What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky(5)

WILD




Two months before my first semester at Emory—two months I’d imagined I’d spend getting high in Leila’s basement while we crooned stale power ballads at each other—my mother sabotaged my summer plans with a one-way ticket to Lagos and a promise to purchase the return only after I’d earned it. A suitcase was already packed and my passport, whisked from my room the week before, was presented to me along with the ticket, relieving me of excuses. My plane left in four hours.

“I’ve just had enough. You can either go and stay with Auntie Ugo or work at the clinic with me, no friends, no visits, no nothing. It’s up to you, but enough is enough.”

“Enough” had started with stupid teenage things that, magnified under the halo of Chinyere, my well-behaved cousin, made me a bad, bad girl. There was the misfortune of having my first kiss—with Bartholomew Fradkin, who shouldn’t even have been in my class but had been held back once in kindergarten, then again in third grade—witnessed by no less than four faculty members and three students. The resulting plague of rumors earned me a lecture from my mother—“You are not like these oyinbo girls, you can’t just do your body anyhow”—and an undeserved reputation as a bit of a ho.

“Enough” was the time my mother, looking to treat a headache, found the Ecstasy I’d thought cleverly hidden in an Excedrin bottle, and I came home to her making carpet angels. I joined her and we laughed and laughed till she’d sobered up and the laughing stopped.

Or when I was suspended for calling my Debate and News teacher a fascist cow because she refused to let me argue for abortion rights, an issue I didn’t feel one way or the other about until I was denied the option to support it. The suspension lasted a week and a half and that fascist cow scheduled a pop quiz every day I was gone, lowering my GPA by 0.07, enough for Emily Gleason (the fascist cow’s niece) to be valedictorian instead of me. When my mother found out, she screamed at me for an hour about responsibility and dedication and all the responsible and dedicated people who had made it possible for me to be here, starting with my great-grandfather, a mere goat herder, who no doubt was curled in his grave, weeping, and ending with my father, God rest his soul.

“You know, they told me to beat you.”

“Who?”

“Everybody. They said since you were being raised without a father and in America of all places, if I didn’t beat you, you would go wild. And I didn’t listen.”

“Well, are you going to start now?” My mother was a small woman who carried her weight in her personality. I had three inches and fifteen pounds on her. It would be tricky.

She just shook her head at me, wearing a helpless half sneer that asked whose daughter was this. It was a look I had seen many times.

“I’m sorry?”

“This is because of that girl,” she said, ignoring my apology.

“That girl” was Leila, my best friend since the seventh grade. At first our friendship had been one of convenience, a forced camaraderie that came from being the only two nonwhites—and foreigners—in our entire grade. But later that year Leila’s mother passed away and, each of us down a parent—mine to a car accident, hers to cancer—we bonded over the loss. My mother had liked Leila at first, preferring that I make friends with other immigrants, but after Leila’s mother died and she started acting out, my mother tried to steer me away, although she remained courteous to her.

“There’s nothing wrong with Leila. There’s nothing wrong with me. There’s nothing wrong with anything. We’re fine, Mom.” My mother threw up her hands and the argument ended as many had before, with her exasperated capitulation.

Or so I thought.

Now, two weeks later, my mother drove to the airport in a silence so heavy it slid across my skin. She’d threatened to send me to my aunt so many times it had become toothless, but the valedictorian thing must have been the last straw. At the airport, she mellowed enough to give careful warnings—don’t take anything from strangers, stay at your gate so you don’t miss the plane—but I responded in monosyllables, too angry to manage much else.

“Chinyere will be picking you up from the airport. Please be good. I love you.”

—

I could tell right away that I wasn’t what she’d expected, this wild American cousin of hers. I was wearing loose jeans, a tank top, and a flannel shirt, which had served in the coolness of the aircraft but I now tied around my waist to circumvent the naija heat. I looked, as always, disappointing. My mother constantly complained about my dressing, the baggy jeans and shirts too masculine for her liking, but I had always dressed for comfort, not much caring how I looked.

Chinyere dressed for style and was much thinner than I’d expected, but without the bony edges that had earned me the nickname “Daddy Longlegs” in my adolescence.

“Chinyere.”

“Ada, welcome.”

My mother loved invoking Chinyere to nudge me into correct behavior. Chinyere was such a sweet girl; Chinyere went to church, so why couldn’t I; Chinyere was so obedient. Even after her indiscretion, the lectures continued. Chinyere was so nice, you see, and called my mother every other Sunday afternoon between three and four, just to chat. There was no chance of us being friends.

In her car, a sporty but dusty two-door Toyota, my phone beeped as it connected to a network. Chinyere held out her hand.