They sat around the oval conference table in Aunty Onenu’s large office. Aunty Onenu’s weave was longer and more incongruous than the last, high and coiffed in front, with waves of hair floating to her back. She sipped from a bottle of diet Sprite and said she liked Doris’s piece “Marrying Your Best Friend.”
“Very good and inspirational,” she said.
“Ah, but Aunty Onenu, women should not marry their best friend because there is no sexual chemistry,” Zemaye said.
Aunty Onenu gave Zemaye the look given to the crazy student whom one could not take seriously, then she shuffled her papers and said she did not like Ifemelu’s profile of Mrs. Funmi King.
“Why did you say ‘she never looks at her steward when she speaks to him’?” Aunty Onenu asked.
“Because she didn’t,” Ifemelu said.
“But it makes her sound wicked,” Aunty Onenu said.
“I think it’s an interesting detail,” Ifemelu said.
“I agree with Aunty Onenu,” Doris said. “Interesting or not, it is judgmental?”
“The idea of interviewing someone and writing a profile is judgmental,” Ifemelu said. “It’s not about the subject. It’s about what the interviewer makes of the subject.”
Aunty Onenu shook her head. Doris shook her head.
“Why do we have to play it so safe?” Ifemelu asked.
Doris said, with false humor, “This isn’t your American race blog where you provoked everybody, Ifemelu. This is like a wholesome women’s magazine?”
“Yes, it is!” Aunty Onenu said.
“But Aunty Onenu, we will never beat Glass if we continue like this,” Ifemelu said.
Aunty Onenu’s eyes widened.
“Glass is doing exactly what we are doing,” Doris said quickly.
Esther came in to tell Aunty Onenu that her daughter had arrived.
Esther’s black high heels were shaky, and as she walked past, Ifemelu worried that the shoes would collapse and sprain Esther’s ankles. Earlier in the morning, Esther had told Ifemelu, “Aunty, your hair is jaga-jaga,” with a kind of sad honesty, about what Ifemelu considered an attractive twist-out style.
“Ehn, she is already here?” Aunty Onenu said. “Girls, please finish the meeting. I am taking my daughter to shop for a dress and I have an afternoon meeting with our distributors.”
Ifemelu was tired, bored. She thought, again, of starting a blog. Her phone was vibrating, Ranyinudo calling, and ordinarily she would have waited until the meeting was over to call her back. But she said, “Sorry, I have to take this, international call,” and hurried out. Ranyinudo was complaining about Don. “He said I am not the sweet girl I used to be. That I’ve changed. Meanwhile, I know he has bought the jeep for me and has even cleared it at the port, but now he doesn’t want to give it to me.”
Ifemelu thought about the expression “sweet girl.” Sweet girl meant that, for a long time, Don had molded Ranyinudo into a malleable shape, or that she had allowed him to think he had.
“What about Ndudi?”
Ranyinudo sighed loudly. “We haven’t talked since Sunday. Today he will forget to call me. Tomorrow he
will be too busy. And so I told him that it’s not acceptable. Why should I be making all the effort? Now he is sulking. He can never initiate a conversation like an adult, or agree that he did something wrong.”
Later, back in the office, Esther came in to say that a Mr. Tolu wanted to see Zemaye.
“Is that the photographer you did the tailors article with?” Doris asked.
“Yes. He’s late. He has been dodging my calls for days,” Zemaye said.
Doris said, “You need to handle that and make sure I have the images by tomorrow afternoon? I need everything to get to the printer before three? I don’t want a repeat of the printer’s delay, especially now that Glass is printing in South Africa?”
“Okay.” Zemaye shook her mouse. “The server is so slow today. I just need to send this thing. Esther, tell him to wait.”