“His depression is because of his experience, Aunty!” Ifemelu said, her voice rising, and then she was sobbing, apologizing to Aunty Uju, her own guilt spreading and sullying her. Dike would not have swallowed those pills if she had been more diligent, more awake. She had crouched too easily behind laughter, she had failed to till the emotional soil of Dike’s jokes. It was true that he laughed, and that his laughter convinced with its sound and its light, but it might have been a shield, and underneath, there might have been a growing pea plant of trauma.
Now, in the shrill, silent aftermath of his suicide attempt, she wondered how much they had masked with all that laughter. She should have worried more. She watched him carefully. She guarded him. She did not want his friends to visit, although the therapist said it was fine if he wanted them to. Even Page, who had burst out crying a few days ago when she was alone with Ifemelu, saying, “I just can’t believe he didn’t reach out to me.” She was a child, well-meaning and simple, and yet Ifemelu felt a wave of resentment towards her, for thinking that Dike should have reached out to her. Kweku came back from his medical mission in Nigeria, and he spent time with Dike, watching television with him, bringing calm and normalcy back.
The weeks passed. Ifemelu stopped panicking when Dike stayed a little too long in the bathroom. His birthday was days away and she asked what he would like, her tears again gathering, because she imagined his birthday passing not as the day he turned seventeen but as the day he would have turned seventeen.
“How about we go to Miami?” he said, half joking, but she took him to Miami and they spent two days in a hotel, ordering burgers at the thatch-covered bar by the pool, talking about everything but the suicide attempt.
“This is the life,” he said, lying with his face to the sun. “That blog of yours was a great thing, had you swimming in the dough and all. Now you’ve closed it, we won’t be able to do more of this stuff!”
“I wasn’t swimming, kind of just splattering,” she said, looking at him, her handsome cousin, and the curl of wet hair on his chest made her sad, because it implied his new, tender adulthood, and she wished he would remain a child; if he remained a child then he would not have taken pills and lain on the basement couch with the certainty that he would never wake up again.
“I love you, Dike. We love you, you know that?”
“I know,” he said. “Coz, you should go.”
“Go where?”
“Back to Nigeria, like you were planning to. I’m going to be okay, I promise.”
“Maybe you could come and visit me,” she said.
After a pause, he said, “Yeah.”
Part 7
CHAPTER 44
At first, Lagos assaulted her; the sun-dazed haste, the yellow buses full of squashed limbs, the sweating hawkers racing after cars, the advertisements on hulking billboards (others scrawled on walls—PLUMBER CALL 080177777) and the heaps of rubbish that rose on the roadsides like a taunt. Commerce thrummed too defiantly. And the air was dense with exaggeration, conversations full of overprotestations. One morning, a man’s body lay on Awolowo Road. Another morning, The Island flooded and cars became gasping boats. Here, she felt, anything could happen, a ripe tomato could burst out of solid stone. And so she had the dizzying sensation of falling, falling into the new person she had become, falling into the strange familiar. Had it always been like this or had it changed so much in her absence? When she left home, only the wealthy had cell phones, all the numbers started with 090, and girls wanted to date 090 men. Now, her hair braider had a cell phone, the plantain seller tending a blackened grill had a cell phone. She had grown up knowing all the bus stops and the side streets, understanding the cryptic codes of conductors and the body language of street hawkers. Now, she struggled to grasp the unspoken. When had shopkeepers become so rude? Had buildings in Lagos always had this patina of decay? And when did it become a city of people quick to beg and too enamored of free things?
“Americanah!” Ranyinudo teased her often. “You are looking at things with American eyes. But the problem is that you are not even a real Americanah. At least if you had an American accent we would tolerate your complaining!”
Ranyinudo picked her up from the airport, standing by the Arrivals exit in a billowy bridesmaid’s dress, her blusher too red on her cheeks like bruises, the green satin flowers in her hair now askew. Ifemelu was struck by how arresting, how attractive, she was. No longer a ropy mass of gangly arms and gangly legs, but now a big, firm, curvy woman, exulting in her weight and height, and it made her imposing, a presence that drew the eyes.
“Ranyi!” Ifemelu said. “I know my coming back is a big deal but I didn’t know it was big enough for a ball gown.”
“Idiot. I came straight from the wedding. I didn’t want to risk the traffic of going home first to change.”
They hugged, holding each other close. Ranyinudo smelled of a floral perfume and exhaust fumes and sweat; she smelled of Nigeria.
“You look amazing, Ranyi,” Ifemelu said. “I mean, underneath all that war paint. Your pictures didn’t even show you well.”
“Ifemsco, see you, beautiful babe, even after a long flight,” she said, laughing, dismissing the compliment, playing at her old role of the girl who was not the pretty one. Her looks had changed but the excitable, slightly reckless air about her had not. Unchanged, too, was the eternal gurgle in her voice, laughter just beneath the surface, ready to break free, to erupt. She drove fast, braking sharply and glancing often at the BlackBerry on her lap; whenever the traffic stilled, she picked it up and typed swiftly.
“Ranyi, you should text and drive only when you are alone so that you kill only yourself,” Ifemelu said.
“Haba! I don’t text and drive o. I text when I’m not driving,” she said. “This wedding was something else, the best wedding I’ve been to. I wonder if you’ll remember the bride. She was Funke’s very good friend in secondary school. Ijeoma, very yellow girl. She went to Holy Child but she used to come to our WAEC lesson with Funke. We became friends in university. If you see her now, eh, she’s a serious babe. Her husband has major money. Her engagement ring is bigger than Zuma Rock.”
Ifemelu stared out of the window, half listening, thinking how unpretty Lagos was, roads infested with potholes, houses springing up unplanned like weeds. Of her jumble of feelings, she recognized only confusion.
“Lime and peach,” Ranyinudo said.
“What?”
“The wedding colors. Lime and peach. The hall decoration was so nice and the cake was just beautiful. Look, I took some pictures. I’m going to put this one up on Facebook.” Ranyinudo gave Ifemelu her BlackBerry. Ifemelu held on to it so that Ranyinudo would focus on her driving.
“And I met someone o. He saw me when I was waiting outside for the mass to end. It was so hot, my foundation was melting on my face and I know I looked like a zombie, but he still came to talk to me! That’s a good sign. I think this one is serious husband material. Did I tell you my mother was seriously saying novenas to end my relationship when I was dating Ibrahim? At least she will not have a heart attack with this one. His name is Ndudi. Cool name, abi? You can’t get more Igbo than that. And you should have seen his watch! He’s into oil. His business card has Nigerian and international offices.”