Chapter Two
My uncle is an attorney. His wife, Sara, is thechief of surgery at Bellwood General Hospital.
They are rich.
It’s why they can afford to live in the part of Bellwood where the houses are bigger.
Still holding the DVD player, I walk along the path that divides the main house and the guesthouse. That’s where my mom, my sister, and I live—in the three-bedroom guesthouse that’s the size of many picket-fence houses a few streets away.
My mother is right. We’re lucky to have Uncle. He’s generous and kind. When he would visit my family in Nigeria, he would bring a suitcase of gifts—clothes, novels, electronics, and expensive perfumes my mother never let me use. We didn’t ask for those things and the other things he did for us. My mother worked as a doctor at a government hospital, and my father was a biology professor and dean of the life sciences faculty at the University of Benin. He also had side businesses that generated additional income. We lived comfortably. But that didn’t stop my uncle’s generosity. He wanted us to have more. A year ago, during his annual visit to Nigeria, he spoke to my father about us moving to America.
“You have a PhD in biology,” he said to my father in our living room. “Ivie has been a doctor for over ten years. You’re both educated, professional people. This will make your application strong.”
“Mm-hmm,” my father replied, stroking his bearded chin.
“You have been putting this off for years—for far too long. Let’s start the application process now. Maybe within a year, we will all be together. Adrian and Naomi can get the chance to grow up with their cousins. And Enore and Esosa can have a wide range of opportunities. Eh?”
My father agreed. We started the applications. Everything was going well. And then we went to Lagos for a health check—a standard part of the process. That’s when they found a lump in my father’s lung. The doctors said it was inoperable. It was too late. My father had gone months ignoring his shortness of breath, his fatigue, and his weight loss. Though with the diagnosis and a precise prediction of his life span, the symptoms intensified, as if acknowledging the disease instantly made it more aggressive. Within weeks of his diagnosis, he became frail.
We watched him die slowly, our goodbye gradual, extensive, and agonizing.
Two months after his funeral, we moved to America. My mother was eager to leave Nigeria—to put distance between us and the scene of our loss. We packed what we could and left so much of him behind—his collection of fountain pens, his Fela records, his academic books with colorful notes sticking out of them. All I brought to America were fragments of him—pieces of his identity that don’t paint a complete picture of the man he was. His T-shirts hang in the closet in my new room. His gold necklace with a small cross pendant is on my nightstand. His brown leather watch is strapped to my wrist—slightly loose, but secure. I’ve worn it every day since we arrived. It’s the least I can do. There are no memories of him here, so I carry a part of him with me and conjure up moments that could have been.
The front door opens unexpectedly, and my sister and cousin step out of the main house. They’re laughing, but stop the moment they see me. Their eyes shift to my arms.
“Did they fix it?” Esosa asks.
“Yes,” I say. “It’s fixed.”
“Good, so you can come out with us.”
“We’re gonna meet up with some of my friends and grab something to eat,” my cousin Adrian says. “It’s gonna be chill. You should come.”
“No. I’m okay. Go ahead.”
“You can’t stay inside that house forever, watching those movies,” Esosa says. “It’s not… healthy.”
“Yeah. I second that,” Adrian adds.
They make me sound like a loner. I’m not. I’ve just been preparing myself before fully interacting with my new environment and the people in it. I’m a preparer. A meticulous one. It’s the reason I asked Adrian to give me a complete rundown of what to expect from high school when it begins next week. As I go into my senior year, it’s important I know the social norms—the dos and don’ts of an American high school. But Adrian, who was born and raised in America, couldn’t spare the time for a lesson.
“Look, cuz,” he said to me just two weeks ago. “Summer is almost through. I can’t afford to waste…” He cleared his throat. “I mean spend the last days drawing a map of high school for you.” He ruffled his long curly hair, then blew out a breath. “Look. There’s gonna be a party at the beach tonight. You should come—get to know some people before school starts up. It’ll be fun.”
I turned down his invitation because going to a party meant diving into socializing. And I don’t dive. I watch the water first, studying the nature of it before gradually, and I mean gradually, dipping my toes into it.
After a moment of thinking, Adrian snapped his fingers and grinned. “I’ve got an idea. Hold up.” He left my bedroom and returned minutes later with a box. “These should help. If you want to know about high school, watch these.”
“What are they?” I asked.
“Naomi’s collection of movies.” He placed the box on my bed and opened it. “I’m surprised she didn’t take them to college with her, seeing how obsessed she was with them.”
DVD cases filled the box. I picked one and read the title. “Mean Girls.” My stare shifted to Adrian. “How is your sister’s collection of movies supposed to help me?”
“They’re movies about high school—every single one of them. If you want to know what to expect from an American high school, watch these.”
“Okay. But are they accurate?”
“Um… they’re informative,” he answered with a shrug.
“Come na,” Esosa says to me now. “Come out with us. You might have some fun, make some friends. I’ve made a few already.”
Of course she has. My sister is not like me. She doesn’t watch the water to study the nature of it. She doesn’t dip her toes in gradually. Esosa just dives in. She looks at me now, her brows bent, asking me to dive in with her.
But I don’t know how to do that.
“Have fun,” I tell them.
“But you’ve been—”
“It’s fine, guys,” Auntie Sara says, cutting off her son. She stands under the doorframe and smiles warmly. “You two go ahead. Enore can hang out with me.” She waves goodbye to Esosa and Adrian and motions for me to enter the house. “Come on, honey. You can help me with dinner.”
The interior of the house is as extravagant as the exterior. A grand staircase curves against the wall, and behind it, there’s an entryway that leads to the kitchen.
I place the DVD player on the white countertop, where there’s a vase of sunflowers, and Auntie Sara frowns.
“What’s that about?” she asks.
“It stopped working, so I took it to get repaired.”
“Well, we can always get another. That one is pretty old.”
“That’s okay. It’s working now. He fixed it.” The corners of my lips twitch as a smile forms.
“Who fixed it?” Auntie Sara’s eyes narrow, suspicious and curious.
“I don’t know his name.”
“Well, what does he look like? Do you remember?”
I remember the color of his eyes clearly, but what’s most memorable is how they made me feel. Though I’d rather keep that information to myself. “I wasn’t paying attention to how he looked.”
“Hmm.” Auntie Sara lifts her chin and examines me from a high angle. “All right.” A moment passes, and she turns away. Her black bone-straight hair, tied in a low ponytail, swings as she moves around the kitchen. After rinsing a bunch of green onions in the sink, she places them on a wooden chopping board. “Help me cut these?”
“Okay.” I lather my hands with soap, rinse, then start chopping. “What are you making?”
“Just something quick and simple—shoyu ramen. It’s going to be very spicy—just how your uncle likes it.”
“That’s how I like it too.”
“I know,” she laughs. “Nigerians love spicy food. Because of your uncle, my taste buds have adapted.”
Auntie Sara is Japanese American. She and my uncle have been married for nineteen years. I first met her when I was twelve. During one of my uncle’s trips to Nigeria, he brought his whole family along. Adrian, who was also twelve at the time, was set on finding reliable internet access. Naomi, their oldest child, who currently goes to MIT, was set on sightseeing. Auntie Sara, however, was quiet and reserved. Not because she was shy. She was just comfortable. She didn’t act like a foreigner—demanding the conveniences she had in her country or constantly looking to be wowed by something new. She was just chill. Back then, liking her was as easy as it is now.
“Enore, honey,” she says, scooping a mixture of garlic and ginger from the food processor. “I think it would do you some good to leave the house at some point.”
“I left today. And I went to choir practice last week.”
“I mean leave the house to socialize with people your age—not a bunch of middle-aged and elderly women in a church choir.”
“But I like singing in the choir.” For years, I was part of my church choir in Nigeria. When my family moved to Bellwood, I joined the Holy Trinity choir because it’s what my father would have wanted. He would have encouraged me to audition, saying something along the lines of Enore, don’t be stingy with your gift. Share it. I joined because of him, because it would have made him proud.
“I know you love singing,” Auntie Sara continues, “but I didn’t think your one effort at socializing would be joining the church choir. I want you to make friends. Friends your own age. Hopefully when school starts next week, you’ll make some.”
I shrug. “Maybe.”
“Honey, I just want you to get settled here. I want you to feel like you belong here. Like this is your home.”
I’ve lived in America for a month, but I still don’t know how to exchange one home for another, one country for another. I feel suspended, caught between two places, between the before when everything was normal and the after when everything changed.
I miss my dad. In a way that is almost intolerable. I’ve missed people before—my mother when she went to Abuja for a month to stay with her sister who had a baby, my uncle when he returned to America after every visit with us, Esosa one weekend when she stayed at a friend’s. But whatever I felt then seems so shallow compared to what I feel now. I never knew missing someone could be excruciating.
“Enore,” Auntie Sara says. “Do you understand what I’m saying, honey? I’m a little concerned.”
“Don’t be,” I tell her while forcing a smile. “I’ll make friends. I’ll be fine.”
That’s what everyone wants to hear. And I wish it were true, but I can’t ignore my grief. It’s constantly present, lurking and slithering with a slickness that makes it obscure until it takes me by surprise.