Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Read Free Book Online Page B

deposit amount, an easy exchange. Kosi expected him to cheat, and her concern was to minimize the possibilities he might have. “Kosi, nothing can happen unless I want it to. I will never want it to,” he had said, in what was both a reassurance and a rebuke.
    She had, in the years since they got married, grown an intemperate dislike of single women and an intemperate love of God. Before they got married, she went to service once a week at the Anglican church on the Marina, a Sunday tick-the-box routine that she did because she had been brought up that way, but after their wedding, she switched to the House of David because, as she told him, it was a Bible-believing church. Later, when he found out that the House of David had a special prayer service for Keeping Your Husband, he had felt unsettled. Just as he had when he once asked why her best friend from university, Elohor, hardly visited them, and Kosi said, “She’s still single,” as though that was a self-evident reason.

    MARIE KNOCKED on his study door and came in with a tray of rice and fried plantains. He ate slowly. He put in a Fela CD and then started to write the e-mail on his computer; his BlackBerry keyboard would cramp his fingers and his mind. He had introduced Ifemelu to Fela at university. She had, before then, thought of Fela as the mad weed-smoker who wore underwear at his concerts, but she had come to love the Afrobeat sound and they would lie on his mattress in Nsukka and listen to it and then she would leap up and make swift, vulgar movements with her hips when the run-run-run chorus came on. He wondered if she remembered that. He wondered if she remembered how his cousin had sent mix tapes from abroad, and how he made copies for her at the famous electronics shop in the market where music blared all day long, ringing in your ears even after you had left. He had wanted her to have the music he had. She had never really been interested in Biggie and Warren G and Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg but Fela was different. On Fela, they had agreed.
    He wrote and rewrote the e-mail, not mentioning his wife or usingthe first person plural, trying for a balance between earnest and funny. He did not want to alienate her. He wanted to make sure she would reply this time. He clicked Send and then minutes later checked to see if she had replied. He was tired. It was not a physical fatigue—he went to the gym regularly and felt better than he had in years—but a draining lassitude that numbed the margins of his mind. He got up and went out to the verandah; the sudden hot air, the roar of his neighbor’s generator, the smell of diesel exhaust fumes brought a lightness to his head. Frantic winged insects flitted around the electric bulb. He felt, looking out at the muggy darkness farther away, as if he could float, and all he needed to do was to let himself go.

Part 2

CHAPTER 3

    Mariama finished her customer’s hair, sprayed it with sheen, and, after the customer left, she said, “I’m going to get Chinese.”
    Aisha and Halima told her what they wanted—General Tso’s Chicken Very Spicy, Chicken Wings, Orange Chicken—with the quick ease of people saying what they said every day.
    “You want anything?” Mariama asked Ifemelu.
    “No, thanks,” Ifemelu said.
    “Your hair take long. You need food,” Aisha said.
    “I’m fine. I have a granola bar,” Ifemelu said. She had some baby carrots in a Ziploc, too, although all she had snacked on so far was her melted chocolate.
    “What bar?” Aisha asked.
    Ifemelu showed her the bar, organic, one hundred percent whole grain with real fruit.
    “That not food!” Halima scoffed, looking away from the television.
    “She here fifteen years, Halima,” Aisha said, as if the length of years in America explained Ifemelu’s eating of a granola bar.
    “Fifteen? Long time,” Halima said.
    Aisha waited until Mariama left before pulling out her cell phone from her pocket. “Sorry, I make quick call,” she said, and