THIS AMERICAN LIFE SEF

You were a nurse, a degree-holding Registered Nurse. You never forgot that you ought to be rich. You worked round the clock. Every shift American nurses declined, you would accept. Holidays and all, you were available. In fact, you loved the holidays because you got paid double the time. And at sixty dollars an hour, a double meant more than a new hairstyle. It meant a day at the spas, a visit to Bloomingdale"s and another bottle of Agent

Provocateur.
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You drove a big BMW, an SUV model. Most men who had the opportunity to get close were intimidated by your con dence and poise. Those who were not, who dared to approach you with brilliant Pick-up lines, you had doubts about their sincerity. You could not gure out if they were coming to you because of your hard earned money or to take advantage of the residency status which you had earned as a nurse.

It wasn"t long ago when he told you that you belonged to him. You a.s.sumed that it meant he belonged to you. You were an African, but you now you live in America. You cook with the microwave and you bathe in the bathtub. You fetch no rewood and you draw no well water. You eat hamburgers and not foofoo. You wear jeans and not a buba. No proverbs were created around computers, iPods and GPS systems, so you accepted that it meant all proverbs were suspended. You had crossed seven seas and seven rivers. You had left behind the seven idioms of the seven shrines of your homeland. You were now in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

All old things had pa.s.sed away.

So you allowed him to etch a tattoo down your waistline. He tattooed you that rst night he made love to you. You let him draw a big stop sign. He painted it red, too. When you wore a tank top, the red sign showed at your waistline. Your panties often split the sign into two. Further down, he wrote a special note. He ended it with an exclamation mark. His note read: Private property – do not trespa.s.s. Scorpions on guard, ready to sting objects as little as index ngers - men beware! Then you lay there for three hours as he drew a scorpion. You did not mind as he sc.r.a.ped o some pubic hair to nd s.p.a.ce for its tail.

He asked you to tattoo him too. But you were no tattoo artist. You were just a nurse. You told him not to worry. You did not need to draw your face around his p.e.n.i.s to be a.s.sured of his faithfulness. When he asked you what you would have drawn, you lied to him. You did not tell him you would have drawn a long rose stem. Instead, you said to him, "I would have drawn a gun and simply written beside it, in capital letters, BANG." You knew you were lying. But lying had become part of your life. Your true self had not taken you anywhere.

You were not always like this. In fact, when you came to America, you carried with you, like a little sh.e.l.l, all the norms you learnt at home. You dared not look a man deep in the eyes. Your Mama taught you to carry yourself with grace. Growing up in Enugu, you were able to resist the pressures of your peers. You still hear your mother"s voice. "Uzo, don"t be like those loose girls who are spoilt and are not good for marriage." But her voice became fainter as each day pa.s.sed. You had managed to con ne her voice to a small cubicle where you stash things of the past.

If only Mama could see you, she would not believe what you had become. You had become a grown woman. A woman, ten times the woman she was. You knew what you wanted and how to get it. You did things that she could not imagine in this life and maybe, in the life to come. Somehow, you had learnt to please yourself. Sometimes you worry that you might be in a rush to recover the years you spent trying to please Mama. You do not regret those years. Without the restrictions, you probably would not have won the scholarship that brought you to America. But you were happy to throw away all inhibitions of the past.

He was the one who opened your eyes. He was the one who led you to places you did not know existed. In moments of bliss, you did not fail to remind him that he spoilt you. You liked to be spoilt. You liked to be pampered. You liked to be worshipped. You liked your man to think of nothing else but you. And you had succeeded with him. Like a tortoise, you had made him desire you. He desired you so much that he had agreed to lift the earth onto your head. Your only challenge was nding a place for him to stand as he did that.

You were not just a taker, you were also a giver. And that was how you met him. You were doing a graveyard shift at the trauma centre of Union Hospital in Lynn, Ma.s.sachusetts, when paramedics rushed him into the hospital. A Latino gang member shot him right inside his barbershop/tattoo parlour. You were a.s.signed to him after surgery to remove a bullet lodged in his thigh. A foot higher, the bullet would have shattered his manhood. When he came out of surgery, it was the rst thing he said to you. And you laughed.

You cared for him that night. You cared for him like he was your brother. You continued to care for him in the days that followed. He had n.o.body around. His two brothers and sister all lived in London. You knew this because you bought the phone card and dialled the numbers for him as he informed them of his ordeal. They called. They sent him owers. But they were too busy to y to America. His parents in Nigeria were too busy with local politics to come too. His friends came when time permitted. But you were the one who was always there.

When he was discharged, you continued to visit him at home. You cooked and baked. You made meals, soups, and porridge. You helped him clean his house. You dressed his wound. You even helped him run his barbershop before he nally sold it. The gunshot he said, was just a warning. But for you, it was a sign you had wanted to see for so long. At rst, you did not know why you were doing those things. But you were sure they were the right things to do.

It had been a while since you last did something because it was right. You had learned that, in America, because it was right wasn"t a good reason to do anything. In America, experience had shown you, people did things mainly because it felt good. You had paid a heavy price before you learnt this. The scars on your soul, the patches on your emotions and the wrinkles in your smiles were constant reminders.

Caring for him felt good. Considering where you came from and what you had been through, it did not make sense. But deep inside your heart, it felt good. That was how it started and blossomed into a love a air.

Everything was going well until his mother came to visit. It was his mother who unmasked you. She was the one who told him who you really were; that poor wawa girl whose mother sold bean b.a.l.l.s, akara, in front of Chief Obiozo"s house. Yes, it was you.

His father and Chief Obiozo were friends, thus he was a friend of Chief Obiozo"s children. He visited Chief Obiozo"s house many times. You were a secondary school student then, some seventeen years ago, and so was he. You admired him. From the boys" quarters where you and your mother lived, you saw him drive in several times with Obiozo"s children. You were jealous when you saw beautiful girls in his arms. You wished you were one of those girls.

When they threw parties, you peeped through your little window and wondered how great their lives were. But you remembered what Mama told you; that you were given a di erent destiny - whatever that meant. You knew that your place was lower than his, even though you were in the same cla.s.s, but di erent schools. He was attending the elite College of Immaculate Conception, Enugu, while you were at the lowly Idaw River Girls Secondary School o Agbani Road, also in Enugu. In spite of your di erent stations in life, you knew about boundless goodness that surpa.s.sed all imaginations. You knew this because your father, a driver for Chief Obiozo, died during the Biafran war. He was Chief Obiozo"s aide de camp. You were told he gave his life for Chief Obiozo to live. Faced with a bleak future, Chief Obiozo took you and your Mama into his house. He contributed to your education and you were almost like his daughter.

"Almost," you would say, because you were not part of Chief Obiozo"s children"s parties. You were not friends with their friends. If you were, you would have been in his life before now.

When Chief Obiozo was not home, you were more of his children"s servant than their friend. You remembered one night, during one of the wild parties Chief Obiozo"s children threw, when Kenny, Obiozo"s rst child, called you in to perform a ch.o.r.e. You could not remember what the ch.o.r.e was. But you remembered going into the kids" wing of the big house and seeing a living room full of beer bottles and cigarette b.u.t.ts. Half–naked girls were lying on the carpet. You remembered seeing him there. You remembered him because he came to your rescue when one of Obiozo"s children grabbed you and started fondling your b.r.e.a.s.t.s. You did not like what he said that night. You did not forget it, either. But you were still grateful that he rescued you. In fact, you have rationalized what he said so much that you have convinced yourself that he only said it to protect you.

"Leave that ngbeke alone," he said. It had the same e ect on you then that "leave that n.i.g.g.e.r alone" would have had on you today. Only that now, you knew you would be grateful to a white man if he said that and saved you from possible **** in the hands of another white man. That was how you rationalized it and compartmentalized it. You packaged it and keep it where you store things of the past.

Then, his mother came and revealed them all.

You were kind to his mother, too. When she came, you took time o from work. You drove her around and showed her places. You shopped for her; bought her expensive jewellery and clothes. You took her to every mall and every outlet in New England. She only needed to look at an item twice before you picked it up for her. You took her to the museum. You took her to Faneuil Hall and New England Aquarium. At Boston w.a.n.g Theatre, you saw the Broadway show, Les Miserable. You rode on the Boston Duck Tour. You saw her laugh as the duck became a boat in the river and a bus on land. She marvelled at that. She called it an American wonder. You were glad she liked it because she did not like Salem, the Witch city. You gave her a good time.

You thought things went well. When she was leaving, you gave her money too. You were not trying to bribe her. You were not even acknowledging that the path to a man"s surname often started with the approval of his mother. You were doing it because, on so many levels, it felt right.

She seemed grateful for all you did for her. After each outing, she gave you a little more cray sh. Then she gave you garri. By the time she gave you ogiri, you were sure you rmly had her in your camp. Not that it was your goal all the while. As you accompanied him to the airport to drop her o , she surprised you when she gave you some yards of lace and material for a wrapper. Even though it was the cheap aba naanya material, you were very grateful. As you hugged her for the last time, you called her Mama. It wasn"t the rst time you called her Mama, but this time, it came out with a deeper meaning.

By the time his mother visited, you had known him for over two years. You had seen him grow from n.i.g.g.e.rwannabe to a well-balanced black man. It started with the gunshot wound but you had a lot to do with the nal outcome. When he owned the barbershop, he also drove a cab. The two occupations placed him in direct contact with the most violent people in the society. You helped him in his transition. You bought him the equipment he needed to become a DJ. It was what he wanted. He did that for a little while but business was not booming. He abandoned that too.

You encouraged him to go into nursing. He resisted many times. He was afraid of math and he hated biology. You made him take the North Sh.o.r.e Community College LPN entrance examination. He failed thrice.

He said he wanted to be a computer network administrator. You paid ve thousand dollars for him to attend a training inst.i.tute. He completed his courses. He studied hard and obtained his certi cation. By the time he was done, the computer boom had zzled out. Those who were surviving were those who got in not for the money but for the love of computers. He got in for the money and when the money was not coming, he put away his chips.

Finally, he settled into real estate. He became a realtor. He wore a suit and tie, expensive shoes and went about seeking people who want to buy houses. He was good at it. He had a sweet mouth. And it helped that he was handsome. It made wives encourage their husbands to listen. Many listened and he sold many houses. You agreed with him that he had found his calling.

But then, all his friends and acquaintances who had good credit and could a ord the down payments had all bought houses. His options began to narrow. You helped him buy two houses. It was a small business of renting for him. A cushion. You also helped him start a sta recruiting agency that sent nurses and direct support sta to nursing homes and group homes. For a long while, you and your nurse friends were his core base of nurses.

As you helped move him towards more stable and responsible career choices, you also noticed his stabilization. It was gradual. He reduced the number of days he went to the gym and began to see himself beyond the pu ness of his muscles. You noticed the changes from the nature of the haircuts he was getting. You could also see from the size of the pants he wore. As he slid from the hard-core hip-hop worldview to a middle cla.s.s black outlook, the size of his pants reduced. His pants also climbed up his b.u.t.t. You were glad that your man was coming home. You were hopeful that he was settling.

But as soon as his mother left, you noticed a change in him. He wasn"t as open as before. You asked him once what was eating him and he said he was being pressured by his mother to get married. You tried to console him. You tried to tell him all parents were designed to think like that. You tried to tell him that your mother had also been pushing you in the same direction.

You did not tell him, "h.e.l.lo? What"s the problem?" You did not say, "I"m here!" No. You encouraged him to listen to his mother and yet to make his own decision.

When he suddenly announced that he was going home and would stay for two months, you did not have any worries. After all, it had been a long time since he was home. You volunteered to help him run his businesses, but he refused. That surprised you because you had been helping him in the past. But you did not read too much into it. Not even when his agency stopped calling you for work. You did not care because you were never short of work hours anyhow.

He went to Nigeria and called you once. You did not hear from him again. One month, two months, three months. You were worried. You sent him an email but he did not respond.

You visited his house and there was no sign that he had come back. You visited his sta ng agency o ce. It had been closed. You made enquiries. You spoke to his friends but n.o.body seemed to know anything.

Even though you missed him so much, you gave him his s.p.a.ce. It was very painful as your birthday came. Last year, you travelled with him to Disney World. It was there that you marked your thirty-fourth birthday and he celebrated his thirty-sixth, which was two months after yours. You missed him but you also knew in your heart that he was G.o.d"s gift to you. Agaracha, wanderer, you told yourself, must come back.

Then four months after he went away, during your birthday party, someone gave you a strange gift. It was an envelope with a business card inside. You looked at the business card. It was his. It showed his name, new address and phone number in Worcester. A note on the back of the card said he had returned from Nigeria with a nineteenyear old wife and they both live in Worcester.

You stormed out of your own party like b.u.t.tocks stung by a vicious ant. You entered your car and drove to Worcester. You could not recall stopping at any tra c light. You could not remember paying any toll at Tobin Bridge. The last time you were in Worcester, you had come with him to attend a pre-wedding party of a Kenyan friend at Lucky Dog nightclub.

You got to the address and saw his Mercedes car parked in the driveway—a car you made the down payment for. You sat outside his house and watched, while your blood boiled inside. From the window you could see two gures moving around the house. You called the home number on the card. You saw him walk towards what must be the phone. He paused at what must be the phone"s caller ID. He did not pick it up. You waited for two minutes. You called his new cell phone number. He did not pick that up either.

You sat in the car for a long time with your eyes focused on the house. As tears began to build up, you saw the two gures inside what looked like the living room area. He held her hand and they began to dance. The scene broke goose pimples all over your skin. You called again, this time dialling * 87 rst to conceal your phone number. He walked toward the phone but still did not pick it up. You saw them swinging into what looked like the bedroom.

You wished you could be invisible. You wished your phone was a gun. You wished you had enough gas to pour round the house and set it ablaze. You wished you could invoke the tornado of 1952 on the house. You wetted your ngers with your saliva and rubbed your eyes. You were not dreaming. You called again. This time, the male gure did not walk toward the phone. He switched o the light as the two gures gently landed on what must be the bed. You knew exactly what would follow. You have been there.

You started your car and drove away as erratic as a sliced worm, wondering amongst other things if he had given her a tattoo too. And if so, what her tattoo might say;

Sc.u.mbag?

As you drove home, tears trickled down your eyes. Every mile away from Worcester, its seven steep hills fading behind, you imagined the undertakers preparing your rst love for burial. This is one funeral you will not attend. You had waited for eternity for those tears to ow. Now you feared it would ood Lake Quinsigamond. But weeping was all your soul needed to be free.

At Tobin Bridge, across the Mystic River of Ma.s.sachusetts, the spirits of those who could not bear loads like this besieged you. They said, "Stop the car. Climb out. Take a jump o the bridge. Immerse your tired body into this cold water. It will cool your soul." There were many voices. They were loud, cluttered and making eerie noises across the cantilever truss. You heard a voice like that of Charles Stuart. His murdered pregnant wife sobbed in the background. You heard a splash as his body made the 115 ft. plunge into the river, causing receding ripples just as Boston police circled his home.

You slowed down your car. You pulled up by the emergency lane. You clicked the door open with your tear soaked hands. The night was chilly. You looked out and saw darkness as creepy as a monster"s claws. Suddenly, the voices stopped shouting and began to whisper in seductive tones.

You put your foot out and it felt unsteady touching the frozen bridge.

From afar, you heard police sirens singing a dirge. They were coming toward you. They were driving up fast. You ducked into the car like a scared snail burying its head in the sh.e.l.l. You started the car and drove o in a panic. The voices jumped into the car with you and began to call you a coward. You a.s.sured them you were not a coward. You debated with them. They insulted you. You continued to drive, dgeting and frightened. You turned on the radio to interrupt the voices. On the radio, the alternative rock band, Failure came on. They were singing "The Nurse Who Loved Me":

Say h.e.l.lo to everything you"ve left behind It"s even more a part of your life now that you can"t touch it

I"m taking her home with me, all dressed in white

She"s got everything I need; some pills in a little cup

She"s fallen hard for me; I can see it in her eyes…

Those were the last words you heard before you smashed into a pavement a few yards o the bridge.