Mr. and Mrs. Doctor Read online

  When Ifi rose to make her way to the bathroom mirror, she could not move her neck. The clasp had caught on her hair. Job tried to pull it free, but Ifi swung her arms wildly as if swatting a mosquito. “Leave me!” she yelled. “Leave me, oh!”

  Job yanked harder at the clasp. Suddenly the necklace exploded, shells flying in every direction.

  Ifi collapsed to her knees and began to pick up the shells. Impossible. She would be on her knees all night, like the boy in the restaurant.

  “Leave it,” Job said. “I will buy another.” Ifi ignored him, silent tears spreading down her cheeks.

  When the lights went out again with a sudden whoosh, Job was relieved. In the darkness, Ifi continued to feel her way to each shell. Job opened and shut drawers in search of matches or a lighter. In the bottom drawer of the bathroom sink, his fingers finally closed over a box of matches, slightly damp with the scent of cleaning fluids. He tried each match until he finally found one that worked and struck it. From there, he could just make out a raw, half-eaten candle, which he lit.

  With a backwards swipe, Job erased the perspiration from his face. He decided that he would return her to her people and go back to America alone. His family could begin the process again, inquiring into the reputation of each prospective family, sending him snapshots of stoic women, their heads draped in wigs, coolly gazing past the flash of the camera.

  She should have been prettier, he told himself. After all, his family had made a point of forgiving her poverty; her good name would do. She was tall by his family’s standards. Lean in a way that made wrappers and dresses appear ill fitting and silly. Still, her thinness was ideal for the blue jeans that American women wore. His father, who had never visited America but had watched every videocassette he had mailed him, had reminded Job of this. His grandmother had insisted her small buttocks would grow with the birth of their first child. She is still just a child herself, she had explained. Ifi’s legs were bony and ridged at the knees, her face taut with strain around her eyes, as if she squinted furiously at everything. She was also not as light skinned as his mother would have preferred, and her hair was not ideal. But, Job reminded himself, she wasn’t ugly.

  Job sank down onto the toilet, striking his foot against Ifi’s bag and knocking the few articles of clothing, makeup, perfume, and jewelry loose. He began to place each item back in the bag, using the flickering light of the candle as a guide. Women with all their tools. Men didn’t have it as easy. If a woman was fat, thin, too dark, too light, too short, too tall, there was always something she could do about it. His sisters, Jenny and Florence, had used lightening creams for years, wearing tall heels to compensate for their short frames and even slipping cotton balls into their bras. When they went to their rooms at night, they were his plain sisters with ashy skin and acne, but when they reemerged, they were something new.

  His fingers ran along a pearl necklace in Ifi’s bag. He’d sent it to her many months before. He remembered the awkwardness of picking it out at Wal-Mart, the saleslady watching him closely as he gazed into the glass case. Now, he lifted it against his hairy chest and clasped the ends behind his neck. Success. Why hadn’t he been able to get it right when it mattered?

  With the pearls around his neck, he remembered the feeling he had the first time he wore a stethoscope. Strangely, it was just like this, the same satisfaction. A small smile grew on his face as he listened for his heartbeat once more. He was a boy the first time he’d heard this sound—the wonder, the amazement at a device that could track the rapid sound of his own music. His brother, Samuel, had smiled when Job asked if a small ear was in the tool.

  After the funeral, when Job was going through his brother’s things in the room they’d shared, he found the stethoscope again. Job fingered and played with it, listening to the sound for a long time, enthralled. His mother came in then and saw him on his knees with his dead brother’s things scattered around him on the floor. She beat him, asking what he was thinking, playing with his brother’s belongings. “Samuel will be angry. Hurry, put it away!” she had said, as if Samuel was among the living, as if he was still fighting for Biafra.

  After the beating was over, and Job wept silently at his sister’s side, his father called him over. Job’s mother was turned away, her face set in a frown. His father had the box of Samuel’s things. “Choose what you like,” he said to Job, “and then I must never see you playing in this box, you hear?”

  At first, Job didn’t know what to do. He saw his mother with the look she made when she tasted something spoiled, so he waited, but he heard nothing. After a while, she turned to face him. Only then did he take the box. He went through it, lifting each object out slowly, examining it, deciding on its weight, its smell, its usefulness. Since the stethoscope was the start of all the trouble, he wanted nothing to do with it. Instead, he took a jazz record. He had never heard it play, but he knew one day he would have the money to buy a music machine of his own. He also took a cricket ball and mallet. He would practice until he was better than all of his agemates. Samuel’s trousers were too long, but he took them anyway, and his brother’s hat, which he tipped forward on his head, like his brother had. The brim dangled over his eyes. A smile twitched on his mother’s lips, loosening the scowl, so he put on his brother’s pants, adjusting his hips so that the waist gapped around his narrow body. Like the trunk of an elephant, the trouser legs bagged at his feet. His mother laughed and pulled him into her arms for a tight hug, her eyes wet with tears when she released him.

  “He is not finished,” his father had said. He pushed the box back toward Job. All that remained was the stethoscope. Job wanted nothing to do with it. “Take it,” his father had said. Job shook his head furiously. His father reached for him and put it around Job’s neck. He put the ear tips in Job’s ears and then, kneeling before him, he placed the chestpiece to his own chest. Job heard no sound, so he adjusted the chest piece until he found the sound of his father’s heartbeat, a dull, raspy thudding.

  Standing in the hotel bathroom on the night of his honeymoon, Job no longer replayed his memory of the stethoscope. Instead, he remembered his mother’s laughter at the sight of his small frame in his brother’s oversized clothes. She had gone from tears to anger to laughter, just like that. But what had made her laugh? Was it merely the sight of him in his brother’s clothes? It had to have been more than that.

  Job picked up Ifi’s perfume, sprayed it into the air, and sniffed. It smelled good. He twirled his fingertip in her rouge, absentmindedly dragging a deep red line across the sink. Then, still staring at the streak, he began to spread the rouge on his cheeks, then his eyelids, and finally his lips. Laughing, he reached for her bra, thinking of his flat-chested sisters standing before the mirror as small girls. He put it on, filling each cup with toilet tissue. Ballooning his chest, he made motions like a woman, then a gorilla, then the Incredible Hulk. The little cups barely jiggled on his chest. He chuckled—how silly this was! But maybe, like his mother did, Ifi would laugh; perhaps like his father did, Ifi would hope.

  He didn’t see himself in the mirror. Instead, he saw his reflection in Ifi’s horrified expression as she leaned in the doorway: potbellied, tangled curly hairs escaping the bra, straps crookedly balanced on his broad shoulders, smudged red rouge covering his mouth, as much on his teeth as on his lips. She wasn’t laughing, not even a hint of a smile. Ifi was paralyzed and Job was too, his mind flashing to the kind of humiliation her scorn could bring. He simply could not survive it. He had failed badly. Job struggled to peel off the bra. Pretend this never happened. Send her home with the driver. Return to America. Alone.

  Suddenly, she let out a burst of laughter. She raised her hand, stopping him. Her eyes formed a question, then her lips followed: “Americans do this, too?”

  “Nothing is too strange for Americans,” he admitted.

  Ifi motioned to her dress, heaped on the floor. With a toe, she gently kicked it to him. Go on, her look said, don’t let me interrupt you.


  Is she trying to make a fool of me? He couldn’t. He wouldn’t.

  And suddenly he realized, understood, that something had been fixed, and would be broken if he did not proceed. Just not while she watched. Twirling his finger, he motioned for her to look the other way. She obliged. Carefully, he stepped into her dress, yellow with daisies along the bottom, fitted around the waist. It was a struggle, but eventually he secured the straps in the back. There he stood, ashy feet and unclipped toenails peeking out from under the hem. “Turn around,” he said.

  When she saw him, something like hiccups began to erupt from her chest—a laugh.

  He sighed. He could do nothing but blow her a kiss.

  As she backed through the open doorway, falling onto the bed, she continued to laugh. He turned his hips this way and that, standing on his toes as if in his sisters’ heels. She laughed harder, nearly choking.

  “No, no! Like this.” Standing before him, Ifi began to stir her buttocks in slow, deliberate strokes. She spun as if she were unwinding. Once thin and featureless, her body was now defined only by the movement in her hips.

  Jerking his hips, knees, and buttocks, Job imitated her. Uproarious laughter rose through Ifi, exaggerating the movement in her hips until she could dance no more. There was a freshness in her face. It made Job laugh as he hadn’t in years.

  It was only natural that gradually the clothes began to fall away. The dress refused to come off peacefully; it caught on the bra strap. He squeezed each buttock muscle individually as he lowered the bra to step out of it. It didn’t occur to him that he could simply turn the bra around and unclasp it. One after another, he fought each article of clothing before tossing it to her.

  With nothing but the makeup on, Job came toward his wife. Propped on the bathroom sink, the dancing flames peeked through the open doorway and illuminated Job just enough so that the contours of his heavily painted face were accented. Ifi ran her fingers across her husband’s face, tenderly wiping away the rouge with his sweat. “This is only for your lips,” she said. “And for your eyes, there is something called eye shadow and mascara. Did your mother not teach you anything?”

  Then, in a blast, the light returned.

  In the blinding light, their gazes split apart.

  She could not look at him. He could not look at her.

  CHAPTER 2

  JOB OGBONNAYA’S FIRST WIFE HAD, LIKE IFI, ARRIVED IN A STACK OF photographs before they were ever married. To be exact, the photographs were postcards. Cheryl’s was the third. On one side, stock photography of sandhill cranes dotting an amber Nebraska landscape with a blazing sunset misting around the birds. On the other side, no photograph; instead, her particulars: American, white, twice divorced. She was thirty-two. She owned two dogs and lived with her only sibling, a deaf-mute, in the home their dead parents had left them. His name was Luther. He was on disability. Cheryl was out of work. These were the things Job must know. The rest could be lies.

  It was 1982, and he had only been in America for five years. He was just twenty-four, with less than a year left on his visa since he had flunked out of college. His father had given him money for tuition, but he was using it to pay for the arrangement. Half now and half after the business was done. His father didn’t need to know. There would be too many questions. Job could talk to the proper people; he could take the proper tests; he could go back to school, later.

  Job arrived that day wearing a tan corduroy suit, a tie, and cracked leather shoes that he had coaxed to a shine with vegetable oil. He had even barbered his hair. As agreed, they met by a Volkswagen across the street from the county clerk’s office, a tall limestone building with dark windows like gapped teeth. An American flag clapped in the breeze, and the sprinkler chopped the bronze placard on the front of the building with a wet streak.

  Emeka had said to marry quick-quick, and then irreconcilable differences. Emeka had said his was nineteen, a model. Emeka had said his was getting a degree in literature, but her parents wanted her to study home economics, so she was doing this to pay for her tuition. Anyway, she had said, it’s a free country.

  Instead of the American model studying Shakespeare, Job got a short woman, slender with loose, pale skin, red hair, and a freckled face full of teeth, like a small boy. Her stonewashed jean skirt exposed knobby, raw knees. Surely, she was older than the thirty-two on the postcard.

  In an hour they would stop processing applications for the day. There were two men waiting upstairs, the broker told them, the witnesses. Once the money had been exchanged, the broker left them on their own. After, the broker would return and they would exchange the second half. In a few months they would be divorced, and it would be like the marriage had never happened.

  As soon as they met, without even looking at him, Cheryl said, “I don’t usually do this.”

  They always say they have never done this before, Emeka had said. It is a mistake to believe them.

  “Of course,” Job said to her with a curt smile. “Of course. You will change your dress and we will go.”

  “What do you mean?” Cheryl asked.

  “This is not what you will wear.”

  “What’s wrong with what I have on?”

  Could she really have intended to appear without properly dressing? Real or not, this was a wedding and should be observed accordingly. Job eyed her closely.

  They will ask you to spend more money than you have agreed, Emeka had said. Do not fall into this trapdoor.

  “I will not buy you anything more. You understand.”

  “Wait a minute,” she said. “You think I want you to buy me clothes? You?” She spoke as if conversing with a diseased goat.

  Job shook his head. He would have to tell the broker that this one was not good for the price.

  “First of all, this is not Africa, O.K.? This is America. It’s a free country. We can wear whatever we want here. Second of all, I don’t need your money. I don’t need to take anything from you. And third of all—” she took a deep breath. “Do you have a light?”

  Just as Job reached into his pocket for his lighter, she produced a packet of cigarettes. He stopped himself. It was one thing for her to dress so foolishly on such a day. It was yet another for her to smoke like a man in his presence, America or not. “No, I am sorry,” he said.

  Across the parking lot, there was a strip of faded brick buildings and linked to those, a gas station convenience store. “I’m gonna run down the street to the gas station and get a lighter,” she said.

  “Come now,” Job said. “You can smoke your cigars after. One hour is remaining. They are waiting.”

  “Just back off, man. I need to relax.” She kneaded her fingers into her face. “I need a cigarette.”

  Slowly, he lifted the lighter out of his pocket. Fixing his gaze on her, he spoke coolly. “You need to smoke.” When she sucked her teeth in surprise, he did not bother to feign an apology.

  She poked out her lips and put the cigarette between them anyway. Again and again she clicked the lighter on, but there was no flame. She flung the lighter into the street. “You did that on purpose.” Her fingers pressed into her temples so hard that they left red prints along her hairline. “Fuck, I can’t do this.”

  “Okie,” Job said, frowning. “Okie, we will buy you a cigarette lighter.”

  They stood along the doors of the gas station. Cigarettes were a part of the job, she said. So he was paying for that now, or it would be added to everything else in the end. Fine, Job had said. Fine. She hadn’t eaten, and when they entered the gas station she wanted food too. But he drew the line at the cigarette lighter.

  Once outside, she wouldn’t light the cigarette until he turned away. He was making her “antsy.” But he would only go as far as the end of the building. From a payphone, Job dialed Emeka’s number.

  “Emeka,” he said, “how are you, my friend?”

  “I am living on top of the Chrysler Building. And you?”

  “My man, I am preparing t
o become an American citizen.” Job laughed into the phone. He turned away from the receiver and faced Cheryl, who was still sucking on the cigarette. She twisted the frayed ends of her skirt with her other hand.

  “Excellent,” Emeka said, “and after, you will come and we will celebrate.”

  “Of course, my man,” Job said, “but I am wondering: are some American women more prepared in these arrangements than others?”

  “Abeg, Job. Have you not listened to me? I hope you are not wining and dining for this American.” Emeka sighed into the phone. “Do not make a fool of yourself. Americans are way-o.”

  “What are you talking about? Do I look like a fool?” Job asked. “Ah-ah! She is long legged and blonde, like a model.”

  Cheryl pinched the cigarette with the heel of her shoe, gathered her worn-out purse straps, and started for the county clerk’s office.

  “I have to go. I will call you back.” Before Emeka had a chance to respond, he hung up.

  This time, Cheryl entered the county clerk’s office before he did. All the way down the dark, airless halls, her sandals left a hollow thud while his scuffed soles creaked.

  Two men in tan slacks and tucked shirts leaned against a tall wooden door with the number 113 stenciled on it. One of the men was white with tufts of hair sprouting from around a faded baseball cap, and the other was a Native American with a greased ponytail. When Cheryl saw the men, she stopped.

  “I need to eat,” she said. “I feel sick to my stomach.”

  “Let us finish this, oh,” Job said in exasperation.

  “We need to eat now,” Cheryl said.

  “You want chips? You want Coca-Cola? We will buy you Coca-Cola when we are finished.”

  “Look,” Cheryl said. She was beginning to shake. “I am not some whore, O.K.? I barely know you.”