Americanah (35 page)

She got an apartment in Charles Village, a one-bedroom with old wood floors, although she might as well have been living with Curt; most of her clothes were in his walk-in closet lined with mirrors. Now that she saw him every day, no longer just on weekends, she saw new layers of him, how difficult it was for him to be still, simply still without thinking of what next to do, how used he was to stepping out of his trousers and leaving them on the floor for days, until the cleaning woman came. Their lives were full of plans he made—Cozumel for one night, London for a long weekend—and she sometimes took a taxi on Friday evenings after work to meet him at the airport.

“Isn’t this great?” he would ask her, and she would say yes, it was great. He was always thinking of what else to
do
and she told him that it was rare for her, because she had grown up not doing, but being. She added quickly, though, that she liked it all, because she did like it and she knew, too, how much he needed to hear that. In bed, he was anxious.

“Do you like that? Do you enjoy me?” he asked often. And she said yes, which was true, but she sensed that he did not always believe her, or that his belief lasted only so long before he would need to hear her affirmation again. There was something in him, lighter than ego but darker than insecurity, that needed constant buffing, polishing, waxing.

AND THEN
her hair began to fall out at the temples. She drenched it in rich, creamy conditioners, and sat under steamers until water droplets ran down her neck. Still, her hairline shifted further backwards each day.

“It’s the chemicals,” Wambui told her. “Do you know what’s in a relaxer? That stuff can kill you. You need to cut your hair and go natural.”

Wambui’s hair was now in short locs, which Ifemelu did not like; she thought them sparse and dull, unflattering to Wambui’s pretty face.

“I don’t want dreads,” she said.

“It doesn’t have to be dreads. You can wear an Afro, or braids like you used to. There’s a lot you can do with natural hair.”

“I can’t just cut my hair,” she said.

“Relaxing your hair is like being in prison. You’re caged in. Your hair rules you. You didn’t go running with Curt today because you don’t want to sweat out this straightness. That picture you sent me, you had your hair covered on the boat. You’re always battling to make your hair do what it wasn’t meant to do. If you go natural and take good care of your hair, it won’t fall off like it’s doing now. I can help you cut it right now. No need to think about it too much.”

Wambui was so sure, so convincing. Ifemelu found a pair of scissors. Wambui cut her hair, leaving only two inches, the new growth since her last relaxer. Ifemelu looked in the mirror. She was all big eyes and big head. At best, she looked like a boy; at worst, like an insect.

“I look so ugly I’m scared of myself.”

“You look beautiful. Your bone structure shows so well now. You’re just not used to seeing yourself like this. You’ll get used to it,” Wambui said.

Ifemelu was still staring at her hair. What had she done? She looked unfinished, as though the hair itself, short and stubby, was asking for attention, for something to be done to it, for
more
. After Wambui left, she went to the drugstore, Curt’s baseball hat pulled over her head. She bought oils and pomades, applying one and then the other, on wet hair
and then on dry hair, willing an unknown miracle to happen. Something, anything, that would make her like her hair. She thought of buying a wig, but wigs brought anxiety, the always-present possibility of flying off your head. She thought of a texturizer to loosen her hair’s springy coils, stretch out the kinkiness a little, but a texturizer was really a relaxer, only milder, and she would still have to avoid the rain.

Curt told her, “Stop stressing, babe. It’s a really cool and brave look.”

“I don’t want my hair to be
brave
.”

“I mean like stylish, chic.” He paused. “You look beautiful.”

“I look like a boy.”

Curt said nothing. There was, in his expression, a veiled amusement, as though he did not see why she should be so upset but was better off not saying so.

The next day, she called in sick, and climbed back into bed.

“You didn’t call in sick so we could stay a day longer in Bermuda but you call in sick because of your hair?” Curt asked, propped up by pillows, stifling laughter.

“I can’t go out like this.” She was burrowing under the covers as though to hide.

“It’s not as bad as you think,” he said.

“At least you finally accept that it’s bad.”

Curt laughed. “You know what I mean. Come here.”

He hugged her, kissed her, and then slid down and began to massage her feet; she liked the warm pressure, the feel of his fingers. Yet she could not relax. In the bathroom mirror, her hair had startled her, dull and shrunken from sleep, like a mop of wool sitting on her head. She reached for her phone and sent Wambui a text:
I hate my hair. I couldn’t go to work today
.

Wambui’s reply came minutes later:
Go online. HappilyKinkyNappy.com. It’s this natural hair community. You’ll find inspiration
.

She showed the text to Curt. “What a silly name for the website.”

“I know, but it sounds like a good idea. You should check it out sometime.”

“Like now,” Ifemelu said, getting up. Curt’s laptop was open on the desk. As she went to it, she noticed a change in Curt. A sudden tense quickness. His ashen, panicked move towards the laptop.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“They mean nothing. The e-mails mean nothing.”

She stared at him, forcing her mind to work. He had not expected her to use his computer, because she hardly ever did. He was cheating on her. How odd, that she had never considered that. She picked up the laptop, held it tightly, but he didn’t try to reach for it. He just stood and watched. The Yahoo mail page was minimized, next to a page about college basketball. She read some of the e-mails. She looked at attached photographs. The woman’s e-mails—her address was SparklingPaola123—were strongly suggestive, while Curt’s were just suggestive enough to make sure she continued.
I’m going to cook you dinner in a tight red dress and sky-high heels
, she wrote,
and you just bring yourself and a bottle of wine
. Curt replied:
Red would look great on you
. The woman was about his age, but there was, in the photos she sent, an air of hard desperation, hair dyed a brassy blond, eyes burdened by too much blue makeup, top too low-cut. It surprised Ifemelu, that Curt found her attractive. His white ex-girlfriend had been fresh-faced and preppy.

“I met her in Delaware,” Curt said. “Remember the conference thing I wanted you to come to? She started hitting on me right away. She’s been after me since. She won’t leave me alone. She knows I have a girlfriend.”

Ifemelu stared at one of the photos, a profile shot in black-and-white, the woman’s head thrown back, her long hair flowing behind her. A woman who liked her hair and thought Curt would too.

“Nothing happened,” Curt said. “At all. Just the e-mails. She’s really after me. I told her about you, but she just won’t stop.”

She looked at him, wearing a T-shirt and shorts, so certain in his self-justifications. He was entitled in the way a child was: blindly.

“You wrote her too,” she said.

“But that’s because she wouldn’t stop.”

“No, it’s because you wanted to.”

“Nothing happened.”

“That is not the point.”

“I’m sorry. I know you’re already upset and I hate to make it worse.”

“All your girlfriends had long flowing hair,” she said, her tone thick with accusation.

“What?”

She was being absurd, but knowing that did not make her any less
so. Pictures she had seen of his ex-girlfriends goaded her, the slender Japanese with straight hair dyed red, the olive-skinned Venezuelan with corkscrew hair that fell to her shoulders, the white girl with waves and waves of russet hair. And now this woman, whose looks she did not care for, but who had long straight hair. She shut the laptop. She felt small and ugly. Curt was talking. “I’ll ask her never to contact me. This will never happen again, babe, I promise,” he said, and she thought he sounded as though it was somehow the woman’s responsibility, rather than his.

She turned away, pulled Curt’s baseball hat over her head, threw things in a bag, and left.

CURT CAME BY LATER
, holding so many flowers she hardly saw his face when she opened the door. She would forgive him, she knew, because she believed him. Sparkling Paola was one more small adventure of his. He would not have gone further with her, but he would have kept encouraging her attention, until he was bored. Sparkling Paola was like the silver stars that his teachers pasted on the pages of his elementary school homework, sources of a shallow, fleeting pleasure.

She did not want to go out, but she did not want to be with him in the intimacy of her apartment; she still felt too raw. So she covered her hair in a headwrap and they took a walk, Curt solicitous and full of promises, walking side by side but not touching, all the way to the corner of Charles and University Parkway, and then back to her apartment.

FOR THREE DAYS
, she called in sick. Finally, she went to work, her hair a very short, overly combed and overly oiled Afro. “You look different,” her co-workers said, all of them a little tentative.

“Does it mean anything? Like, something political?” Amy asked, Amy who had a poster of Che Guevara on her cubicle wall.

“No,” Ifemelu said.

At the cafeteria, Miss Margaret, the bosomy African-American
woman who presided over the counter—and, apart from two security guards, the only other black person in the company—asked, “Why did you cut your hair, hon? Are you a lesbian?”

“No, Miss Margaret, at least not yet.”

Some years later, on the day Ifemelu resigned, she went into the cafeteria for a last lunch. “You leaving?” Miss Margaret asked, downcast. “Sorry, hon. They need to treat folk better around here. You think your hair was part of the problem?”