“You’ll have a good time, and I’ll have one of those drinks they call Sex on the Beach,” Jende added, winking at her as she rolled her eyes and walked out of the living room.
On the evening of the party, they arrived an hour late, thanks to Neni changing and unchanging her mind on which blouse to wear so she could look equally sexy and respectable. Winston was standing near the counter with a group of friends when they walked in holding hands, Jende in front, Neni behind. Next to Winston and his friends, two men sat on stools, smiling with their faces so close Neni was convinced she was about to witness her first kiss between two men. The sight of the men reminded her of the instructor—thanks to whom she’d gotten an A-minus final grade in precalculus and ended the semester with a 3.7 GPA—and got her wondering what his boyfriend looked like, and where they were in the adoption process, which the instructor had told her on the last day of class they were ready to begin because he didn’t want to wait until after his graduation anymore, being that he was about to turn forty.
“What should we do?” Jende whispered in her ear as they stood by the door, unsure of how to navigate the room packed with patrons sipping beer and swirling cocktails. She shrugged—how was she supposed to know what to do in a place like this? With no choice but to wait for Winston to come get them, they remained by the door, waving intermittently at him and hoping he would see them, which he did only after one of his friends waved back at them. Winston put up a finger and mouthed something but seemed unable to extricate himself from his friends, so Jende and Neni continued standing by the exit, hands linked like adjacent trees with interlocked branches, awkwardly shifting their feet and looking at the drinkers despite knowing they wouldn’t be seeing a familiar face in the roomful of good-looking, young white people.
“I’m going to the bathroom,” Neni whispered in Jende’s ear, and rushed for the ladies’ room before he had a chance to respond. In front of the mirror, she noticed that her face was getting sweaty, certainly not from the heat in the air-conditioned room. What was she going to do or say to those people out there for two hours? She’d never been invited to a party with mostly white people, and even if she had, she would not have attended. She was only doing this for Winston, but maybe she should have stayed home and cooked him some fufu and eru for his birthday gift. This place wasn’t her kind of place; the people out there weren’t her kind of people. Winston had friends of all races, she knew, but she had no idea he had so many white friends—she didn’t have a single non-African friend and hadn’t even come close to being friends with a white person. It was one thing to be in the same class with them, work for them, smile at them on the bus; it was a whole other thing to laugh and chat with them for hours, making sure she enunciated every word so they wouldn’t say her accent was too difficult to understand. No way could she spend time with a white woman and be herself the way she was with Betty or Fatou. What would they talk about? Laugh about? Besides, she hated it when she said something and they smiled or nodded and she could tell they had no idea what she’d just said. And the people in the bar, they looked like that kind—they were mostly associates at the firm where Winston worked, so she had to be careful not to embarrass him. Nothing shamed her more than black people embarrassing themselves in front of white people by behaving the way white people expect them to behave. That was the one reason why she had such a hard time understanding African-Americans—they embarrassed themselves in front of white people left and right and didn’t seem to care.
She pulled a tissue from her purse, dabbed the sweat and oil off her face. She reapplied her dark purple lipstick, which needed no reapplication. This should be a good exercise, she thought as she walked back into the bar, pulling down her red halter blouse to cover the top of her jeans, which was annoyingly bunching up beneath her belt and overlapping belly. She was glad Jende had talked her out of wearing high heels—her legs were shaky enough on the two-inch cowgirl boots into which she’d tucked her jeans. Shaky or not, though, she had to make herself at ease and act as if she went to places like this every night. After she becomes a pharmacist, she might have to attend lots of parties with white people. Hopefully, her accent will no longer be as strong as one of her professors has said it is; maybe she’ll learn to speak with an American accent by then. But for tonight she would try to speak as slowly as she could and then smile. No one would ask her to repeat herself three times if she just smiled.
For perhaps a minute after reentering the bar, she couldn’t see Jende or Winston, so she stood by herself, looking around the room at friends and co-workers and couples whispering into ears or conversing at the top of voices. Then she saw Jende by the door, chatting with someone, probably one of Winston’s friends whom he’d met during the month he lived with Winston when he first came to America.
She was trying to decide whether to join Jende or order a glass of soda on Winston’s tab when a young white woman with curly dark hair appeared in front of her, a cocktail glass in hand, smiling as if she’d just seen something incredibly special.
“Oh my God!” the young woman said. “You must be Neni!”
Neni nodded, broadening her smile.
“I’m Jenny. Winston’s girlfriend.”
Winston’s girlfriend?
“So glad to finally meet you!” Jenny said, giving Neni a hug.
“I am glad to meet you, too,” Neni said, struggling to enunciate and scream above the hip-hop music blasting into her ears from every direction.
“Are you having a good time?” Jenny shouted, moving closer to her. “Would you like a drink?”
Neni shook her head.
“I’m so glad we finally get to meet!” Jenny shouted again. “I’ve heard so much about you.”
“Thank you. I am happy to meet you, too.”
“I’ve been telling Winston that we need to hang out, all four of us, but it’s just so tough with everyone’s work schedules. But we’ve got to. Is Jende here?”
Neni nodded and smiled, still thinking: Winston’s girlfriend?
“How do you like New York? Winston tells me you’ve been here for only two years.”
“I love it. Very much. I am very happy to be here.”
“I’d love to go to Cameroon!” Jenny said, smiling and looking upward dreamingly. “Winston doesn’t seem too eager to visit anytime soon but I’m pushing for us to go sometime next year.”