The Thing Around Your Neck Read online

  Even before Kamara looked at Josh the next afternoon, she knew he hadn’t won. He was sitting in front of a plate of cookies, drinking a glass of milk, with Neil standing beside him. A pretty blond woman wearing ill-fitting jeans was looking at the photographs of Josh posted on the fridge.

  “Hi, Kamara. We just got back,” Neil said. “Josh was fantastic. He really deserved to win. He was clearly the kid who had worked the hardest.”

  Kamara ruffled Josh’s hair. “Hello, Joshy.”

  “Hi, Kamara,” Josh said, and stuffed a cookie into his mouth.

  “This is Maren,” Neil said. “She’s Josh’s French teacher.”

  The woman said hi and shook Kamara’s hand and then went into the den. The jeans dug into her crotch and the sides of her face were stained with a too-cheery shade of blusher and she was nothing like Kamara imagined a French teacher would be.

  “The Read-A-Thon ate into their lesson time, so I thought they might have the lesson here and Maren was sweet enough to say yes. It’s okay, Kamara?” Neil asked.

  “Of course.” And all of a sudden, she liked Neil again and she liked the way the blinds sliced up the sunlight coming into the kitchen and she liked that the French teacher was here because when the lesson started, she would go down and ask Tracy if it was the right time to take off her clothes. She was wearing a new balconet bra.

  “I’m worried,” Neil said. “I think I’m consoling him with a sugar overload. He’s had two lollipops. Plus we stopped at Baskin-Robbins.” Neil was whispering even though Josh could hear. It was the same unnecessarily hushed tone that Neil had used to tell her about the books he’d donated to Josh’s pre-K class at Temple Beth Hillel, books that were about Ethiopian Jews, illustrated with pictures of people where skin was the color of burnished earth, but Josh said the teacher had never read the books to the class. Kamara remembered the way Neil had grasped her hand gratefully after she’d said “Josh will be fine,” as if all Neil needed was to have somebody say that.

  Now, Kamara said, “He’ll get over it.”

  Neil nodded slowly. “I don’t know.”

  She reached out and squeezed Neil’s hand. She felt filled with a generosity of spirit.

  “Thanks, Kamara.” Neil paused. “I better go. I’ll be late today. Is it okay if you make dinner?”

  “Of course.” Kamara smiled again. Perhaps there might be time to go back down to the basement while Josh ate his dinner, perhaps Tracy would ask her to stay and she would call Tobechi and tell him there had been an emergency and she needed to take care of Josh overnight. The door that led to the basement opened. Kamara’s excitement brought a dull throbbing to her temples, and the throbbing intensified when Tracy appeared in her leggings and her paint-stained shirt. She hugged and kissed Josh. “Hey, you are my winner, buddy, my special winner.”

  Kamara was pleased that Tracy did not kiss Neil, that they said “Hi, you” to each other as though they were brother and sister.

  “Hey, Kamara,” Tracy said, and Kamara told herself that the reason Tracy seemed normal, not absolutely delighted to see her, was that she did not want Neil to know.

  Tracy opened the fridge, took an apple, and sighed. “I’m so stuck. So stuck,” she said.

  “It’ll be fine,” Neil murmured. And then, raising his voice so that Maren, in the den, would hear, he added, “You haven’t met Maren, have you?”

  Neil introduced them. Maren extended her hand and Tracy took it.

  “Are you wearing contacts?” Tracy asked.

  “Contacts? No.”

  “You have the most unusual eyes. Violet.” Tracy was still holding Maren’s hand.

  “Oh. Thank you!” Maren giggled nervously.

  “They really are violet.”

  “Oh … yes, I think so.”

  “Have you ever been an artist’s model?”

  “Oh … no …” More giggles.

  “You should think about it,” Tracy said.

  She raised the apple to her lips and took a slow bite, her gaze never wavering from Maren’s face. Neil was watching them with an indulgent smile, and Kamara looked away. She sat down next to Josh and took a cookie from his plate.

  JUMPING MONKEY HILL

  The cabins all had thatch roofs. Names like Baboon Lodge and Porcupine Place were hand-painted beside the wooden doors that led out to cobblestone paths, and the windows were left open so that guests woke up to the rustling of the jacaranda leaves and the steady calming crash of the sea’s waves. The wicker trays held a selection of fine teas. At midmorning, discreet black maids made the bed, cleaned the elegant bathtub, vacuumed the carpet, and left wildflowers in handcrafted vases. Ujunwa found it odd that the African Writers Workshop was held here, at Jumping Monkey Hill, outside Cape Town. The name itself was incongruous, and the resort had the complacence of the well-fed about it, the kind of place where she imagined affluent foreign tourists would dart around taking pictures of lizards and then return home still mostly unaware that there were more black people than red-capped lizards in South Africa. Later, she would learn that Edward Campbell had chosen the resort; he had spent weekends there when he was a lecturer at the University of Cape Town years ago.

  But she didn’t know this the afternoon Edward—an old man in a summer hat who smiled to show two front teeth the color of mildew—picked her up at the airport. He kissed her on both cheeks. He asked if she had had any trouble with her prepaid ticket in Lagos, if she minded waiting for the Ugandan whose flight would come soon, if she was hungry. He told her that his wife, Isabel, had already picked up most of the other workshop participants and that their friends Simon and Hermione, who had come with them from London as paid staff, were arranging a welcome lunch back at the resort. He and Ujunwa sat down on a bench in Arrivals. He balanced the sign with the Ugandan’s name on his shoulder and told her how humid Cape Town was at this time of the year, how pleased he was about the workshop arrangements. He lengthened his words. His accent was what the British called “posh,” the kind some rich Nigerians tried to mimic and ended up sounding unintentionally funny. Ujunwa wondered if he was the one who had selected her for the workshop. Probably not; it was the British Council that had made the call for entries and then selected the best.

  Edward had moved a little and sat closer to her. He was asking what she did back home in Nigeria. Ujunwa faked a wide yawn and hoped he would stop talking. He repeated his question and asked whether she had taken leave from her job to attend the workshop. He was watching her intently. He could have been anything from sixty-five to ninety. She could not tell his age from his face; it was pleasant but unformed, as though God, having created him, had slapped him flat against a wall and smeared his features all over his face. She smiled vaguely and said that she had lost her job just before she left Lagos—a job in banking—and so there had been no need to take leave. She yawned again. He seemed keen to know more and she did not want to say more, and so when she looked up and saw the Ugandan walking toward them, she was relieved.

  The Ugandan looked sleepy. He was in his early thirties, square-faced and dark-skinned, with uncombed hair that had tightened into kinky balls. He bowed as he shook Edward’s hand with both of his and then turned and mumbled a hello to Ujunwa. He sat in the front seat of the Renault. The drive to the resort was long, on roads haphazardly chiseled into steep hills, and Ujunwa worried that Edward was too old to drive so fast. She held her breath until they arrived at the cluster of thatch roofs and manicured paths. A smiling blond woman showed her to her cabin, Zebra Lair, which had a four-poster bed and linen that smelled of lavender. Ujunwa sat on the bed for a moment and then got up to unpack, looking out of the window from time to time to search the canopy of trees for lurking monkeys.

  There were none, unfortunately, Edward told the participants later, as they ate lunch under pink umbrellas on the terrace, their tables pushed close to the railing so that they could look down at the turquoise sea. He pointed at each person and did the introductions. The white South Afric
an woman was from Durban, while the black man came from Johannesburg. The Tanzanian man came from Arusha, the Ugandan man from Entebbe, the Zimbabwean woman from Bulawayo, the Kenyan man from Nairobi, and the Senegalese woman, the youngest at twenty-three, had flown in from Paris, where she attended university.

  Edward introduced Ujunwa last: “Ujunwa Ogundu is our Nigerian participant and she lives in Lagos.” Ujunwa looked around the table and wondered with whom she would get along. The Senegalese woman was the most promising, with the irreverent sparkle in her eyes and the Francophone accent and the streaks of silver in her fat dreadlocks. The Zimbabwean woman had longer, thinner dreadlocks, and the cowries in them clinked as she moved her head from side to side. She seemed hyper, overactive, and Ujunwa thought she might like her, but only the way she liked alcohol—in small amounts. The Kenyan and the Tanzanian looked ordinary, almost indistinguishable—tall men with wide foreheads who were wearing tattered beards and short-sleeved patterned shirts. She thought she would like them in the uninvested way that one likes nonthreatening people. She wasn’t sure about the South Africans: the white woman had a too-earnest face, humorless and free of makeup, and the black man looked patiently pious, like a Jehovah’s Witness who went from door to door and smiled when each was shut in his face. As for the Ugandan, Ujunwa had disliked him from the airport, and did so even more now because of his toadying answers to Edward’s questions, the way he leaned forward to speak only to Edward and ignored the other participants. They, in turn, said little to him. They all knew he was the winner of the last Lipton African Writers’ Prize, with an award of fifteen thousand pounds. They didn’t include him in the polite talk about their flights.

  After they ate the creamy chicken prettied with herbs, after they drank the sparkling water that came in glossy bottles, Edward stood up to give the welcoming address. He squinted as he spoke, and his thin hair fluttered in the breeze that smelled of the sea. He started by telling them what they already knew—that the workshop would be for two weeks; that it was his idea but of course funded graciously by the Chamberlain Arts Foundation, just as the Lipton African Writers’ Prize had been his idea and funded also by the good people at the foundation; that they were all expected to produce one story for possible publication in the Oratory; that laptops would be provided in the cabins; that they would write during the first week and review each participant’s work during the second week; and that the Ugandan would be workshop leader. Then he talked about himself, how African literature had been his cause for forty years, a lifelong passion that started at Oxford. He glanced often at the Ugandan. The Ugandan nodded eagerly to acknowledge each glance. Finally Edward introduced his wife, Isabel, although they had all met her. He told them she was an animal rights activist, an old Africa hand who had spent her teenage years in Botswana. He looked proud when she stood up, as if her tall and lean gracefulness made up for what he lacked in appearance. Her hair was a muted red, cut so that wisps framed her face. She patted it as she said, “Edward, really, an introduction.” Ujunwa imagined, though, that Isabel had wanted that introduction, that perhaps she had even reminded Edward of it, saying, Now, dear, remember to introduce me properly at lunch. Her tone would have been delicate.

  The next day at breakfast, Isabel used just such a tone when she sat next to Ujunwa and said that surely, with that exquisite bone structure, Ujunwa had to come from Nigerian royal stock. The first thing that came to Ujunwa’s mind was to ask if Isabel ever needed royal blood to explain the good looks of friends back in London. She did not ask that but instead said—because she could not resist—that she was indeed a princess and came from an ancient lineage and that one of her forebears had captured a Portuguese trader in the seventeenth century and kept him, pampered and oiled, in a royal cage. She stopped to sip her cranberry juice and smile into her glass. Isabel said, brightly, that she could always spot royal blood and she hoped Ujunwa would support her antipoaching campaign and it was just horrible, horrible, how many endangered apes people were killing and they didn’t even eat them, never mind all that talk about bush meat, they just used the private parts for charms.

  After breakfast, Ujunwa called her mother and told her about the resort and about Isabel and was pleased when her mother chuckled. She hung up and sat in front of her laptop and thought about how long it had been since her mother had really laughed. She sat there for a long time, moving the mouse from side to side, trying to decide whether to name her character something common, like Chioma, or something exotic, like Ibari.

  Chioma lives with her mother in Lagos. She has a degree in economics from Nsukka, has recently finished her National Youth Service, and every Thursday she buys The Guardian and scours the employment section and sends out her CV in brown manila envelopes. She hears nothing for weeks. Finally she gets a phone call inviting her to an interview. After the first few questions, the man says he will hire her and then walks across and stands behind her and reaches over her shoulders to squeeze her breasts. She hisses, “Stupid man! You cannot respect yourself!” and leaves. Weeks of silence follow. She helps out at her mother’s boutique. She sends out more envelopes. At the next interview, the woman, speaking in the fakest, silliest accent Chioma has ever heard, tells her she wants somebody foreign-educated, and Chioma almost laughs as she leaves. More weeks of silence. Chioma has not seen her father in months, but she decides to go to his new office in Victoria Island to ask if he can help her find a job. Their meeting is tense. “Why have you not come since, eh?” he asks, pretending to be angry, because she knows it is easier for him to be angry, it is easier to be angry with people after you have hurt them. He makes some calls. He gives her a thin roll of two-hundred-naira notes. He does not ask about her mother. She notices that the Yellow Woman’s photo is on his desk. Her mother had described her well: “She is very fair, she looks mixed, and the thing is that she is not even pretty, she has a face like an overripe yellow pawpaw.”

  The chandelier in the main dining room of Jumping Monkey Hill hung so low that Ujunwa could extend her hand and touch it. Edward sat at one end of the long, white-covered table, Isabel at the other, and the participants in between. The hardwood floors thumped noisily as waiters walked around and handed out menus. Ostrich medallions. Smoked salmon. Chicken in orange sauce. Edward urged everyone to eat the ostrich. It was simply mah-ve-lous. Ujunwa did not like the idea of eating an ostrich, did not even know that people ate ostriches, and when she said so, Edward laughed good-naturedly and said that of course ostrich was an African staple. Everyone else ordered the ostrich, and when Ujunwa’s chicken, too citrusy, came, she wondered if perhaps she should have had the ostrich. It looked like beef, anyway. She drank more alcohol than she had ever drunk in her life, two glasses of wine, and she felt mellowed and chatted with the Senegalese about the best ways to care for natural black hair: no silicone products, lots of shea butter, combing only when wet. She overheard snatches as Edward talked about wine: Chardonnay was horribly boring.

  Afterwards, the participants gathered in the gazebo—except for the Ugandan, who sat away with Edward and Isabel. They slapped at flying insects and drank wine and laughed and teased one another: You Kenyans are too submissive! You Nigerians are too aggressive! You Tanzanians have no fashion sense! You Senegalese are too brainwashed by the French! They talked about the war in the Sudan, about the decline of the African Writers Series, about books and writers. They agreed that Dambudzo Marechera was astonishing, that Alan Paton was patronizing, that Isak Dinesen was unforgivable. The Kenyan put on a generic European accent and, between drags at his cigarette, recited what Isak Dinesen had said about all Kikuyu children becoming mentally retarded at the age of nine. They laughed. The Zimbabwean said Achebe was boring and did nothing with style, and the Kenyan said that was a sacrilege and snatched at the Zimbabwean’s wineglass, until she recanted, laughing, saying of course Achebe was sublime. The Senegalese said she nearly vomited when a professor at the Sorbonne told her that Conrad was really on her side, as if she could not
decide for herself who was on her side. Ujunwa began to jump up and down, babbling nonsense to mimic Conrad’s Africans, feeling the sweet lightness of wine in her head. The Zimbabwean staggered and fell into the water fountain and climbed out spluttering, her dreadlocks wet, saying she had felt some fish wriggling around in there. The Kenyan said he would use that for his story—fish in the fancy resort fountain—since he really had no idea what he was going to write about. The Senegalese said her story was really her story, about how she mourned her girlfriend and how her grieving had emboldened her to come out to her parents although they now treated her being a lesbian as a mild joke and continued to speak of the families of suitable young men. The black South African looked alarmed when he heard “lesbian.” He got up and walked away. The Kenyan said the black South African reminded him of his father, who attended a Holy Spirit Revival church and didn’t speak to people on the street because they were not saved. The Zimbabwean, Tanzanian, white South African, and Senegalese all spoke about their fathers.

  They looked at Ujunwa and she realized that she was the only one who had said nothing, and for a moment the wine no longer fogged her mind. She shrugged and mumbled that there was really little to say about her father. He was a normal person. “Is he in your life?” the Senegalese asked, with the soft tone that meant she assumed he was not, and for the first time her Francophone accent irritated Ujunwa. “He is in my life,” Ujunwa said with a quiet force. “He was the one who bought me books when I was a child and the one who read my early poems and stories.” She paused, and everyone was looking at her and she added, “He did something that surprised me. It hurt me, too, but mostly it surprised me.” The Senegalese looked as if she wanted to ask more but changed her mind and said she wanted more wine. “Are you writing about your father?” the Kenyan asked and Ujunwa answered with an emphatic NO because she had never believed in fiction as therapy. The Tanzanian told her that all fiction was therapy, some sort of therapy, no matter what anybody said.