Dream Count

by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

After the father of her son abandoned her, a part of Zikora decayed into a bitterness which she imagines is wisdom.

She relates with women only through the pain caused them by men. That I do not trade in stories of my love-inflicted wounds is my unforgivable failing.

“Am I hurting you?” he asked, over and over, while I thought: Hurting me with what? I barely felt a thing, never mind navigating that belly. I saw behind him a trail of faking women; it was the only reason he could ask, “Am I hurting you?” He walked to the bathroom and back, walked to the window to draw the curtains, with no inhibitions at all, this bulky naked man who so loved his own inadequate bits. I felt he should have had the grace to be even if only fleetingly abashed. “I will do for you what no other man has done for you,” he said, and his lascivious smile repulsed me. As did his post-sex sprawl, legs spread out on my bed as if it were his. Why had I invited this man? Waves of disgust made my skin feel clammy.

If I felt anything it was toward myself and not him: bewilderment, in a frame of self-loathing. How could I have opened my door to this man who I did not want at all and could not possibly have wanted?

I have never mourned not having children, but Aunty Jane’s words brought the cold drip of melancholy at facing the reality that I now almost certainly cannot, at forty-six. It’s possibility I want, doors kept open.

I began to think that I can respect what I do not believe. Belief in ogwu made no sense, this large unwieldy concoction with no logic at its core. But so much else lacks logic. What is the logic of sacrificing to an omniscient God, the point of Jesus dying first before God could save us? Maybe logic is not the point of faith; maybe succor is.

Yes, I have time for Chia. Chia is easy to love, but had she not been, I would have loved her still. Sometimes two humans have spirits fully at rest with each other

It is easy to be sad; sadness is a low-hanging fruit. Hope and happiness you have to reach higher for and I didn’t teach her how.

The male ego is a phenomenon easy to predict.

It took so little for these men, these men who held so much power in the palm of their hands, to dissolve like a cube of sugar in tea, unable to take any criticism at all.

He was re-creating something seen. Suddenly I didn’t want it and I didn’t want him in my bed. What did I want? The imperfection of the real. There were more practiced movements of fingers and tongue. I felt that he was watching himself as his own enraptured audience. I could not peak. I wanted to, if only to make it all less of a colossal waste of time, and then I realized it would be his victory if I did. They do care about pleasing you, but only so they can say, “Wow, look what I did.” An act of self-praise more than an act of giving. A few dramatic moans, I decided, and then I would ask him to stop.

Arrogance in women has the possibility of excitement, because it is subversive, but in men it is always reactionary and therefore boring, especially arrogance of the chivalrous kind, that noblesse oblige of the stronger sex.

And so it ended and we took our hurts with us.

I look at her and think that it isn’t about this particular rape. It is about any rape at all. Ahemen prefers men. In the face of any rape story, she will craft for men the most gorgeous of excuses, and for women her instinct will be distrust.

Slights had always been easy for me to brush aside, as long as I achieved my goal, but something about that moment burrowed deep in the part of me that stored pain. It was the rank stinking power and her rashly righteous use of it, how she chewed my dignity and spit it out just because she could. Speak up! The intent was to make me feel small. People paid so much in visa fees and came here timid with hope, only to be humiliated before hearing a no. If she wanted to, she could say no and still leave their dignity intact. Not

At least he didn’t say, “Have a good day!” with that American cheer so transparently false I wondered why they bothered.

Valid. It yawned across the room in its blandness, valid; it felt like being given a trophy for effort rather than victory, a recognition you did not really deserve. She said it again and again, valid valid valid. It rang disturbingly in my ears like a mosquito

Everything was about exploring; we were all exploring, always exploring, and we could say we didn’t have the answers because we were just exploring, and so we didn’t need to boldly risk coming to clear conclusions. Sunk in the miasma of exploring, we cast off clarity.

It wasn’t even that they felt offended; it was that offended was the only thing they felt. Perfect righteous American liberals. As long as you board their ideology train, your evilness will be overlooked. Champion an approved cause and you win the right to be cruel.

She thought she was resplendent in her righteousness, but she was just a person unable to love. They don’t know how to love, these pious people, and they don’t know love. Even the way they help each other is so cheerless and earnest.

asked them—Can you understand that love and pride complicate? They can implicate as well but first you must see how they complicate. But they can’t see because their hearts lack eyes. Their hearts are blind. They are so dead to human foibles, these Americans of the pious class.

And anyway it would have to be joy as resistance. Or joy as a subversive anti-patriarchy project. Never just joy. As joy.

Well, it isn’t in Nigeria. You Americans need to climb out of your cribs. You think the world is American; you don’t realize that only America is American. To be so provincial and not even know that you are.

sip his drink, and yet also how oddly disarming. His manner felt familiar, almost African: expansive, sensitive to status, heedless and harmless in crossing boundaries.

was I drawing a too simple line? But much of our lives could be explained by drawing simple lines; we inherit our parents’ scars more often than we know.

“You know what we want. You know. Do you want to go to my hotel or I come to yours?” How quickly the delicate threads of promise turn crude and bristly. A pall came over me. Had I given a wrong signal? But how and when? I was flirting and open, not sure where it would end, waiting to see, but he already saw an end and presumably thought I did too. Everything was spoiled.

The point of art is to look at our world and be moved by it, and then to engage in a series of attempts at clearly seeing that world, interpreting it, questioning it. In all these forms of engagement, a kind of purity of purpose must prevail. It cannot be a gimmick, it must at some level be true. Only then can we reach reflection, illumination, and finally, hopefully, epiphany.