Friend Request

AMAKA was not like one of those other Nigerians. And by other she meant her American born companions who, despite an impressive work ethic and unbridled ambition, all flocked to the medical profession like birds pecking at a single loaf of bread.

Amaka was determined to be different. Although she already had three years of pre-med courses under her belt, she’d felt a change within herself recently. It had occurred only yesterday:

She was leaving her Cell Bio class with the mid-term exam carefully folded as a bookmark inside the class textbook. She deplored carrying around that massive nine hundred page monstrosity. There’s no way I’m looking at my grade she thought to herself as she walked the path from Sterling Chemistry Lab to Yale Commons dining hall.

After all, she’d studied diligently for this exam, locking herself in a corner of the library and successfully fighting every temptation to answer text messages or check Facebook. Facebook had been the downfall of her previous attempt to improve her science GPA.

“It’s harder these days!” she declared, during a spat with her father.

“How? I was once a student too,” her father said in his deep, bombastic voice. He was a stocky, dark complexioned man of fifty with coarse features, easily resembling an African dictator. “Look at Chizoba—.”

“—I am not Chizoba!” she interrupted, almost breaking into tears at the mere mention of her older sister, a medical intern at The John Hopkins Hospital.

Her father grunted, “Clearly.”

Amaka wanted to stab in him in the eye as he leaned back in his recliner.

“Chizoba is insane,” she continued. “She barely had friends in college. She never went out. All she ever did was study 24 hours a day to please you. And she hates it Daddy.”

“Does she?”

“She doesn’t enjoy medicine anymore. I know, because she told me.”

Her father waved off her concerns, “She doesn’t know what she enjoys yet. She will be making Big Money soon,” he said, his eyes growing wide at “Big” to emphasize the wads of cash Chizoba would have to swim through to get to her driveway. “And you haven’t answered my question yet. How is school harder now?”

A pause. Amaka took a moment to collect herself. And when she spoke, all of the previous anger was gone from her voice. “Facebook,” she said, plainly.

Her father made a stinky face, bewildered. “Ama, I have no time for nonsense. What is ‘dis Face-book you talk about?

Amaka showed him. She hurried to her room to return with a Macbook, setting it upon the foot of the recliner for her father to see. She logged him in under her account name, and clicked on a photo album showing her with her roommates goofing around in the dorms.

“Heh!” he screamed, grabbing his heart and falling back dramatically. “’Dis is how you are wasting my money? I can barely fill the tank and you are throwing my money away on a gadget! Lord have mercy! You children are killing me, I swear.”

Amaka did not regret showing the website to her father. Many times before he had threatened to take her out of school and send her to the village in Urrenubu to fetch water and pull yams from the ground. It didn’t bother her to see him recoil at discovering a fault in her work ethic. She wasn’t Chizoba; she wasn’t a robot.

The day she got her Cell Bio midterm back, she found an empty dining table at the back of Commons and filled a cup with Cheerios. She snacked on the cereal while considering her future. If not pre-med, then what? It occurred to her that she’d spent most of her life chasing perfect grades and never stopped for a minute to consider her own future. How could I be so careless she thought.

Of all the students in her high school’s graduating class, she was the one poised for success; class valedictorian, near perfect SAT scores, all A.P. classes except History, and scholarships to every university she applied to. When she began her freshman year of college, she had the confidence and swagger of someone accustomed to being the best and brightest of their set. Who could match her drive and intellect or the sacrifices she had made to be this smart, this awesomely gifted?

Yet, after a month in New Haven, she took a late train back to the city and burst through the front door of her house without even saying hello to her mother, or her little brother, Uchenna, who was in the middle of his mandatory reading time. Instead, she collapsed on her bed and cried until she could no longer remember the reason for her sadness.

Her mother sent her back on the train the next morning with a bag of her favorite treats: chin chin and akara. She returned to campus in good spirits, her jaw tired from munching, silently repeating the affirmation, “I will do better.”

---

As AMAKA SAT quietly looking at the students filtering into Commons, she saw a lot of familiar faces, many of them students in her class year. She tried to pick out the ones she knew, attempting to predict their fates. “You!” she whispered to herself, but pointing with her gaze at a tall blonde boy wearing a gray cardigan, “Will be the forty-seventh president of the United States.”

Her eyes continually scanned the crowd. She saw future bankers, consultants, and lawyers. Every dozen or so people her eyes would stumble upon a face as worried and nervous as her own. She watched these individuals carefully, how they sat alone, eating their dinner while thumbing through the Yale Herald, pretending to be engrossed in an article.

These students were equally bright and ambitious, but just like a child born rich and with privilege, all of their virtues seemed to spoil under the hot gaze of unlimited opportunity.

She sighed.

Her Cheerios no longer tasted sweet as they dissolved on her tongue. All at once, she felt herself getting depressed and homesick. It was her mid-term exam—still folded up between the pages of her textbook—that was crushing her thoughts and trapping her with its dark magnetism.

She couldn’t ignore it any longer. Amaka had to center herself to prepare for what she imagined would be a terrible climax.

How many times had she rushed to the bathroom after class to open an exam inside the stall while sitting on the toilet seat, one hand already holding folded toilet paper to muffle the inevitable scream. Each time that a graded exam was handing out by the teaching assistants, she felt her stomach tighten followed by a sharp ringing in her ears.

After her first meltdown, her mother made it a point to call everyday during exam period,

“Ama, are you fine?” she’d ask.

“Yes, mommy.”

“Are you happy?”

Amaka did not like this question. It implied that her mother could sense her anxiety. And who could answer “Yes” convincingly without sounding dishonest.

“What is happiness? And why do we bother to pursue it?” she would answer in her most academic tone. She could see her mother frowning on the other line, considering whether her daughter was slowly losing her mind or just being cheeky.

“Ok. Don’t forget to call your father.”

That was always how their conversations ended, with a reminder, but none more frequent than to call her father. Amaka rarely made that call. She would probably unravel if she did.

The exam was not going to go away. She closed her eyes and wished that it would burst into flames, injuring her enough to demand a re-test, “Or I’ll sue!” Such a silly idea she thought.

When she finally managed the courage to open the slip of paper and look at her grade it simply read: Please see me after class.

---

AFTER A brutal round of Friday classes, third level Spanish in the morning, followed by Social Psychology and a four-hour bio lab, Amaka was not ready to collapse, but energized. She nearly skipped back to her dorm, not stopping to acknowledge all the familiar faces strolling throughout the courtyard of her residential college.

When she reached her room, she locked the door, and sat down at her desk. Ever since that moment in Commons, she decided to schedule time every Friday to search for her passions. At first she felt silly about it, never daring to discuss her new commitment for fear of sounding like a hippy.

But Amaka relished this time alone. Yet, the moment she sat down, with only the faint and distant din of New Haven to distract her, she immediately drew a blank.

Then she tore a sheet of paper from a notebook and began to sketch the leaf of a tree. She held the pencil loosely and made liberal strokes, attaching a stem and drawing additional leaves, each with great detail. Her wrist swept back and forth across the page following a careful arc.

After a few minutes, she held the paper before her face, turning it sideways, squinting one eye before crumpling the paper and tossing it aside.

So she wasn’t an artist. That was one less hope to worry about. In a way, it was freeing to know there was something she couldn’t do. She also added sports to that list since at her age it was probably too late to begin picking up a sport with the intention of doing it professionally, though if she’d discovered it younger she’d clearly have an advantage with her long legs and arched feet.

Nonetheless, Amaka was not discouraged. She continued the sessions for two more weeks until she hit a wall; her ‘Can’t do’ list had nearly seventeen items on it, mostly things that required extraordinary skill and a lifetime of practice, while her ‘Can do’ list had merely two items: entrepreneur and grade school teacher, neither of which paid well or with any certainty.

In a moment of desperation, she called Chizoba. It was 3am in the morning, yet Chizoba answered midway through the second ring.

“What’s the matter,” she said in her mature and practical tone.

“Nothing,” said Amaka.

“Ama, do you need money?”

“No, well yes, but that’s not why I’m calling.”

Chizoba waited silently for Amaka to explain the reason for her call. Amaka spoke for nearly fifteen minutes and at a rapid pace, eager to get out every fear and insecurity that had been torturing her the last few weeks. She felt so relieved to speak openly and Chizoba was such a good listener, never interrupting, assenting at all the right moments. Once Amaka finished, Chizoba sighed into the receiver and said:

“Ama, can I call you back?”

Stunned, Amaka mumbled a yes and just as soon heard a click on the other line.

She crawled into bed and drew the covers up to her chin and crossed her arms over her breasts. She wanted to be so warm she could be buried that way.

On a Friday night while all of the campus came alive with drunkenness, Amaka closed her eyes and became as still as an unbloomed flower.

---

CHIZOBA was standing on the pickup line outside Union station when Amaka got off the shuttle bus. Chizoba’s face lit up when their eyes met. Amaka ran to her and they embraced. Although they had different styles and personalities, they strongly resembled each other with their petite frames and high cheekbones. They were without doubt sisters, only five years apart, and both still radiant with youth.

“You came,” she said, matter of factly.

Chizoba smiled and rubbed Amaka’s shoulder. Right away, she began to dish on stories of the other interns; the ones she couldn’t stand, the ones she found trustworthy, and especially the ones she found cute.

They walked to a local café, a start-up that had just gotten positive reviews in the Yale Herald. It was full of underclassmen sipping mochas while clicking away on their laptops.

“Gosh, it’s been so long,” Chizoba said, looking around the room.

“What do you mean?”

“Since I had such free time. I’m jealous.”

“How is it?” Amaka asked, carefully reading her sister’s face.

“It’s busy and stressful, but what’s new. I’ll survive. And you?”

Amaka didn’t know what more to say. She’d emptied her conscience of all its weight during their phone conversation a few days ago. Now she felt free but slightly hollow.

Chizoba took a bite from her coffee cake muffin. It was terribly over priced, yet she seemed to savor it. In truth, it was the first time in a while that she’d been able to eat a meal sitting down.

“I remember having a fight with Daddy during my sophomore year,” she said, licking the corners of her mouth and slowly undressing the muffin. “I was so mad I was practically screaming at the phone. My roommates must have thought I was talking to an ex-boyfriend. When I finished, Daddy was silent. I couldn’t believe it. He had nothing to say, Ama. Mom picked up the phone and you know what she said?”

Amaka was listening intently, following every word and recreating the scene in her mind. “What’d she say?”

“ ‘Please, finish your courses, dear. When you graduate you can do what you want, but finish the required courses.’ So I did, convincing myself that when it was over, I’d travel the world or take up a job at a young company and have the weekends to myself.”

“But you went straight to med school after graduation,” Amaka interrupted with disbelief.

Chizoba nodded, “It was my choice. Daddy didn’t force me. In the end, I figured ‘why not’. After all, I’d suffered for four years already.”

Amaka folded her hands onto the table.

“If you had Daddy’s support what would you do with your life?” Chizoba continued.

Amaka had never considered what life would be like if she had her father’s unconditional approval. She had always felt slightly ashamed to find joy anywhere outside of her studies. On a clear day, her father’s aspirations and expectations beamed down upon her like a red-hot sun. How could she ever escape his gaze or warm the cold look of derision in his eyes whenever they spoke of her future?

Chizoba began to laugh. At first it was just a gentle, private chuckle, slowly unrolling within the cavity of her chest, but then it became a raucous declaration of mockery. Suddenly, the steady clicking of computer keys throughout the café fell to a low murmur.

Amaka felt exposed and vulnerable.

“I’m sorry, Ama,” Chizoba said, fighting the last stubborn fit of laughter in her side, “It’s just that…it’s just that you looked so terrified when I asked you that question and it reminded me…of myself.”

---

BEFORE the sisters parted they promised to keep in touch despite demanding schedules. Amaka would see to it that the promise was kept.

She left Union station saddened but grateful. How silly of her to think that Chizoba could magically rescue her from making a decision that was so intensely personal as what to do with her own life. Yet, having Chizoba visit added a bit of comfort in knowing that discovering a passion was a process, full of mistakes and revisions, and not some moment of divine inspiration.

She returned to her room emotionally exhausted. Sitting on her bed she began to look for something to occupy the rest of the afternoon. Naturally, she grabbed her laptop and logged into Facebook, discovering a friend request from someone with her father’s first name: Madu. The request came with a message:

Ama, it’s your daddy. Please study hard. Try not to spend too much time on the face book. It’s very addicting.

-End