Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

keep your proper books and leave me with the books I like. And by the way, I still win when we play Scrabble, Mr. Read Proper Books.”
    Now, she slipped her hand from his as they walked back to class. Whenever she felt this way, panic would slice into her at the slightest thing, and mundane events would become arbiters of doom. This time, Ginika was the trigger; she was standing near the staircase, her backpack on her shoulder, her face gold-streaked in the sunlight, and suddenly Ifemelu thought how much Ginika and Obinze had in common. Ginika’s house at the University of Lagos, the quiet bungalow, the yard crowned by bougainvillea hedges, was perhaps like Obinze’s house in Nsukka, and she imagined Obinze realizing how better suited Ginika was for him, and then this joy, this fragile, glimmering thing between them, would disappear.

    OBINZE TOLD HER , one morning after assembly, that his mother wanted her to visit.
    “Your mother?” she asked him, agape.
    “I think she wants to meet her future daughter-in-law.”
    “Obinze, be serious!”
    “I remember in primary six, I took this girl to the send-off party and my mom dropped both of us off and gave the girl a handkerchief. She said, ‘A lady always needs a handkerchief.’ My mother can be strange,
sha
. Maybe she wants to give you a handkerchief.”
    “Obinze Maduewesi!”
    “She’s never done this before, but then I’ve never had a serious girlfriend before. I think she just wants to see you. She said you should come to lunch.”
    Ifemelu stared at him. What sort of mother in her right mind asked her son’s girlfriend to visit? It was odd. Even the expression “come to lunch” was something people said in books. If you were Boyfriend and Girlfriend, you did not visit each other’s homes; you registered for after-school lessons, for French Club, for anything that could mean seeing each other outside school. Her parents did not, of course, know about Obinze. Obinze’s mother’s invitation frightened and excited her; for days, she worried about what to wear.
    “Just be yourself,” Aunty Uju told her and Ifemelu replied, “How can I just be myself? What does that even mean?”
    On the afternoon she visited, she stood outside the door of their flat for a while before she pressed the bell, suddenly and wildly hoping that they had gone out. Obinze opened the door.
    “Hi. My mom just came back from work.”
    The living room was airy, the walls free of photographs except for a turquoise painting of a long-necked woman in a turban.
    “That’s the only thing that is ours. Everything else came with the flat,” Obinze said.
    “It’s nice,” she mumbled.
    “Don’t be nervous. Remember, she wants you here,” Obinze whispered, just before his mother appeared. She looked like Onyeka Onwenu, the resemblance was astounding: a full-nosed, full-lipped beauty, her round face framed by a low Afro, her faultless complexion the deep brown of cocoa. Onyeka Onwenu’s music had been one of theluminous joys of Ifemelu’s childhood, and had remained undimmed in the aftermath of childhood. She would always remember the day her father came home with the new album
In the Morning Light;
Onyeka Onwenu’s face on it was a revelation, and for a long time she traced that photo with her finger. The songs, each time her father played them, made their flat festive, turned him into a looser person who sang along with songs steeped in femaleness, and Ifemelu would guiltily fantasize about him being married to Onyeka Onwenu instead of to her mother. When she greeted Obinze’s mother with a “Good afternoon, ma,” she almost expected her, in response, to break into song in a voice as peerless as Onyeka Onwenu’s. But she had a low, murmuring voice.
    “What a beautiful name you have. Ifemelunamma,” she said.
    Ifemelu stood tongue-tied for seconds. “Thank you, ma.”
    “Translate it,” she said.
    “Translate?”
    “Yes, how would you translate your name? Did Obinze tell