The Thing Around Your Neck - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie [13]
“When oga Obiora comes next week, madam, you will discuss it with him,” Amaechi says with a resigned air, pouring vegetable oil into a pot. “He will ask her to move out. It is not right, moving her into your house.”
“So after he moves her out, then what?”
“You will forgive him, madam. Men are like that.”
Nkem watches Amaechi, the way her feet, encased in blue slippers, are so firm, so flatly placed on the ground. “What if I told you that he has a girlfriend? Not that she has moved in, only that he has a girlfriend.”
“I don’t know, madam.” Amaechi avoids Nkem’s eyes. She pours onion slices into the sizzling oil and backs away at the hissing sound.
“You think your oga Obiora has always had girlfriends, don’t you?”
Amaechi stirs the onions. Nkem senses the quiver in her hands.
“It is not my place, madam.”
“I would not have told you if I did not want to talk to you about it, Amaechi.”
“But madam, you know, too.”
“I know? I know what?”
“You know oga Obiora has girlfriends. You don’t ask questions. But inside, you know.”
Nkem feels an uncomfortable tingle in her left ear. What does it mean to know, really? Is it knowing—her refusal to think concretely about other women? Her refusal to ever consider the possibility?
“Oga Obiora is a good man, madam, and he loves you, he does not use you to play football.” Amaechi takes the pot off the stove and looks steadily at Nkem. Her voice is softer, almost cajoling. “Many women would be jealous, maybe your friend Ijemamaka is jealous. Maybe she is not a true friend. There are things she should not tell you. There are things that are good if you don’t know.”
Nkem runs her hand through her short curly hair, sticky with the texturizer and curl activator she had used earlier. Then she gets up to rinse her hand. She wants to agree with Amaechi, that there are things that are best unknown, but then she is not so sure anymore. Maybe it is not such a bad thing that Ijemamaka told me, she thinks. It no longer matters why Ijemamaka called.
“Check the potatoes,” she says.
. . .
Later that evening, after putting the children to bed, she picks up the kitchen phone and dials the fourteen-digit number. She hardly ever calls Nigeria. Obiora does the calling, because his Worldnet cell phone has good international rates.
“Hello? Good evening.” It is a male voice. Uneducated.
Rural Igbo accent. “This is Madam from America.” “Ah, madam!” The voice changes, warms up. “Good evening, madam.”
“Who is speaking?”
“Uchenna, madam. I am the new houseboy.”
“When did you come?”
“Two weeks now, madam.”
“Is Oga Obiora there?”
“No, madam. Not back from Abuja.”
“Is anybody else there?”
“How, madam?”
“Is anybody else there?”
“Sylvester and Maria, madam.”
Nkem sighs. She knows the steward and cook would be there, of course, it is midnight in Nigeria. But does this new houseboy sound hesitant, this new houseboy that Obiora forgot to mention to her? Is the girl with the curly hair there? Or did she go with Obiora on the business trip to Abuja?
“Is anybody else there?” Nkem asks again.
A pause. “Madam?”
“Is anybody else in that house except for Sylvester and Maria?”
“No, madam. No.”
“Are you sure?”
A longer pause. “Yes, madam.”
“Okay, tell oga Obiora that I called.”
Nkem hangs up quickly. This is what I have become, she thinks. I am spying on my husband with a new houseboy I don’t even know.
“Do you want a small drink?” Amaechi asks, watching her, and Nkem wonders if it is pity, that liquid glint in Amaechi’s slightly slanted eyes. A small drink has been their tradition, hers and Amaechi’s, for some years now, since the day Nkem got her green card. She had opened a bottle of champagne that day and poured for Amaechi