A Bit of Difference (2 page)

“Ah, a boy. That's what I would like. Ali wants a girl.”

Deola assumes Anne is married to a Muslim man, which makes her regret her moment of anxiety when, on her way to the bathroom on the plane, she saw a man who looked Arab reading an Arabic-to-English translation dictionary. He was dressed in military khakis. She was not the only passenger giving him furtive looks. Now she wonders if he was working for the US government.

She has reservations about the orange alert the US is on. She has referred to the alerts in general as Banana Republic scare tactics, like Idi Amin or Papa Doc trying to keep people in check with rumors of juju and voodoo, and has compared the Iraq war casualties to Mobutu sacrificing human blood to the gods to ensure his longevity in office. She is in the US to learn how the Atlanta office managed their launch of Africa Beat, an HIV awareness campaign. She and Anne talk about the UK launch, which is a few months away. Her colleagues in Atlanta have not been able to send all their financial records by e-mail or to explain figures via the phone.

Stewart “Stone” Riley is the US spokesman for Africa Beat. His biography reads like a rocker's creed: born in a small town, formed a group in high school, suffered under commercialization, was crucified by the press, rumored to be dead, rose again in the charts and the rest of it. He claims he is influenced by rhythm and blues. Deola has heard his music and it sounds nothing like the R&B she listened to in the eighties, music with a beat she can dance to. In London, the spokesperson for Africa Beat is Dára, a hip-hop singer. He is Nigerian, but because of the accent over his name and his tendency to drop his H's, Anne mistakes him for French West African. Deola tells Anne he is Yoruba.

“Dára?” Anne says, stressing the first syllable of his name instead of the last. “Really?”

“His name means ‘beautiful.' It is short for ‘beautiful child.'”

“That's appropriate,” Anne says. “He
is
very beautiful.”

Deola does not know one Nigerian who thinks Dára is beautiful. They say he looks like a bush boy, not to mention his questionable English. It is almost as if they are angry he is accepted overseas for the very traits that embarrass them.

“Do you speak the language, then?” Anne asks, hesitantly.

“Yes.”

“I thought you were British.”

“Me? No.”

She tells Anne she was born in Nigeria and grew up there. She went to school in England in her teens, got her degree from London School of Economics and has since lived and worked in London. She doesn't say she has a British passport, that she swore allegiance to the Queen to get one and would probably have got down on her knees at the home office and begged had her application been denied.

“You see yourself as Nigerian, then,” Anne says.

“Absolutely,” Deola says.

She has never had any doubts about her identity, though other people have. She has yet to encounter an adequate description of her status overseas. Resident alien is the closest. She definitely does not see herself as British. Perhaps she is a Nigerian expatriate in London.

“Atlanta doesn't have any programs in Nigeria,” Anne says.

“London doesn't either.”

“I suppose that's because you haven't been approached.”

“Actually.” This slips out with a laugh. “The management team doesn't trust Nigerians.”

Anne frowns. “Oh, I'm not so sure about that. It's the government they don't trust, but it's a shame to hold NGOs responsible for that. I mean, they are just trying to raise funds for… for these people, who really don't need to be punished any more than they have been already.”

Deola tells herself she must not say the word “actually” again on this trip. “Actually” will only lead to another moment of frankness, one that might end in antagonism. Nor will she say the words “these people” so long as she works for LINK or ever in her life.

She tells Anne that Kate Meade is considering a couple of programs in Nigeria. One is to prevent malaria in children and the other is for women whose husbands have died from AIDS. The London office funds programs in Kenya, South Africa and other African countries that have a record for being what they call “fiscally reliable.”

“Do you like living in London?” Anne asks.

“I do,” Deola says, after a pause.

“It's very European these days.”

“It is also very American.”

“How?”

“You know, with hip-hop and the obsession with celebrities.”

Anne shuts her eyes. “Ugh!”

Sincerity like this is safe. As a Nigerian, Deola, too, is given to unnecessary displays of humiliation.

“Do you think you will ever go back to Nigeria?” Anne asks.

Deola finds the question intrusive, but she has asked herself this whenever she can't decide if what she really needs is a change in location, rather than a new job.

“Eventually,” she says.

z

Atlanta is more traditional and landlocked than she imagined it to be, with its concrete overpasses, greenery and red brick churches. She had envisaged a modern, aquatic city because of the name, which sounds similar to that futuristic series that was on television in the seventies,
Man From Atlantis
. Downtown, she counts three people who are mentally ill. The common signs are there: unkempt hair, layers of clothing and that irresolute demeanor whether they are crossing the median, rolling a pushcart up Ponce de Leon or standing by a dusty windowpane. It is like London of the Thatcher years.

Her hotel is on Peachtree, some ten minutes away from the Atlanta office. Anne will shuttle her there and back tomorrow. She thanks Anne for giving her a lift from the airport and arranges to meet her in the lobby the next
morning. At the reception area, she joins the line and checks into a single room with a queen-sized bed. She inspects the room after putting her suitcase down. She prods and rubs the furniture and unclasps her bra. She needs to buy new underwear. She knows a Nigerian couple in Atlanta she could call, but she finds them enamored with consumerism—cars, houses, shops and credit cards. They brag about living in America, as if they need to make Nigerians elsewhere feel they have lost out.

She turns on the television and switches from one cable station to another. She clicks on one called the Lifetime Movie Network. The film showing is
She Woke Up Pregnant
and the subtitle reads: “A pregnancy for which she cannot account tears a woman's family apart.” She turns to another station. Surprisingly, a Nigerian Pentecostal pastor is preaching. He is dressed in a white three-piece suit and his shoes are also white. His hair is gelled back and his skin is bleached.

“Stay with me,” he says, coaxing his congregation. “Stay with me, now. I'm getting there. I'm getting there. Oh, y'all thought I was already there? Y'all thought I was through delivering my message this morning? I haven't even got started! I haven't even got started with y'all yet!”

He ends with a wail and his congregation erupts in cheers. A man waves his Bible and a woman bends over and trembles.

Deola smiles. Nigerians are everywhere.

z

Tonight, she dreams she has accidentally murdered Dára and deliberately buried his remains in her backyard and she alone knows the secret. The police are searching for him and the newspaper headlines are about his mysterious disappearance. The newspapers spin around as they do in 1950s black-and-white films until their headlines blur. She wakes up and tosses for hours.

The next morning, she is still sleepy when she meets Anne in the lobby, but she tells Anne she is well rested. Anne grumbles about the price of her Starbucks latte on the way to the office and sips at intervals.

“The problem is, I'm hooked on the stuff. And it's not as if you can go cold turkey, because the temptation is everywhere.”

“London has been taken over by Starbucks,” Deola says.

She has heard some requests for a latte that are worth recording: “Grand-day capu-chin-know.”

“That's a shame,” Anne says. “I'll be there next month and I know I won't be able to help myself.”

“Isn't Rio having their launch next month?”

“Yes. I'll be there for that.”

“Do they have Starbucks over there?”

“I hope not.”

The Atlanta office is also on Peachtree. People in the elevator glare at them as they hurry toward it—the usual disdain inhabitants of cramped spaces have, followed by a general shyness. They all look downward.

The reception wall has the logo of the foundation's network, two linked forefingers. The office is mostly open-plan space with workstations. Deola meets Susan and Linda, who are also auditors. Susan is a CPA who trained with an accountancy firm and Linda has a banking background.

“Don't you think she sounds British?” Anne asks them.

“Well,” Susan says, “there's some Nigerian there.”

There is some Chinese in Susan's voice. Her thick-rimmed glasses are stylish. Her jacket is too big for her and her slender fingers poke out of her sleeves.

“I think she sounds British,” Anne says.

“She sounds like herself,” Linda says.

Her braids are thin and arranged into a neat donut shape on her crown.

There is a Linda in every office, Deola thinks, who will not waste time showing a newcomer how much her boss annoys her. Why she remains with her boss is understandable. How she thinks she can get away with terrorizing her boss is another matter.

“I should say English,” Anne says. “What does British mean anyway? It could be Irish or Welsh.”

“I don't think Ireland is part of Great Britain,” Susan says, blinking with each word.

“Scottish, I mean,” Anne says.

“I can't understand the Glaswegian accent,” Deola says.

“I couldn't understand a word anyone said to me in Scotland,” Anne says. says.

“They probably wouldn't understand a word we say over here,” Linda

Deola notices leaflets on “commercial sex workers” and is conscious of being between generations. Old enough to have witnessed some change in what is considered appropriate. Her colleagues walk her through their system and she reverts to her usual formality. They show her invoices, vouchers and printouts. It is not relevant that they are in the business of humanitarianism. There are debits and credits, checks and balances. Someone has to make sure they work and identify fraud risks, then make recommendations to the executive team.

As an audit trainee, she was indifferent to numbers, even after she followed their paper trails to assets and verified their existence. How connected could anyone be to bricks, sticks, vats and plastic parts? Her firm had a client who did PR for the Cannes Film Festival and it was the same experience working for
them. With Africa Beat, the statistics on HIV ought to have an impact on her and they do, but only marginally. The numbers in the brochure are in decimals. They represent millions. The fractions are based on national populations. Deola knows the virus afflicts Africa more than any other continent, women more than men and the young more than the old. Her examination of the brochure is cursory. She has seen it before and it is the same whenever she watches the news. Expecting more would be like asking her to bury her head into a pile of dirt and willingly take a deep breath in.

z

Ali is a woman—or a Southern girl, as Anne refers to her. Her name is Alison. Deola doesn't find out until later in the evening when Anne treats her to dinner at a Brazilian restaurant. Ali is from Biloxi, Mississippi, and she is a
florist. Anne is from Buffalo, New York, and she used to be a teacher there. They don't watch television.

“We haven't had one for… let's see… five, six years now,” Anne says. “We read the newspapers and listen to NPR to keep up with what's going on.”

“I watch too much television,” Deola says.

She chides herself for finding belated clues in Anne's stubby fingernails as Anne gesticulates, so she brings up the title of the Lifetime Movie Network film.

“I thought, this has got be a joke. She woke up pregnant?”

“The networks in general don't credit women with any intelligence,” Anne says. “Mothers especially.”

“I can well imagine,” Deola says.

Their table is under what looks like mosquito netting dotted with lights. Behind them is a fire with meat rotating on spits. The waiters wear red scarves around their necks and walk over once in a while with a leg of lamb, pork roast, filet mignon, scallops, shrimp and chicken wrapped in bacon. The bacon is more fatty than Deola is used to.

“But we can't decide who gets pregnant,” Anne says. “So wouldn't that be perfect if one of us wakes up and boom?”

Deola has finished eating her salad, but she picks at the remnants of her grilled peppers and mushrooms as the thought of artificial insemination diminishes her appetite. Or perhaps it is the realization that she might one day have to consider the procedure, if she remains single for much longer.

This is an unexpected connection to Anne, but she won't talk about her own urge to nest, which has preoccupied her
lately. Anne might regard what she has to say with anthropological curiosity: the African woman's perspective.

“There's always adoption,” she says, wondering if this is appropriate.

“I did think of that,” Anne says. “You get on a plane and go to a country that is war-torn or struggling with an epidemic and see so many orphans, so many of them. But at the end of the day, you have to have the humility to say to yourself, ‘Maybe I am not the person to raise this kid. Maybe America is not the place to raise him or her.'You have to ask yourself these questions.”

“You must,” Deola says, crossing her arms, as if to brace herself for more of Anne's rectitude.

“It's that mindset,” Anne says. “Our way is best, everyone else be damned, the world revolves around us. But I think when you travel widely enough, you quickly begin to realize
it don't
, don't you think?”