Page 10 of Death of the Author

10 Interview Amarachi

I know this interview is about Zelu, but there are certain things that pretty much every child born to Nigerian parents experiences.

I only realized this after meeting other Naijamericans. When I tell them about this stuff, they always respond, “Hey, that

exact same thing happened to me!”

Yes, yes, when I list these things, you will say, “But we do that, too.” I’m not saying you don’t. I’m saying that we Nigerian

Americans do this because of our specific cultural experiences, because we are children of immigrants from Nigeria. I’m not

talking about you.

Anyway , number one: the Cooking Moment. One thing that Naijamericans love to talk about is food . Food is one of our most intimate connections to the culture. There’s a Nigerian proverb, “The way to a man’s heart is through

his stomach.” Our mothers know and understand this. But the Naijamerican version of the proverb is “The way to Nigeria is

through the stomach.” We learn to love and crave the culture by eating the food our mothers make to please our fathers.

Our mother ate Yoruba food growing up, but she also learned to cook the Igbo way for our father. This was all we ate at home growing up. And we all loved it. Our mother made egusi soup, efo riro, moi moi, okra soup, amala, pounded yam, rice and stew, fried plantain, pepper soup,

and, of course, jollof rice. Other kids might have craved McDonald’s, pizza, hamburgers. We’d go home from school fantasizing

about our mother’s stew. We’d fight over the best chunks of meat. But our mom only taught us to cook a few dishes. She was a registered nurse and, therefore, a busy woman. But we learned the basics—all of us can

make decent jollof rice, fried plantain, and egusi soup. Well, Chinyere is different. She’s the one who can cook anything . She really got good when Zelu was in the hospital after her accident. She’s the exception, not the rule.

So, just because you move out of the house doesn’t mean you stop craving those dishes. They are part of our identities and

they are soooooo good. We realized we needed to make the food we’d grown up eating. But in order to make these things, a trip

to a Nigerian specialty store is often required. So, you go to the store, and when you walk in, the glorious smells hit you.

Ahhhh, lovely. Sharp, colorful spices, dried and smoked fish, palm oil. You see familiar items from the kitchen at your parents’

house. Someone is usually speaking loudly in Yoruba or Igbo.

The store owner knows your mom or dad and smiles and says, “You should buy some of this, too.” You look at the foreign thing.

You smell it; it smells familiar, delicious. It is a culinary treasure, but you have no idea what it is , let alone how to prepare it. And you’re too embarrassed by your Naijamerican ignorance to ask. And thus, you don’t know

that even though you indeed have eaten that thing many times in some type of soup or rice or whatever, it requires elaborate preparation that takes hours

or even days. So you buy it and bring it home, thinking you can just break it up and throw it in your egusi soup or jollof

rice.

The last time I did this, it was dried fish. I remembered seeing it sold on the side of the road in Nigeria, and they were

selling the same type right here in Chicago! I got so excited. Eventually I learned that this fish required soaking and cleaning

and the removal of very nasty -looking innards. My mom even told me that if I’d bought it in Nigeria, I’d have had to soak away flies and even maggots first! Never again!

Actually, I don’t know if Zelu ever had her Cooking Moment. She stayed in Chicago to get her BA and MFA. Even when she was

living in her apartment, she came home for home-cooked meals often. She never had to cook a thing because of my mom.

But on to number two: the Goat Experience. Almost every Naijamerican has a story about seeing a goat die. This one I know

happened to Zelu. When we visited Nigeria as kids, it happened quite often during festivals or celebrations. For special events,

people don’t go to the supermarket to buy their meats; animals are killed. A bull, a goat, plenty of chickens. This is the

reality in Nigeria, but we aren’t used to it.

Inevitably, some uncle or cousin will call you to come and see. I don’t know if there’s any vindictiveness involved or they

just want you to have that good old Nigerian experience, but they’ll bring you as a child to see your first goat slaughtered.

This happened to Zelu and Chinyere when they were eight and nine years old. I don’t know where the rest of us were; we were

very small. Uzo wasn’t even born yet. We had our own experiences when we got older.

But the way Zelu told it always made me laugh. Let me see if I can do it:

The poor thing was held down with a rope by two boys. Our uncle gently pushed them back as he said, “Watch closely. We will

roast afterwards.”

He had this big, sharp knife in his hand, Zelu would say. Though she tends to exaggerate. I’ll bet it wasn’t actually that

big or sharp. Our uncle took the knife to the goat’s neck and—whenever Zelu tells the story, this is when she would start

shouting and flailing her arms—“Blood all over the place! Just nasty and red and warm. You know how I knew it was warm? Because

it hit me IN THE FACE!” Then she’d scream and make gagging noises. “VILE, VILE, VILE!” And the poor animal was shrieking like

a baby. You know how goats can sound like children. Can you imagine? She and Chinyere went running to Mom, crying, while everyone

laughed. Most Nigerian Americans get over their Goat Experience, but to this day, none of my siblings or I eat goat meat.

Number three is what I call Easy and Noisy. We are loud and argumentative. We argue often and honestly, which means we also make up smoothly. We don’t get offended and we don’t hold grudges. We are just loose and free. We laugh loudly. When we are all together at a restaurant, people usually tell us to quiet down. Almost all Nigerian Americans adopt this from their parents. However, Zelu was a little different.

I remember when I noticed it for the first time. It was on the way back from a road trip I took with her and Chinyere to New

Orleans. We were nearly home and very tired. Chinyere wanted to listen to talk radio, whereas I wanted to listen to Beyoncé.

Chinyere can be very rigid. To make a long story short, the agreement got so heated that Chinyere pulled the car over so that

we could scream it out.

Eventually, Chinyere got her way and we got back on the road, listening to some dry-ass talk radio show about world news.

We’d been driving for ten minutes when I heard a sniffle and thought to look at Zelu in the back seat. She was curled in on

herself, cheek pressed against the window, her face puffy from tears. She’d had a panic attack because of our fight and neither

of us had even noticed.

Zelu was tough, but she was also deeply sensitive. Maybe that’s why she was always retreating—always disconnecting from us.

The family was hard on her. Okay, fine, I was hard on her. I dunno, she just brought that out in me. I wanted her to be good and behave so I wouldn’t worry. I don’t

know why she had to be so delicate and reactionary. I mean, come on . She had to go this far ? She had to do something this extreme? So beyond her capabilities?

A snake should not try to be a lizard, right? My sister has always had a problem with reality. That’s what family is for.

Family grounds you. But I will say...

I wish I’d have shut up more often with her. Let her talk more. Let her spill. Let her just be her weird, impulsive self.

She’s always had more to give than what she says, and speaking, no, writing may have been the only way for her to give it. I’ve read Rusted Robots several times now, and each time, I see more and more of my sister behind each word.