The woman shrugged. “I’ve been here a long time. It doesn’t make much of a difference.”
“No,” Halima said, suddenly animated, standing behind the woman. “When I come here with my son they beat him in school because of African accent. In Newark. If you see my son face? Purple like onion. They beat, beat, beat him. Black boys beat him like this. Now accent go and no problems.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” the woman said.
“Thank you.” Halima smiled, enamored of the woman because of this extraordinary feat, an American accent. “Yes, Nigeria very corrupt. Worst corrupt country in Africa. Me, I watch the film but no, I don’t go to Nigeria!” She half waved her palm in the air.
“I cannot marry a Nigerian and I won’t let anybody in my family marry a Nigerian,” Mariama said, and darted Ifemelu an apologetic glance. “Not all but many of them do bad things. Even killing for money.”
“Well, I don’t know about that,” the customer said, in a halfheartedly moderate tone.
Aisha looked on, sly and quiet. Later, she whispered to Ifemelu, her expression suspicious, “You here fifteen years, but you don’t have American accent. Why?”
Ifemelu ignored her and, once again, opened Jean Toomer’s Cane. She stared at the words and wished suddenly that she could turn back time and postpone this move back home. Perhaps she had been hasty. She should not have sold her condo. She should have accepted Letterly magazine’s offer to buy her blog and keep her on as a paid blogger. What if she got back to Lagos and realized what a mistake it was to move back? Even the thought that she could always return to America did not comfort her as much as she wished it to.
The film had ended, and in the new noiselessness of the room, Mariama’s customer said, “This one’s rough,” touching one of the thin cornrows that zigzagged over her scalp, her voice louder than it needed to be.
“No problem. I will do it again,” Mariama said. She was agreeable, and smooth-tongued, but Ifemelu could tell that she thought her customer was a troublemaker, and there was nothing wrong with the cornrow, but this was a part of her new American self, this fervor of customer service, this shiny falseness of surfaces, and she had accepted it, embraced it. When the customer left, she might shrug out of that self and say something to Halima and to Aisha about Americans, how spoiled and childish and entitled they were, but when the next customer came, she would become, again, a faultless version of her American self.
Her customer said, “It’s cute,” as she paid Mariama, and shortly after she left, a young white woman came in, soft-bodied and tanned, her hair held back in a loose ponytail.
“Hi!” she said.
Mariama said “Hi,” and then waited, wiping her hands over and over the front of her shorts.
“I wanted to get my hair braided? You can braid my hair, right?”
Mariama smiled an overly eager smile. “Yes. We do every kind of hair. Do you want braids or cornrows?” She was furiously cleaning the chair now. “Please sit.”
The woman sat down and said she wanted cornrows. “Kind of like Bo Derek in the movie? You know that movie 10?”
“Yes, I know,” Mariama said. Ifemelu doubted that she did.
“I’m Kelsey,” the woman announced as though to the whole room. She was aggressively friendly. She asked where Mariama was from, how long she had been in America, if she had children, how her business was doing.
“Business is up and down but we try,” Mariama said.
“But you couldn’t even have this business back in your country, right? Isn’t it wonderful that you get to come to the U.S. and now your kids can have a better life?”
Mariama looked surprised. “Yes.”
“Are women allowed to vote in your country?” Kelsey asked.
A longer pause from Mariama. “Yes.”
“What are you reading?” Kelsey turned to Ifemelu.
Ifemelu showed her the cover of the novel. She did not want to start a conversation. Especially not with Kelsey. She recognized in Kelsey the nationalism of liberal Americans who copiously criticized America but did not like you to do so; they expected you to be silent and grateful, and always reminded you of how much better than wherever you had come from America was.
“Is it good?”
“Yes.”
“It’s a novel, right? What’s it about?”
Why did people ask “What is it about?” as if a novel had to be about only one thing. Ifemelu disliked the question; she would have disliked it even if she did not feel, in addition to her depressed uncertainty, the beginning of a headache. “It may not be the kind of book you would like if you have particular tastes. He mixes prose and verse.”
“You have a great accent. Where are you from?”