The Thing Around Your Neck

Fiction | Short Story Collection | Adult | Published in 2009

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“On Monday of Last Week”Chapter Summaries & Analyses

“On Monday of Last Week” Summary

A Nigerian woman living in the US, Kamara, is working as a housekeeper and nanny for an American family. She looks after the family’s seven-year-old son, Josh, and considers the fad diets and food trends that the father, Neil, follows. Kamara is fascinated by the mother, Tracy, who is Black. Kamara thinks back to when Neil hired her, his desire to have a Black nanny for his biracial child and her feeling she had made a mistake in revealing that she had a master’s degree to him. Neil tells her that Tracy is an artist who works in the basement of the house and that neither she nor Josh should go down to the basement. After getting the job Kamara is put off by the American-ness of the family but admits to herself she is happy to have a job that gets her out of her apartment.

Three months into the job, Kamara still has not met Tracy, seeing her only in the wedding photos in the house and hearing banging from the basement. One day, Tracy appears in the kitchen, and after seeing her, Kamara begins to try to lose weight and wear makeup. She is consumed by the thought of Tracy coming upstairs again. Neil calls while Kamara is looking after Josh, and Kamara lies to him about Josh being in the bathroom; she rejects Neil’s offer to go out with him and Josh, not wanting to be friendly with Neil anymore.

Kamara remembers meeting her husband, Tobechi, at Nsukka University and how they got married quickly because he had an opportunity to go to America. It was six years before he got his green card and was able to send for Kamara to join him. She remembers arriving at the airport in Philadelphia and how Tobechi was different than she remembered him, how he spoke with an American accent mixed into his Igbo. Kamara feels a continued distance from Tobechi in the US, no longer at ease in their relationship the way she was in Nigeria. Kamara desperately wants to be pregnant in order to have a baby to care for. Tobechi doesn’t notice her detachment until the day she sees Tracy, commenting that she seems brighter that day.

Kamara thinks of her first meeting with Tracy, of how Tracy asked her if she had ever been an artist’s model and took her and Josh to the basement to see her painting. Kamara wanted to do anything to stay in the basement with Tracy. Tracy asked her about her name and Nigeria, finally asking if Kamara would model nude for her. Kamara said that she didn’t know and would consider it. A few days later Neil brings Josh back and asks if Josh can have his French lesson while Kamara is there. Kamara agrees and wonders if this is the right time to go pose for Tracy. Then Tracy comes upstairs. Seeing the French teacher, Tracy compliments her and asks if she has ever been an artist’s model. Kamara looks away.

“On Monday of Last Week” Analysis

Kamara’s feelings toward and fascination with Tracy are the central focus of “On Monday of Last Week.” Tracy begins as an unknowable figure to Kamara, an African American woman who spends all day making art in the basement. Kamara’s interest in her is motivated by her curiosity. Tracy’s physical absence furthers this interest, and her off-limits basement is a place that is only open to Kamara’s imagination. When Tracy does properly enter the narrative, her statements to Kamara create a similar backdrop for Kamara’s imagination as the empty space of the basement: Tracy’s question about whether Kamara would pose for her and her assertion that Kamara should be her model give Kamara room for speculation and wonder. In each of their limited interactions, there is the promise of something more, filling Kamara with hope and anticipation about what could happen in the eventual modelling session.

Further exploring the theme of The Immigrant Experience, Kamara’s recent immigration increases her susceptibility to Tracy. Life feels fundamentally different to Kamara in the US than in Nigeria—her problems are different from those of anyone she knows. Kamara has to hide her education, hide her values, and follow ‘Americanisms’ that are confusing and nonsensical to her. She is also isolated; after Neil hires her, she thinks about how “[s]he wanted the job, any job; she wanted a reason to leave the apartment every day” (71). Her feelings toward Tracy emphasize both the lack of female companionship and the lack of romantic and sexual satisfaction in Kamara’s life since leaving Nigeria. When speaking to her friend, “Kamara tried to soothe Chinwe, raged about the useless husband, and then hung up without saying a word about her new life; she could not complain about not having shoes when the person she was talking to had no legs” (77). She can no longer relate to her friends in the same way. Her husband, Tobechi, has also changed to the point that she “wondered if it was even the same Tobechi” (77). Unhappy and alone, Tracy represents the fascinating possibility present in Kamara’s new life, and Tracy embodies all the hopes she had for her new life in America. She had expected to have a fuller, richer life in which she met interesting people unlike any she would ever meet in Nigeria. In this way, Tracy becomes Kamara’s hope of a new chapter in her life. But when Tracy asks the French tutor to model for her, just as she had asked Kamara, Kamara’s hopes are dashed as she realizes there is no new life chapter on the horizon.