The Best American Short Stories® 2011 Read Online Free PDF Page A

rigorous. Of course, they teach in French, but it can only be good for the child to learn another civilized language, since she already learns English at home."
    "Okay, Auntie. I'll go there and talk to them," Kosi said. "I know I have to start early."
    "The French school is not bad, but I prefer Meadowland. They teach the complete British curriculum," the other woman, whose name Obinze had forgotten but who had made a lot of money during General Abacha's military government, said. The story was that she had been a pimp of some sort, providing women for army officers and getting inflated supply contracts in exchange.
    "Oh, yes. Meadowland. I'll look at that one too," Kosi said.
    "Why?" Obinze asked. "Didn't we all go to primary schools that taught the Nigerian curriculum?"
    The women looked at him.
    Finally Mrs. Akin-Cole said, "But things have changed, my dear Obinze," and shook her head pitifully, as though he were an adolescent.
    "I agree," Kosi said, and Obinze wanted to ask what the fuck it was she agreed with anyway.
    "If you decide to disadvantage your child by sending her to one of these schools with half-baked Nigerian teachers..." Mrs. Akin-Cole shrugged. She spoke with that unplaceable foreign accent, British and American and something else all at once, of the wealthy Nigerian who did not want the world to forget how worldly she was, how her British Airways executive card was choking with miles.
    "One of my friends sent her child to St. Mary's, and do you know, they have only five computers in the whole school. Only five!" the other woman said.
    "We'll go to the British school and French school," Kosi said and looked at him with a plea. He shrugged. He would ordinarily not have said anything at all to Mrs. Akin-Cole, but today he wanted to pluck the sneer from her face and crumple it and hurl it back. But Chief was upon them.
    "Princess!" Chief said to Kosi and hugged her, pressing her close; Obinze wondered if Chief had propositioned her in the past. It would not surprise him. He had once been at Chief's house when a man brought his girlfriend to visit, and when she left the room to go to the toilet, Obinze heard Chief tell the man, "I like that girl. Give her to me and I will give you a nice plot in Victoria Island."
    "You look so well, Chief," Kosi said. "Ever young!"
    "Ah, my dear, I try, I try." Chiefjokingly tugged at the satin lapels of his black jacket. He did look well, spare and upright unlike many of his peers in their sixties. "My boy!" he said to Obinze.
    "Good evening, Chief." Obinze shook him with both hands, bowing slightly. He watched the other men at the party bow too, crowding around Chief, jostling to outlaugh one another when Chief made a joke. They were all men who wore conspicuous watches, who had loud conversations about the things they owned, the sort of men that
City People
referred to as "Lagos Big Boys." They reminded Obinze of the three men he saw in Chief's house the first day his cousin took him there. They had been in the living room sipping cognac while Chief pontificated about politics. "Exactly! Correct! Thank you! You have just nailed the exact problem, Chief!" they crowed from time to time. Obinze had watched, fascinated. He was only a month in Lagos after being deported from England, but his cousin Amaka had started to grumble about how he could not just stay in her flat reading and moping, how he was not the first person to be deported, after all, and how he needed to hustle. Lagos was about hustling. His mates were hustling. She was Chief's girlfriend—
he has many but I am one of the serious ones; he doesn't buy cars for everyone
, she said—and so she brought him to Chief's house to introduce them and see if Chief would help him. Chief was a difficult man, she told him, and it was important to catch him in a good mood when he was at his most expansive. They had, apparently, because after the three men left, Chief turned to Obinze and asked, "Do you know that song 'No One