So You Think You’Re American: Childhood Struggles of the First Generation

By Iriowen Thea Ojo

Ekina was made in America with African parts, but unfortunately this has never made him indestructible. Precocious at ten years old, Ekina knows that physical strength wont help him fend off his overbearing parents, cruel teachers, and one-sided romance. It wont help him save his baby sister from their traditionally-misogynist father or protect his little brother from their mothers expectations either, although it mightve helped him master an adagioif he hadnt quit ballet class. Nigerian boys dont wear pointe shoes, and anyway, who does he think he isan American?
So You Think Youre American is a novel about growing up in that world between foreign and native cultures. Poignant, funny, and sometimes hopelessly heartbreaking, So You Think Youre American will evoke profound emotions, tears or laughter, in even the most stoic of readers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jul 22, 2014
• ISBN: 9781496924414

Iriowen Thea Ojo

Iriowen Thea Ojo is a first-generation Nigerian American who wrote her first novel, So You Think You’re American, when she was in ninth grade. She finished writing Generation Wasted when she was sixteen and has also published many poems. When she’s not hunched over a computer screen, typing away on a Word document, she’s eating out with friends, learning new languages, and coming up with new projects for her community service organization, Youth Halo. She lives in Long Island, New York, and will graduate from high school in 2015.

Book preview

Chapter One

THERE WERE NO WOMEN KNIGHTS. I turned the page in my King Arthur book and tried to look for people who weren’t Guinevere and the Lady of the Lake. There was Morgan LeFay, but she was a witch and therefore not really a woman. I mean, I didn’t think witches were women, otherwise they wouldn’t have all gotten burned in Salem. We went there when I was younger and I went to this scary museum where we had to go downstairs into this dungeon place, and witch-puppets in jails kept popping out at us and stuff, and it was in the dark too which made everything twelve times worse. I got so scared that I ran away and left Ize’s carriage over there in that dark. I got in a lot of trouble that day. My mother said he could have gotten kidnapped. I didn’t know how, since how could a baby snatcher see a baby in that kind of darkness? But of course I didn’t bother saying anything. I would’ve just gotten yelled at more.

My arms were hurting a little. I got up from my desk and did a bunch of cartwheels until I banged into the bed and almost broke my neck.

"Eh-eh! What are you doing in there?" someone shouted.

Nothing! I yelled back. I got onto my feet and went over to the window and closed it so the bugs of the night wouldn’t come in, like the mosquitoes leftover from summer.

Ekina! my mother called. Are you still sick? Come downstairs and take some medicine!

I had the flu and an ear infection in both ears and I couldn’t breathe through my nose. My mother said it was because I didn’t wear a jacket, but it was still warm outside so there was no need for one. My room still smelled like sun on the grass because of the air from the window.

I’m coming, I said, even though she couldn’t hear me. I searched for a woman knight one last time, just to see if I’d accidentally skipped a page or something. There wasn’t one. Guinevere was very pretty, but she never wore a helmet or carried a sword, and that was pretty sad because I bet she wanted to.

I went downstairs. My father was watching the news in the living room with my little brother, who looked happy as a clam sitting right in front of the screen the way he wasn’t supposed to because it ruined your eyes. He was over there smiling while the news guy talked about how thousands of people were getting killed by the hurricane in Alabama and Florida.

Is that gonna kill us too, dad? I asked him.

No, my son. It won’t move up here.

My mother said, Ekina, don’t you care that so many people have no homes because of the hurricane? You are only concerned with yourself?

No, mom.

Don’t you remember that your auntie and uncle live in Florida?

But that’s daddy’s side, I told her. Why did she care what happened to them if they weren’t even related to her?

My mother was silent. I stared at her and I knew she knew I was staring at her, but she wouldn’t raise her eyes. She wanted to say it was a shame because she’d taught me to love everyone. She said that before, when I was in first grade and Lennon and I were playing Twin Towers in the backyard with Cory and Damian and Milo and Nate and Josh. She grabbed me by the arm, dragged me into the house, and hit me for it. Her face was like Lord Voldemort’s, and she said what was the matter with me, didn’t I know how many people had died in those buildings? I should be lucky she didn’t die in there, because otherwise I’d be a motherless orphan with only my father to look after me. I cried and said I was sorry, because there was no point in explaining to her that we weren’t trying to be the bombers, we were trying to be the U.S. Air Force rescuers. Or whoever it was that stopped people from bombing places.

My mother gave me some of her weird tea that had the bad-tasting leaves at the bottom and made sure I drank it all. From the couch my father said, If you had been paying attention to the children, Eroro, he wouldn’t have gotten sick.

And what do you mean by that? my mother asked angrily, stepping closer to the living room.

Oh, wow. Again. It was a repeat of what they always did, the way they were always talking in the house. I didn’t know why they just couldn’t talk about something else for once, to spare us all the torture of having to listen. Why did grown-ups always have to act like no one was there?

You know what I mean, woman. If you were actually in the house doing your job, the kids wouldn’t be running here and there and everywhere. Do you know that I went into CVS last week and saw Ekina running in the street with all those little boys from the other houses?

I told him not to do that! She turned to glare at me. Ekinadese! What is wrong with you? You don’t listen when I talk?

I didn’t go there! I said, heat creeping into my face. I wasn’t at CVS!

"I’m not going to blame him," my father said. "You are the parent."

So you’re saying I’m a bad mother.

Well, do you think you’re a good one?

Same conversation, six straight days. At least, I thought it was six days. It may have been more or less. I moved away from the kitchen island and stood on one foot while I opened the door to the fridge. It smelled like cold onions in there.

And who are you to ask me such a question? Her voice could’ve made all the birds fall out of the sky. Who do you think you are?

My baby sister started crying and I pulled her out of her highchair and held her against my shoulder. She was very little; she was small and fat and went around the house in diapers. She was bad at walking. I always had to carry her, and that was how I’d gotten my big muscles.

Ize, I said, let’s go upstairs.

He scowled. No.

Come, let’s go.

Can’t I finish watching this first?

I grabbed him by the hand and yanked him up. Wailing and complaining, he went like a noodle and I almost dropped the baby while dragging him up the stairs.

If you stop making noise, I’ll read you a story, I told him after I put Abieyuwa in her crib. I sat down on his bed, where he had his face buried in the pillow and his mouth open to keep wailing. I’ll read you a nice one about King Arthur and Lancelot and the holy grail.

No. Tell me my favorite story.

I told that to you yesterday.

Tell it again today.

Okay, I said. Fine. There once was a man who was like a prince and a poor lady who met in Nigeria a long, long time ago.

And it was hot and the sun was shining and she was sitting in the forest with the big white flowers all around her—

Be quiet, Ize. Let me finish.

Sorry. He burrowed under the covers.

Anyway, so the prince was walking through the forest. He was really upset because he’d gotten into a fight with his father about getting married soon, and he liked to sit and think in a part of the forest where two almond trees bent towards each other like they were trying to hold hands. Almost like they were—

Kissing, Ize mumbled.

Yes, kissing. So he went there and moved the leaves aside with his hands, and he saw a beautiful, beautiful woman crying, and he saw that where her tears fell the white flowers were growing.

Ize was still. I pushed the blanket from his face and saw that he was asleep. Over the sound of his deep baby breathing, I could hear the house’s exploding anger through my blocked up ears.

The end, I whispered.

There was stomping and shouting coming closer and closer, and I started feeling like someone was coming after me with a gun. There were stories about people who had their houses broken into, and people who had been captured in Germany during World War II. They were the ones who were supposed to feel this way, not me. My feet were cold. I shoved them under Ize’s blankets and he stirred a little.

Then the door burst open and it was my father hovering over me, calling me to come with him, asking did I love him or did I love my mother? Because she did nothing for me, she never helped me; she cared about her work more than anything else in the world. More than me, even.

My mother appeared out of nowhere, screaming with her arms in the air. Get away from him!

They were trying to tell me things at the same time, things I didn’t want to hear, and it was killing me that they didn’t know that I didn’t care about their fights because none of it had anything to do with me but maybe some of it did, and maybe I should be caring since I was a part of them too.

I put the blankets over my face and breathed through the fabric, waiting. Their bodies were shadows. They left me and turned towards each other, waving their hands and going on with whatever they had started with. They went to their room, still going. Ize opened his eyes a crack and reached for me, murmuring something that sounded like Derek Jeter, but I shushed him.

Ekina, he whispered sleepily.

Shush, Ize. What is it?

He started speaking and I didn’t know what he was saying, so I told him to be quiet and just go to sleep already. I closed my eyes and soon I could hear him snoring.

The lights suddenly grew bright, but I knew it wasn’t a natural brightness like from the sun or anything, and Ize was still lying warm next to me, sleeping with his mouth open, and my father was pulling me up with his hands on my shoulders. Through my foggy, blocked-up ears, I heard him say, Ekinadese, I’m leaving.

Where was his face? It seemed to be a brown plate, floating somewhere above me. Ah. Huh?

He pressed his forehead against mine. Be good.

Hmm. Ya.

He let me go, and the brown plate disappeared.

In the morning he wasn’t in his bedroom sleeping like he should have been. My mother wasn’t there either because she always had to go for rounds very early. She left before I even got up, but my dad usually went to work at eight so he was supposed to be here. I wanted to call my mother and ask her about it, but I didn’t want to bother her, and anyway she probably wouldn’t answer me properly. They never answered us properly because we were too young to know about grown-up things like the truth.

The worst part about it was, I didn’t know if the whole thing had been a dream or if it had actually happened in real life.

Chapter Two

MY MOTHER SAID, FORGET ABOUT it. And I had to go to school the next day because I didn’t have a fever anymore. So she hugged me and kissed me and told me to go to sleep, it was nine o’clock already. So I lay in bed and thought about things that didn’t make any sense to me and that made my head hurt like I’d hit it against something hard. He didn’t come back; he hadn’t been back since the day before. Was he sleeping on the bench by the train station near the park with the two big yellow tube slides? Was he cold, although it was still pretty warm? Was he hungry?

It was things like these that kept me up all night and made me wake up with painful, sticky eyes in the morning. I woke up Ize, helped him get ready, and sent him to the kitchen to eat his daily rice bran while I dumped mine in the trash can and covered it up with paper towels. He always cried about it. I didn’t get why he didn’t just eat it; crying didn’t help anything at all.

Ize, eat your bran.

He wailed, snot and tears pouring down his face. I don’t want it!

Ize, eat.

No!

Here, I put syrup in it.

He started to cry harder. I yanked G.I. Joe from his hand and told him I was going to rip its head off if he didn’t eat the bran. He was screaming. He brought the bowl closer to his face and stuffed spoonfuls into his mouth, crying the whole time. It would have been funny if I hadn’t been so tired. My ribs felt like somebody’d beaten me up in the night without my knowing it. My back felt like it was full of cancer or spine fractures or something. No amount of twisting or stretching would make it feel better.

This meant that there was honestly nothing to do but go to school, where my class had to write letters to the president and ask him if he could save stuff for us. The girls were saying the polar bears because they were all getting killed by the oil and the melting Arctic and the ocean that was ruined. Somebody said the kids in Africa and everyone looked at me and I said, Their president should help them by himself. What does America have to do with them?

They were all surprised. They asked me wasn’t I African.

Yes, I said. But that’s not the point.

People began to remember the soldiers and they wrote for the president to end the war because Mariana Milligan had a cousin in Iraq and she was afraid he’d die. He was in the Infantry.

What are you going to write? Zada asked me.

I don’t know yet.

I’m going to write all about the whales, said Amethyst. Everybody should write about the whales. That way he has no choice but to help them.

The whales did not care if the president saved them or not. I told her about that.

You don’t care about animals! she shouted at me. "The whales are dead and no one is doing anything! I love them!" And she started crying. Amethyst was such an annoying crybaby. In kindergarten I licked her glue stick because it tasted like milk and she cried about that too, when clearly there was no reason for her to have been crying at all. It was a glue stick for Pete’s sake.

If all the starving kids in Africa had food the size of a whale, they wouldn’t be hungry anymore, I said.

After I said that, Sister Anne made me sit in the chair in the corner, which was completely unfair because I hadn’t even done anything—at least not to her, anyway. The corner was like that place in cartoons where the kid sits on a stool and wears a dunce hat. Except we didn’t have any dunce hats, and at least the stool I was sitting on had a back to it. I wrote my letter in the corner. I told the president to forget about the dolphins and the whales and make sure to save his own people.

After this we had to make blankets and send toothbrushes and cards to the soldiers, because American toothbrushes and blankets would make them happier than what the cactuses and camels were making them. It was hot where they were. They didn’t need blankets because they would die of heat stroke, and that would cause all sorts of madness. I mean, how could people let big, strong warriors go ahead and die from something like heat stroke? I cut the blanket I’d finished sewing into little pieces and flushed them down the toilet one by one. It took a long time to do because I had no choice but to use those stupid safety scissors that were not even qualified enough to be called scissors. It was a real commitment. I could not put people’s lives in danger like that.

Cassandra Everett had made that blanket with me. Her side was pink because she was a girl and my side was green. It was supposed to be the flag but we didn’t have red or blue squares, and then we forgot the stripes so we gave up on the stars. She thought she had lost the blanket because I hadn’t told her what actually happened to it. Then she realized none of us had had it last. We’d put it on the top shelf of the art closet. There was honestly no one else to blame but Sister Anne, so we did it secretly because it was a crime against the pope and the church and everybody to lie about a holy woman of God out loud. But even though we solved that problem, Cassandra was really worried about the project. At lunch, she asked me what we were going to do. For the eighty-second time.

I told you already, I said. It was Sister Anne’s fault. She’s the one who lost it.

But Ekina, we’ll get in trouble anyway.

It’s not our fault, Cass.

Now the soldiers won’t have blankets and they’re gonna freeze to death.

I poured myself some juice from the pitcher on the table and stared at her. They sleep in the desert, Cassandra.

The desert has really strong winds. That’s why the sand gets blown everywhere and nothing can grow.

Except cactuses.

Right. So what are we going to do?

She either couldn’t hear properly or she was trying to be annoying. Your ravioli is getting cold.

I don’t care about the ravioli.

It was because she was a teacher’s pet, but not as much as Nelly was. All right. What do you wanna do?

Come to my house after school and we can sew another one.

Sorry, I can’t.

Just call your mom from the office and ask her if you can come home with me. I’ll call my mom.

I have Kumon after school today.

Cassandra scowled. Ekina, you are so unhelpful. I guess I’ll have to do everything by myself.

Sorry, I said. I would help you but I have stuff to do.

She nodded. It’s okay. I think I know what we can do.

She came to school the next day with a paper bag, and when she opened it a little so I could see, I saw that there was a quilt inside. It was way nicer than ours, with patriotic red and white and blue hearts all over.

This is not yours, Sister Anne said when we brought it to her. Where is your blanket? What have you done with it?

I wasn’t going to say anything about losing it. I was going to tell her that we put our original in the closet, high up for safekeeping, and it disappeared completely. Not a pink or green thread left. Before I could open my mouth, Cassandra cracked and blurted, We lost it!

Honestly, that girl could never keep her mouth shut sometimes, and one day it was going to get her into deep trouble. Sister Anne shook her head and said what a pity. We didn’t put anything in the box for Afghanistan.

We were marines because the soldiers were in the Middle East and we had no ships to be sailors.

What do marines even do? asked Nate.

I guess they protect the sea. Like a marine biologist.

What? A marine biologist studies dolphins!

You guys don’t know anything, Damian said. The marines are like the Coast Guard.

We don’t have any sea.

Whatever.

We got Cory’s tent and set it up in his yard to make a fort. There were leaves all over the place, red and brown and orange, so we glued them to the tent.

So we can go incognito and no one will ever know it’s there, Cory said.

We had to pile more leaves around it to make it look even more real, and Lennon duct-taped the flap to get in. The entrance was cut out at the bottom. You had to crawl in from underneath, and that part was covered up by leaves too. But we needed booby traps to be safe in case the enemy tried to get in.

Cory had the traps in his attic, the ones they had in Tom and Jerry that were used to catch dogs’ legs and looked like an open mouth. They were rusty but he said they might still work. We carried them outside with gloves so if one of the traps actually worked, it wouldn’t hurt so badly when it snapped us.

I stepped on one of them when I was coming out of the fort and nothing happened. It didn’t snap me up and drag off my skin or anything. I felt myself all over just to make sure.

Cory, they don’t work, I told him.

Oh, too bad. We should’ve got the snakes like I said.

It wasn’t warm enough for snakes. We would have come up with something else if Cory’s big brother hadn’t told us that marines didn’t have forts. If they didn’t have them then we just looked stupid. We left the fort alone and changed it to a prison. We put on rain boots and baseball caps and decided to play a new game, one that had never been played before in all the history of games to play.

We were going to play Nam. Lennon had a grandpa who went missing in 1968 and then got found in 1969. He told us about how he hid for a whole year alone in the jungle and had to eat all sorts of bugs and animals and how he almost got killed in his sleep. Twice. He was old and always yelled at us for making too much noise if he was asleep or sitting in front of the TV or something. Lennon would tell us to just ignore him, but when the grandpa was nice, he’d call us over to him and talk to us about how Lennon’s mom used to be a hippie and had all these hippie friends and said she was going to join the flowers in harmony. We said that to each other for weeks and weeks, flowers in harmony, because it was such a funny thing to say. Now Lennon’s mom only wore tie-dye when she cleaned the house, and I knew because I was a witness to it. My mother had never heard of a hippie. She thought it was somebody with big hips. It was hard to explain the real meaning to her because she was too Nigerian to understand it.

Vietnam was hot. We moved on our hands and knees through the marshes, listening for sounds. The Viet Congs were a team of their own. Sometimes we changed up and I was a Cong, which was way better than being an American because the Congs had all these awesome ninja skills, but when I wasn’t, they were after us. But Damian’s Hot Wheels car was dumb; it could never get over the leaves. We’d be stuck and everyone would complain