The Thing Around Your Neck - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie [70]
I murmured something to show I was listening. I thought about the open market in Enugu, the traders who sweet-talked you into stopping at their zinc-covered sheds, who were prepared to bargain all day to add one single kobo to the price. They wrapped what you bought in plastic bags when they had them, and when they did not have them, they laughed and offered you worn newspapers.
My new husband took me to the mall; he wanted to show me as much as he could before he started work on Monday. His car rattled as he drove, as though there were many parts that had come loose—a sound similar to shaking a tin full of nails. It stalled at a traffic light and he turned the key a few times before it started.
“I’ll buy a new car after my residency,” he said.
Inside the mall, the floors gleamed, smooth as ice cubes, and the high-as-the-sky ceiling blinked with tiny ethereal lights. I felt as though I were in a different physical world, on another planet. The people who pushed against us, even the black ones, wore the mark of foreignness, otherness, on their faces.
“We’ll get pizza first,” he said. “It’s one thing you have to like in America.”
We walked up to the pizza stand, to the man wearing a nose ring and a tall white hat.
“Two pepperoni and sausage. Is your combo deal better?” my new husband asked. He sounded different when he spoke to Americans: his r was overpronounced and his t was under-pronounced. And he smiled, the eager smile of a person who wanted to be liked.
We ate the pizza sitting at a small round table in what he called a “food court.” A sea of people sitting around circular tables, hunched over paper plates of greasy food. Uncle Ike would be horrified at the thought of eating here; he was a titled man and did not even eat at weddings unless he was served in a private room. There was something humiliatingly public, something lacking in dignity, about this place, this open space of too many tables and too much food.
“Do you like the pizza?” my new husband asked. His paper plate was empty.
“The tomatoes are not cooked well.”
“We overcook food back home and that is why we lose all the nutrients. Americans cook things right. See how healthy they all look?”
I nodded, looking around. At the next table, a black woman with a body as wide as a pillow held sideways smiled at me. I smiled back and took another pizza bite, tightening my stomach so it would not eject anything.
We went into Macy’s afterwards. My new husband led the way toward a sliding staircase; its movement was rubbery-smooth and I knew I would fall down the moment I stepped on it.
“Biko, don’t they have a lift instead?” I asked. At least I had once ridden in the creaky one in the local government office, the one that quivered for a full minute before the doors rolled open.
“Speak English. There are people behind you,” he whispered, pulling me away, toward a glass counter full of twinkling jewelry. “It’s an elevator, not a lift. Americans say elevator.”
“Okay.”
He led me to the lift (elevator) and we went up to a section lined with rows of weighty-looking coats. He bought me a coat the color of a gloomy day’s sky, puffy with what felt like foam inside its lining. The coat looked big enough for two of me to snugly fit into it.
“Winter is coming,” he said. “It is like being inside a freezer, so you need a warm coat.”
“Thank you.”
“Always best to shop when there is a sale. Sometimes you get the same thing for less than half the price. It’s one of the wonders of America.”
“Ezi okwu?” I said, then hastily added, “Really?”
“Let’s take a walk around the mall. There are some other wonders of America here.”
We walked, looking at stores that sold clothes and tools and plates and books and phones, until the bottoms of my feet ached.
Before we left, he led the way to McDonald’s. The restaurant was nestled near the rear of the mall; a yellow and red