CHAPTER 20
Ifemelu came to love Baltimore—for its scrappy charm, its streets of faded glory, its farmers market that appeared on weekends under the bridge, bursting with green vegetables and plump fruit and virtuous souls—although never as much as her first love, Philadelphia, that city that held history in its gentle clasp. But when she arrived in Baltimore knowing she was going to live there, and not merely visiting Curt, she thought it forlorn and unlovable. The buildings were joined to one another in faded slumping rows, and on shabby corners, people were hunched in puffy jackets, black and bleak people waiting for buses, the air around them hazed in gloom. Many of the drivers outside the train station were Ethiopian or Punjabi.
Her Ethiopian taxi driver said, “I can’t place your accent. Where are you from?”
“Nigeria.”
“Nigeria? You don’t look African at all.”
“Why don’t I look African?”
“Because your blouse is too tight.”
“It is not too tight.”
“I thought you were from Trinidad or one of those places.” He was looking in the rearview with disapproval and concern. “You have to be very careful or America will corrupt you.” When, years later, she wrote the blog post “On the Divisions Within the Membership of Non-American Blacks in America,” she wrote about the taxi driver, but she wrote of it as the experience of someone else, careful not to let on whether she was African or Caribbean, because her readers did not know which she was.
She told Curt about the taxi driver, how his sincerity had infuriated her and how she had gone to the station bathroom to see if her pink long-sleeved blouse was too tight. Curt laughed and laughed. It became one of the many stories he liked to tell friends. She actually went to the bathroom to look at her blouse! His friends were like him, sunny and wealthy people who existed on the glimmering surface of things. She liked them, and sensed that they liked her. To them, she was interesting, unusual in the way she bluntly spoke her mind. They expected certain things of her, and forgave certain things from her, because she was foreign. Once, sitting with them in a bar, she heard Curt talking to Brad, and Curt said “blowhard.” She was struck by the word, by the irredeemable Americanness of it. Blowhard. It was a word that would never occur to her. To understand this was to realize that Curt and his friends would, on some level, never be fully knowable to her.
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.”