“Oh, I’ll take him,” he said. “Just don’t be surprised if I refuse to give him back.”
“We can make arrangements for that,” she said, smiling as she pulled out her precalculus textbook. She was glad she was feeling more at ease with the instructor, to the extent that she was making jokes. On their first meeting, she’d been immensely uncomfortable spending one-on-one time in a café with a man she barely knew: The whole hour she had mostly nodded while the instructor spoke, scarcely asking questions, because she was afraid of asking a stupid question and embarrassing herself. Before the second meeting, though, she told herself it was no use going downtown if she couldn’t take full advantage of the instructor’s offer and ultimately improve her grade. So, though nervous, she had pushed herself to ask multiple questions, and the instructor had answered even the most stupid of them. By the third meeting—despite still being anxious enough that she’d told Liomi before they entered the café not to say a word to the professor lest he get upset by a child disturbing him and leave—she was feeling far more comfortable, so much that, toward the end of their session, she and the instructor began chatting about where they’d each grown up. The instructor’s father was in the military, she learned, and he’d lived in many parts of America and Europe. Germany was his favorite place to live, he said, because, even as a child, he could tell how much the Germans loved Americans, and it felt great to be loved for his nationality. She wanted to know more about what such a life was like, how wonderful or awful it must have been not to have the same friends for all of his childhood, but she didn’t know which questions were appropriate to ask of an instructor and which ones weren’t, so she told him about her life in Cameroon instead, about how she’d never traveled farther than forty miles from Limbe, laughing at how pathetic it now sounded. He was curious about her pharmacist dreams, but Fatou arrived early, with her two youngest children in tow, to put an end to their conversation.
“We gonno drop the childrens to play games,” Fatou announced to the instructor as she sat down in Liomi’s seat after Neni had introduced them and sent the kids off to get cookies. “Then we gonno do we eyebrow and we do we nails and we gonno go to all-we-can-eat Chinese restaurant because today is day for mothers and we musto be very, very special.”
“Ugh,” the instructor said. “Totally forgot about Mother’s Day. I should call my mom and do something nice for her, right?”
“And you wife,” Fatou said.
“I’m not married.”
“Girlfriend?”
Neni kicked Fatou’s leg under the table.
“Boyfriend,” the instructor said.
“Boyfriend?” the women asked in unison.
The instructor laughed. “I take it you ladies don’t know many men with boyfriends?”
Fatou shook her head. Neni’s mouth remained ajar.
“I don’t know no gay man from my country,” Fatou said. “But my village we used to got one man who walk lika woman. He hang his hand for air and shake his derrière very nice when he dance.”
“That’s funny.”
“Everybody say he musto be woman inside, but nobody call him gay because he got a wife and childrens. And we no got no word for gay. So, I am happy to meet you!”
“But I thought you said you like children, Professor,” Neni said, the shock still apparent in her voice.
“Oh, I love children.”
“But how can you … I thought …”
“I’ve always wanted kids. As soon as I’m done with school, my boyfriend and I, we really hope we can adopt.”
“Take one of my childrens,” Fatou said, giggling. “I got seven.”
“Seven!”
Fatou nodded.
“Wow.”
“Yes, me, too, I say the same thing every day. Wow, I got seven childrens? Un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq, six, sept, mon Dieu!”
“How many do you want?” Neni asked the instructor.
“One or two,” he said, “but definitely not seven.”
Fatou and the instructor laughed together, but Neni couldn’t find a way to get past her confusion. How could he be gay? Why was he gay? I can’t believe he’s gay, she said to Fatou over and over as they walked toward the subway with their sons.
“Oh, no, you no musto tell me,” Fatou said. “I see you face when he say it.”
“It’s just that—”
“Just that you like tall Porto Rican boy with long hair. I see for you eyes how you like him.”
“Why does everybody who looks Hispanic have to be Puerto Rican to you?”
“He like you, you like him.”
“What are you talking about? I don’t like him.”
“What you mean, you don’t like him? I see how you look at him when I enter café. You laugh at everything he say, ha, ha, ha, too funny. Ah, oui, Professeur; vraiment, Professeur.”
“I did not say anything like that!”
“Then why you lie?”
“Lie about what?”
“Why you no tell Jende you gonno meet professeur inside café?”
“I already told you. I don’t want him to worry.”
“Worry for what?”
“Worry about the things men worry about when their wife has a rendezvous on a Sunday afternoon with a young professor. If you were him, would you like it?”
“I no worry if Ousmane gonno meet anybody … but what if Liomi tell him?”
“I told Liomi to say I went to study, which is true. What is the difference between me telling Jende I’m going to study versus I’m going to meet my professor to help me with my schoolwork? It all has to do with my school.”
“Aha,” Fatou said as they descended the stairs to the downtown D train.
“Aha, what?”
“That be the same reason why my cousin husband beat her one day back home.”
“Because she went to meet with her professor?”
“No, no,” Fatou said, shaking her head and wagging her index finger at Neni. “Because she do what you just do. Husband think she somewhere, then he pass somewhere different and see her drinking beer with other man. Husband drag her back to house and beat her well. He say, why you gonno disgrace me, lie to me, and then go sit drink beer with other man? She say, oh, no, he just my friend, but husband say, then why you lie to me?”
“So what did your cousin do?”
“What she gonno do? She do stupid thing, husband beat her. That all. She learn lesson, marriage continue, everybody happy.”
Thirteen