Obinze blinked. “What?”
Ifemelu laughed. Later, when she told him what his mother had said, he shook his head. “We have to tell her when we start? What kind of rubbish is that? Does she want to buy condoms for us? What is wrong with that woman?”
“But who told you we are ever going to start anything?”
CHAPTER 6
During the week, Aunty Uju hurried home to shower and wait for The General and, on weekends, she lounged in her nightdress, reading or cooking or watching television, because The General was in Abuja with his wife and children. She avoided the sun and used creams in elegant bottles, so that her complexion, already naturally light, became lighter, brighter, and took on a sheen. Sometimes, as she gave instructions to her driver, Sola, or her gardener, Baba Flower, or her two house helps, Inyang who cleaned and Chikodili who cooked, Ifemelu would remember Aunty Uju, the village girl brought to Lagos so many years ago, who Ifemelu’s mother mildly complained was so parochial she kept touching the walls, and what was it with all those village people who could not stand on their feet without reaching out to smear their palm on a wall? Ifemelu wondered if Aunty Uju ever looked at herself with the eyes of the girl she used to be. Perhaps not. Aunty Uju had steadied herself into her new life with a lightness of touch, more consumed by The General himself than by her new wealth.
The first time Ifemelu saw Aunty Uju’s house in Dolphin Estate, she did not want to leave. The bathroom fascinated her, with its hot water tap, its gushing shower, its pink tiles. The bedroom curtains were made of raw silk, and she told Aunty Uju, “Ahn-ahn, it’s a waste to use this material as a curtain! Let’s sew a dress with it.” The living room had glass doors that slid noiselessly open and noiselessly shut. Even the kitchen was air-conditioned. She wanted to live there. It would impress her friends; she imagined them sitting in the small room just off the living room, which Aunty Uju called the TV room, watching programs on satellite. And so she asked her parents if she could stay with Aunty Uju during the week. “It’s closer to school, I won’t need to take two buses. I can go on Mondays and come home on Fridays,” Ifemelu said. “I can also help Aunty Uju in the house.”
“My understanding is that Uju has sufficient help,” her father said.
“It is a good idea,” her mother said to her father. “She can study well there, at least there will be light every day. No need for her to study with kerosene lamps.”
“She can visit Uju after school and on weekends. But she is not going to live there,” her father said.
Her mother paused, taken aback by his firmness. “Okay,” she said, with a helpless glance at Ifemelu.
For days, Ifemelu sulked. Her father often indulged her, giving in to what she wanted, but this time he ignored her pouts, her deliberate silences at the dinner table. He pretended not to notice when Aunty Uju brought them a new television. He settled back in his well-worn sofa, reading his well-worn book, while Aunty Uju’s driver put down the brown Sony carton. Ifemelu’s mother began to sing a church song—“the Lord has given me victory, I will lift him higher”—which was often sung at collection time.
“The General bought more than I needed in the house. There was nowhere to put this one,” Aunty Uju said, a general statement made to nobody in particular, a way of shrugging off thanks. Ifemelu’s mother opened the carton, gently stripped away the Styrofoam packaging.
“Our old one doesn’t even show anything anymore,” she said, although they all knew that it still did.
“Look at how slim it is!” she added. “Look!”
Her father raised his eyes from the book. “Yes, it is,” he said, and then lowered his gaze.
THE LANDLORD CAME AGAIN. He barged past Ifemelu into the flat, into the kitchen, and reached up to the electric meter, yanking off the fuse, cutting off what little electricity they had.
After he left, Ifemelu’s father said, “What ignominy. To ask us for two years’ rent. We have been paying one year.”
“But even that one year, we have not paid,” her mother said, and in her tone was the slightest of accusations.
“I’ve spoken to Akunne about a loan,” her father said. He disliked Akunne, his almost-cousin, the prosperous man from their hometown to whom everyone took their problems. He called Akunne a lurid illiterate, a money-miss-road.
“What did he say?”
“He said I should come and see him next Friday.” His fingers were unsteady; he was struggling, it seemed, to suppress emotions. Ifemelu hastily looked away, hoping he had not seen her watching him, and asked him if he could explain a difficult question in her homework. To distract him, to make it seem that life could happen again.
HER FATHER WOULD NOT ASK Aunty Uju for help, but if Aunty Uju presented him with the money, he would not refuse. It was better than being indebted to Akunne. Ifemelu told Aunty Uju how the landlord banged on their door, a loud, unnecessary banging for the benefit of the neighbors, while hurling insults at her father. “Are you not a real man? Pay me my money. I will throw you out of this flat if I don’t get that rent by next week!”
As Ifemelu mimicked the landlord, a wan sadness crossed Aunty Uju’s face. “How can that useless landlord embarrass Brother like this? I’ll ask Oga to give me the money.”
Ifemelu stopped. “You don’t have money?”
“My account is almost empty. But Oga will give it to me. And do you know I have not been paid a salary since I started work? Every day, there is a new story from the accounts people. The trouble started with my position that does not officially exist, even though I see patients every day.”
“But doctors are on strike,” Ifemelu said.
“The military hospitals still pay. Not that my pay will be enough for the rent, sha.”
“You don’t have money?” Ifemelu asked again, slowly, to clarify, to be sure. “Ahn-ahn, Aunty, but how can you not have money?”
“Oga never gives me big money. He pays all the bills and he wants me to ask for everything I need. Some men are like that.”
Ifemelu stared. Aunty Uju, in her big pink house with the wide satellite dish blooming from its roof, her generator brimming with diesel, her freezer stocked with meat, and she did not have money in her bank account.