“Thanks. I’m Chinaza… Agatha.”
Nia was watching me carefully. “What was the first thing you said?”
“My Nigerian name.”
“It’s an Igbo name, isn’t it?” She pronounced it “E-boo.”
“Yes.”
“What does it mean?”
“God answers prayers.”
“It’s really pretty. You know, Nia is a Swahili name. I changed my name when I was eighteen. I spent three years in Tanzania. It was fucking amazing.”
“Oh,” I said and shook my head; she, a black American, had chosen an African name, while my husband made me change mine to an English
one.
“You must be bored to death in that apartment; I know Dave gets back pretty late,” she said. “Come have a Coke with me.”
I hesitated, but Nia was already walking to the stairs. I followed her. Her living room had a spare elegance: a red sofa, a slender potted plant, a huge wooden mask hanging on the wall. She gave me a Diet Coke served in a tall glass with ice, asked how I was adjusting to life in America, offered to show me around Brooklyn.
“It would have to be a Monday, though,” she said. “I don’t work Mondays.”
“What do you do?”
“I own a hair salon.”
“Your hair is beautiful,” I said, and she touched it and said, “Oh, this,” as if she did not think anything of it. It was not just her hair, held up on top of her head in a natural Afro puff, that I found beautiful, though, it was her skin the color of roasted groundnuts, her mysterious and heavy-lidded eyes, her curved hips. She played her music a little too loud, so we had to raise our voices as we spoke.
“You know, my sister’s a manager at Macy’s,” she said. “They’re hiring entry-level salespeople in the women’s department, so if you’re interested I can put in a word for you and you’re pretty much hired. She owes me one.”
Something leaped inside me at the thought, the sudden and new thought, of earning what would be mine. Mine.
“I don’t have my work permit yet,” I said.
“But Dave has filed for you?”
“Yes.”
“It shouldn’t take long; at least you should have it before winter. I have a friend from Haiti who just got hers. So let me know as soon as you do.”
“Thank you.” I wanted to hug Nia. “Thank you.”
That evening I told my new husband about Nia. His eyes were sunken in with fatigue, after so many hours at work, and he said, “Nia?” as though he did not know who I meant, before he added, “She’s okay, but be careful because she can be a bad influence.”
Nia began stopping by to see me after work, drinking from a can of diet soda she brought with her and watching me cook. I turned the air conditioner off and opened the window to let in the hot air, so that she could smoke. She talked about the women at her hair salon and the men she went out with. She sprinkled her everyday conversation with words like the noun “clitoris” and the verb “fuck.” I liked to listen to her. I liked the way she smiled to show a tooth that was chipped neatly, a perfect triangle missing at the edge. She always left before my new husband came home.
Winter sneaked up on me. One morning I stepped out of the apartment building and gasped. It was as though God was shredding tufts of white tissue and flinging them down. I stood staring at my first snow, at the swirling flakes, for a long, long time before turning to go back into the apartment. I scrubbed the kitchen floor again, cut out more coupons from the Key Food catalog that came in the mail, and then sat by the window, watching God’s shredding become frenzied. Winter had come and I was still unemployed. When my husband came home in the evening, I placed his french fries and fried chicken before him and said, “I thought I would have my work permit by now.”
He ate a few pieces of oily-fried potatoes before responding. We spoke only English now; he did not know that I spoke Igbo to myself while I cooked, that I had taught Nia how to say “I’m hungry” and “See you tomorrow” in Igbo.
“The American woman I married to get a green card is making trouble,” he said, and slowly tore a piece of chicken in two. The area under his eyes was puffy. “Our divorce was almost final, but not completely, before I married you in Nigeria. Just a minor thing, but she found out about it and now she’s threatening to report me to Immigration. She wants more money.”
“You were married before?” I laced my fingers together because they had started to shake.
“Would you pass that, please?” he asked, pointing to the lemonade I had made earlier.