The Thing Around Your Neck - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie [31]
That day, Josh was in the bathroom and Kamara was sitting at the kitchen table looking through his homework when she heard a sound behind her. She turned, thinking it was Josh, but Tracy appeared, curvy in leggings and a tight sweater, smiling, squinting, pushing away long dreadlocks from her face with paint-stained fingers. It was a strange moment. Their eyes held and suddenly Kamara wanted to lose weight and wear makeup again. A fellow woman who has the same thing that you have? her friend Chinwe would say if she ever told her. Tufia! What kind of foolishness is that? Kamara had been saying this to herself, too, since Monday of last week. She said this even as she stopped eating fried plantains and had her hair braided in the Senegalese place on South Street and began to sift through piles of mascara in the beauty supply store. Saying those words to herself changed nothing, because what had happened in the kitchen that afternoon was a flowering of extravagant hope, because what now propelled her life was the thought that Tracy would come upstairs again.
Kamara put the chicken strips in the oven. Neil added three dollars an hour for the days when he did not come home on time and she cooked Josh’s dinner. It amused her, how “cooking dinner” was made to sound like difficult work when it was really a sanitized string of actions: opening cartons and bags and placing things in the oven and microwave. Neil should have seen the kerosene stove she had used back home with its thick gusts of smoke. The oven beeped. She arranged the chicken strips around the small mound of rice on Josh’s plate.
“Josh,” she called. “Dinner is ready. Would you like frozen yogurt for dessert?”
“Yes.” Josh grinned and she thought about the curve of his lips being exactly like that of Tracy’s. She hit her toe against the edge of the counter. She had begun to bump into things too often since Monday of last week.
“Are you okay?” Josh asked.
She rubbed her toe. “I’m fine.”
“Wait, Kamara,” Josh knelt down on the floor and kissed her foot. “There. That’ll make it go away.”
She looked down at his little head lowered before her, his hair in helpless curls, and she wanted to hug him very close.
“Thank you, Josh.”
The phone rang. She knew it was Neil.
“Hi, Kamara. Is everything okay?”
“Everything is fine.”
“How’s Josh? Is he scared about tomorrow? Is he nervous?”
“He’s fine. We just finished the practice.”
“Great.” A pause. “Can I say a quick hi?”
“He’s in the bathroom.” Kamara lowered her voice, watching Josh turn off the DVD player in the den.
“Okay. I’ll see you soon. I just literally pushed my last client out of the office. We’ve managed to get her husband to agree to settle out of court and she was starting to linger too much.” He laughed shortly.
“Okay then.” Kamara was about to put the phone down when she realized that Neil was still there.
“Kamara?”
“Yes?”
“I’m a little concerned about tomorrow. You know, I’m actually not sure how healthy that kind of competition is at his age.”
Kamara ran the tap and rinsed away the last streaks of dark green liquid. “He’ll be fine.”
“I hope going to Zany Brainy takes his mind off the competition for a little while.”
“He’ll be fine,” Kamara repeated.
“Would you like to come to Zany Brainy? I’ll drop you off at home afterwards.”
Kamara said she would rather go home. She didn’t know why she had lied about Josh being in the bathroom; it had slipped out so easily. Before, she would have chatted with Neil and probably gone along with them to Zany Brainy, but she didn’t feel like having that get-along relationship with Neil anymore.
She was still holding the phone; it had started to buzz noisily. She touched the PROTECT OUR ANGELS sticker that Neil had recently placed on the cradle, a day after he called, frantic, because he had just seen a photo on the Internet of a child molester who had recently moved to their neighborhood and who looked exactly like the UPS delivery man. Where is Josh? Where is Josh?