There was a minor queue at the register so we waited for our turn. My mother spoke cheerily about the new church she had joined in the city and the diversity of its congregation.
Then she said, staring at me, ‘You’ve lost weight.’
‘Thank you.’
‘I mean it in the Nigerian way.’ Then in Igbo she added, ‘You’re not eating well.’
A voice spat suddenly from behind us, ‘You’re in America, you know.’ We turned to find a big-boned woman with inky hair tied in a tight knot at the top of her head. ‘You should try to speak English.’
In the past, I would have brushed it off, but something had changed in the past months. ‘You’re very stupid! Was English the language your ancestors met in America?’
My mother pulled uneasily at my shoulder. ‘Nwakaego, leave it. Let’s go,’ she whispered. ‘They carry guns in this country o.’ In Nigeria, she would not have let it go.
We took an Uber home because my mother was too distressed to call Akin and wait for his Ford to arrive. Our driver, Hailey, was a chatty brunette woman with delicate model-like features. ‘Have some sweets,’ she said, offering us a bowl.
Our journey was laden with silence and my mother stared out the window in thought, until I asked her, ‘Do you miss Nigeria?’
‘If our country worked well, would we even move here?’ she said, not answering my question, falling silent again. More than anything, her pride had been hurt.
‘Here we are,’ Hailey announced, parking in front of the terraced house. As my mother rigidly made her way out of the car, our driver looked in the rearview mirror and said, ‘Your braids are so pretty,’ even though they had layers of undergrowth budding underneath. And in Hailey, I saw another kind of white woman; one who bore the guilt of people like the woman in the store and sought to make amends.
Close to Christmas, Kwaku came for dinner with his white wife and two sons.
‘He’s one of the other Africans on the college faculty,’ Akin explained before they arrived. ‘You know we Africans have to stick together.’
Kwaku’s accent reminded me of Mrs Mensah, my Ghanaian English teacher in secondary school whose accent was the object of jokes amongst my classmates. ‘Werser,’ Zina mimicked once. ‘They over-emphasise their vowels – is that how to speak English?’
‘It’s still better than our local accent,’ Eriife had said.
‘My good man!’ Kwaku said at the door, pulling Akin into a half embrace and thumping him on the back. Behind him, two biracial men towered over a tiny woman with honey-blonde hair and an oval face. Kwaku made the introductions: ‘My wife, Sophia and our boys, Yao and Kofi. Yao, our last born just finished high school but Kofi is a lawyer in New York, he’s visiting for the holidays.’
I stretched my hand out and was abruptly pulled into an embrace.
‘I’m a hugger,’ Sophia said.
Over dinner, the conversations were focused on the midterm election results. ‘They show a deep dissatisfaction with the current state of things,’ Kwaku said.
‘Dissatisfaction at what exactly?’ Akin responded, passing a plate of jollof rice. ‘Yes, there are issues, but we cannot pretend that there’s no racial factor at the bottom of all this. A particular sect of this country is affronted by the fact that a black man was elected – not once but twice.’
Kwaku shoved a spoonful of rice in his mouth and said to my mother, ‘Ah madam, your jollof rice is good, almost as good as ours back home. But Ghanaian jollof will always be the best eh.’
She laughed at the banter. She’d recovered from the encounter at the clothing store and it made me question how often it had happened. ‘Our jollof rice is better than yours jare.’
To Akin, Kwaku said, ‘The issue with us black people is that we don’t want anyone to criticise Obama. Next thing, we mention racism. We’re too protective of him; he is not faultless, you know.’
‘I’m not saying he’s faultless, but the issues are not at the core of the problem. It’s going to be worse at the general elections,’ Akin said. ‘Something has shifted racially in this country, especially in the last couple of months with the riots.’
‘Yes, but let’s also look at the last few months,’ Kwaku said. ‘The response to the riots? Benghazi? IRS scandal? Ebola? And then he threatened to take away their guns? You know how much they love their guns here. Then the Citizens Pathway Program, that’s enough to start crying about borders being unsafe and letting criminals into the country.’
Akin shook his head in disappointment. ‘Ah Kwaku, don’t tell me you’re one of those who move here then vote against the very policies that helped you.’
‘Of course not! I’m not a sell-out, brother.’ Kwaku appeared affronted by the mere thought. ‘I even gave my children Ghanaian names; I’m not trying to be one of them.’ The emphasis on ‘them’ was clear.
Akin nodded, acquiescing. ‘But you also agree that Obama has been unfairly criticised.’
Kwaku chuckled. ‘The major problem is that Obama is not the liberal hero people want him to be. He’s too right-wing for the left and too left-wing for the right. It’s like he saw what everyone wanted him to be and decided to stick firmly to the middle, pursuing bipartisanship that does not exist.’
I yawned unconsciously, a reflexive response to the drawn-out conversation.
‘See?’ Akin said with a smile. ‘We’re boring our visitor from Britain.’
‘Why don’t you tell us about the UK, Ego?’ Sophia said softly, startling me. It was the first time she had spoken.
‘Yes,’ Kwaku concurred. ‘How are the politics there?’
Their eldest son Kofi’s eyes were immediately alert behind his spectacles and I had the distinct feeling that he was paying close attention.
I chuckled nervously. ‘Well, it’s pretty much the same in terms of the right-wing creating boogie men to scare people into thinking how they want. I think the main difference is the absence of the particular brand of evangelical religious fanaticism that is American. The crusades of the late ’70s and ’80s were successful at spreading it to Africa and certain other parts of the world but not Europe.’
Later, when they were gone, my mother said to me, ‘I think Kofi likes you.’
On Boxing Day, we were up early to watch the English Premier League. Football had always played a part in my relationship with my mother; we’d followed the World Cup together and lamented Nigeria’s defeat in the knockout stages.
‘Do we call this an offshoot of colonialism or what?’ Akin mocked. ‘Waking up on Boxing Day to watch another country’s league football.’
‘Call it whatever you want,’ my mother retorted with her tongue out as Manchester United versus Newcastle United lit up the screen.
‘Okay o, I’ll prepare breakfast,’ Akin said and planted a kiss on her cheek.
