The Thing Around Your Neck Read Online Free PDF

familiarly, as though Nkem’s husband and hers were somehow related to each other. Our men like to keep us here, she had told Nkem. They visit for business and vacations, they leave us and the children with big houses and cars, they get us housegirls from Nigeria who we don’t have to pay any outrageous American wages, and they say business is better in Nigeria and all that. But you know why they won’t move here, even if business were better here? Because America does not recognize BigMen. Nobody says “Sir! Sir!” to them in America. Nobody rushes to dust their seats before they sit down.
    Nkem had asked the woman if she planned to move back and the woman turned, her eyes round, as though Nkem had just betrayed her. But how can I live in Nigeria again? she said. When you’ve been here so long, you’re not the same, you’re not like the people there. How can my children blend in? And Nkem, although she disliked the woman’s severely shaved eyebrows, had understood.
    Nkem lays the scissors down and calls Amaechi to clean up the hair.
    “Madam!” Amaechi screams. “ Chim o! Why did you cut your hair? What happened?”
    “Does something have to happen before I cut my hair? Clean up the hair!”
    Nkem walks into her room. She stares at the paisley cover pulled sleek across the king-size bed. Even Amaechi’s efficient hands can’t hide the flatness on one side of the bed, the fact that it is used only two months of the year. Obiora’s mail is in a neat pile on his nightstand, credit card preapprovals, flyers from LensCrafters. The people who matter know he really lives in Nigeria.
    She comes out and stands by the bathroom as Amaechi cleans up the hair, reverently brushing the brown strands into a dustpan, as though they are potent. Nkem wishes she had not snapped. The madam/housegirl line has blurred in the years she has had Amaechi. It is what America does to you, she thinks. It forces egalitarianism on you. You have nobody to talk to, really, except for your toddlers, so you turn to your housegirl. And before you know it, she is your friend. Your equal.
    “I had a difficult day,” Nkem says, after a while. “I’m sorry.”
    “I know, madam, I see it in your face,” Amaechi says, and smiles.
       
    The phone rings and Nkem knows it is Obiora. Nobody else calls this late.
    “Darling,
kedu
?” he says. “Sorry, I couldn’t call earlier. I just got back from Abuja, the meeting with the minister. My flight was delayed until midnight. It’s almost two a.m. now. Can you believe that?”
    Nkem makes a sympathetic sound.
    “Adanna and Okey
kwanu
?” he asks.
    “They are fine. Asleep.”
    “Are you sick? Are you okay?” he asks. “You sound strange.”
    “I’m all right.” She knows she should tell him about the children’s day, she usually does when he calls too late to talk to them. But her tongue feels bloated, too heavy to let the words roll out.
    “How was the weather today?” he asks.
    “Warming up.”
    “It better finish warming up before I come,” he says, and laughs. “I booked my flight today. I can’t wait to see you all.”
    “Do you—?” she starts to say, but he cuts her off.
    “Darling, I have to go. I have a call coming in, it’s the minister’s personal assistant calling at this time! I love you.”
    “I love you,” she says, although the phone is already dead. She tries to visualize Obiora, but she can’t because she is not sure if he is at home, in his car, somewhere else. And then she wonders if he is alone, or if he is with the girl with the short curly hair. Her mind wanders to the bedroom in Nigeria, hers and Obiora’s, that still feels like a hotel room every Christmas.Does this girl clutch her pillow in sleep? Do this girl’s moans bounce off the vanity mirror? Does this girl walk to the bathroom on tiptoe as she herself had done as a single girl when her married boyfriend brought her to his house for a wife-away weekend?
    She dated married men before