Behold the Dreamers

by Mbue, Imbolo

  “This is my son, Liomi, Professor,” she said upon arrival for the third meeting, pulling a seat from the adjacent table for Liomi. “I am sorry I have to bring him, but my husband is working, and we have plans after this with my friend.”

  “No, not at all. Hi, Lomein, how are you?”

  Liomi smiled.

  “Open your mouth and talk to the professor,” Neni said.

  “I am fine,” Liomi said.

  “How old are you?” she heard the instructor say as she walked toward the counter to order two cups of hot chocolate. She heard Liomi say six going on seven, then giggle at something the instructor said. By the time she got to the front of the line Liomi and her instructor were chatting like old friends, the instructor drawing something on a notepad and making hand maneuvers which thoroughly amused Liomi.

  “You have children, Professor?” she asked as she set the cups of hot chocolate on the table.

  The instructor shook his head and, with a feeble smile, said, “I wish.”

  “You can borrow mine if you want.”

  “Oh, I’ll take him,” he said. “Just don’t be surprised if I refuse to give him back.”

  “We can make arrangements for that,” she said, smiling as she pulled out her precalculus textbook. She was glad she was feeling more at ease with the instructor, to the extent that she was making jokes. On their first meeting, she’d been immensely uncomfortable spending one-on-one time in a café with a man she barely knew: The whole hour she had mostly nodded while the instructor spoke, scarcely asking questions, because she was afraid of asking a stupid question and embarrassing herself. Before the second meeting, though, she told herself it was no use going downtown if she couldn’t take full advantage of the instructor’s offer and ultimately improve her grade. So, though nervous, she had pushed herself to ask multiple questions, and the instructor had answered even the most stupid of them. By the third meeting—despite still being anxious enough that she’d told Liomi before they entered the café not to say a word to the professor lest he get upset by a child disturbing him and leave—she was feeling far more comfortable, so much that, toward the end of their session, she and the instructor began chatting about where they’d each grown up. The instructor’s father was in the military, she learned, and he’d lived in many parts of America and Europe. Germany was his favorite place to live, he said, because, even as a child, he could tell how much the Germans loved Americans, and it felt great to be loved for his nationality. She wanted to know more about what such a life was like, how wonderful or awful it must have been not to have the same friends for all of his childhood, but she didn’t know which questions were appropriate to ask of an instructor and which ones weren’t, so she told him about her life in Cameroon instead, about how she’d never traveled farther than forty miles from Limbe, laughing at how pathetic it now sounded. He was curious about her pharmacist dreams, but Fatou arrived early, with her two youngest children in tow, to put an end to their conversation.

  “We gonno drop the childrens to play games,” Fatou announced to the instructor as she sat down in Liomi’s seat after Neni had introduced them and sent the kids off to get cookies. “Then we gonno do we eyebrow and we do we nails and we gonno go to all-we-can-eat Chinese restaurant because today is day for mothers and we musto be very, very special.”

  “Ugh,” the instructor said. “Totally forgot about Mother’s Day. I should call my mom and do something nice for her, right?”

  “And you wife,” Fatou said.

  “I’m not married.”

  “Girlfriend?”

  Neni kicked Fatou’s leg under the table.

  “Boyfriend,” the instructor said.

  “Boyfriend?” the women asked in unison.

  The instructor laughed. “I take it you ladies don’t know many men with boyfriends?”

  Fatou shook her head. Neni’s mouth remained ajar.

  “I don’t know no gay man from my country,” Fatou said. “But my village we used to got one man who walk lika woman. He hang his hand for air and shake his derrière very nice when he dance.”

  “That’s funny.”

  “Everybody say he musto be woman inside, but nobody call him gay because he got a wife and childrens. And we no got no word for gay. So, I am happy to meet you!”

  “But I thought you said you like children, Professor,” Neni said, the shock still apparent in her voice.

  “Oh, I love children.”

  “But how can you … I thought …”

  “I’ve always wanted kids. As soon as I’m done with school, my boyfriend and I, we really hope we can adopt.”

  “Take one of my childrens,” Fatou said, giggling. “I got seven.”

  “Seven!”

  Fatou nodded.

  “Wow.”

  “Yes, me, too, I say the same thing every day. Wow, I got seven childrens? Un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq, six, sept, mon Dieu!”

  “How many do you want?” Neni asked the instructor.

  “One or two,” he said, “but definitely not seven.”

  Fatou and the instructor laughed together, but Neni couldn’t find a way to get past her confusion. How could he be gay? Why was he gay? I can’t believe he’s gay, she said to Fatou over and over as they walked toward the subway with their sons.

  “Oh, no, you no musto tell me,” Fatou said. “I see you face when he say it.”

  “It’s just that—”

  “Just that you like tall Porto Rican boy with long hair. I see for you eyes how you like him.”

  “Why does everybody who looks Hispanic have to be Puerto Rican to you?”

  “He like you, you like him.”

  “What are you talking about? I don’t like him.”

  “What you mean, you don’t like him? I see how you look at him when I enter café. You laugh at everything he say, ha, ha, ha, too funny. Ah, oui, Professeur; vraiment, Professeur.”

  “I did not say anything like that!”

  “Then why you lie?”

  “Lie about what?”

  “Why you no tell Jende you gonno meet professeur inside café?”

  “I already told you. I don’t want him to worry.”

  “Worry for what?”

  “Worry about the things men worry about when their wife has a rendezvous on a Sunday afternoon with a young professor. If you were him, would you like it?”

  “I no worry if Ousmane gonno meet anybody … but what if Liomi tell him?”

  “I told Liomi to say I went to study, which is true. What is the difference between me telling Jende I’m going to study versus I’m going to meet my professor to help me with my schoolwork? It all has to do with my school.”

  “Aha,” Fatou said as they descended the stairs to the downtown D train.

  “Aha, what?”

  “That be the same reason why my cousin husband beat her one day back home.”

  “Because she went to meet with her professor?”

  “No, no,” Fatou said, shaking her head and wagging her index finger at Neni. “Because she do what you just do. Husband think she somewhere, then he pass somewhere different and see her drinking beer with other man. Husband drag her back to house and beat her well. He say, why you gonno disgrace me, lie to me, and then go sit drink beer with other man? She say, oh, no, he just my friend, but husband say, then why you lie to me?”

  “So what did your cousin do?”

  “What she gonno do? She do stupid thing, husband beat her. That all. She learn lesson, marriage continue, everybody happy.”

  Thirteen

  THOUGH HE LOVED NEW YORK CITY, EVERY WINTER HE TOLD HIMSELF HE was going to leave it for another American city as soon as he got his papers. The city was great, but why spend four months of the year shivering like a wet chicken? Why go around wearing layers upon layers of clothing like the madmen and -women who roamed the streets of New Town, Limbe? If Bubakar hadn’t cautioned him that it was best he remained in the city (it might complicate matters if they trie
d to move his case to another jurisdiction, the lawyer had said), Jende would have been long gone, because there was no reason why a man should willfully spend so many days of his life in a cold, costly, congested place. His friends, Arkamo in Phoenix and Sapeur in Houston, agreed with him. They begged him to move to their warm, inexpensive cities. You come over here, Arkamo told him, and you’ll taste real American enjoyment. Life in Houston, Sapeur said, is sweeter than sugarcane juice. At least half a dozen times every winter, they told him he would forget all about that worwor New York the moment he arrived at their city’s airport and strolled on its clean streets and moved around freely in February without a winter jacket. So convincing were they that on the coldest days of the winter, he and Neni Googled Phoenix and Houston to learn more about the cities. They looked at the pictures Arkamo and Sapeur sent of their spacious houses and gargantuan SUVs and, try as he might, Jende found it impossible to not envy them. These boys, and others he knew in those cities, came from Limbe around the same time as him. They made the same kind of money he made (or less, working as certified nursing assistants or stockroom associates at department stores), and yet they were buying houses—three-bedroom ranch-style houses; four-bedroom townhouses with backyards where their children played and where they hosted Fourth of July barbecues teeming with grilled corn and soya. Arkamo told Jende how easy it was to get a mortgage these days, and promised that as soon as Jende was ready, he would connect him with a loan officer who could get him a zero-down-payment mortgage on a sweet mini-mansion. It all sounded wonderful to Jende (one of the many things that made America a truly great country), but he knew such an option wouldn’t be available to him without papers. Arkamo and Sapeur already had papers—Arkamo through a sister who became a citizen and filed for him; Sapeur through marrying an American single mother he met when he showed up at a nightclub dressed in a three-piece orange suit and red fedora. They could afford to get high-interest loans that would take thirty or more years to pay off because they were green card holders. Jende would buy a nice house in one of those cities, too, if he had papers. As soon as he could, he would move, most likely to Phoenix, where Arkamo lived in a gated community. There would be no more freezing days for him; no more mornings of vapor spewing out of his open mouth as if he were a kettle of boiling water. Neni had her dreams of a condo in Yonkers or New Rochelle because she didn’t want to leave her friends, and she loved New York too much, cold or warm, but he knew he would leave behind the city and its hopeless predicaments if he weren’t stuck in an immigration purgatory.

  Every winter, he was certain of this.

  But then the spring came, and his dreams of Phoenix evaporated like the dew in Marcus Garvey Park. He couldn’t imagine a city more beautiful, more delightful, more perfect for him than New York. Once the temperature rose above fifty-five, it was as if the city had awakened from a deep slumber and the buildings and trees and statues were singing as one. Heavy black jackets flew away and colorful clothes rushed in. All over Manhattan, people seemed on the verge of a song or a dance. No longer pressed down by the cold air, their shoulders opened up and their arms flung freely and their smiles shone brightly because they felt no need to cover their mouths while talking. Sad, Jende often thought, how winter takes away so many of life’s ordinary pleasures.

  On the third Thursday in May—as he was driving Cindy across Fifty-seventh Street to lunch with her best friends, Cheri and June, at Nougatine—he noticed that virtually everyone on the street seemed happy. Maybe they weren’t truly happy, but they looked happy, some practically sprinting in the warmth of the day, delighted to be comfortable again. He was happy, too. It was almost seventy degrees and, as soon as he dropped Cindy off, he was going to take the car to a garage, pay for parking with his own money, and rush into Central Park to breathe in some fresh air. He’d sit on the grass, read a newspaper, have his lunch by a lake or pond, and—

  His cell phone rang.

  “Madam, I am so … so very sorry, madam,” he said to Cindy, realizing he’d forgotten to turn it off. He searched frantically in his jacket pocket, scolding himself as he pulled it out. “I swear I turned it off this morning, madam. I was sure I turned it off right before—”

  “You can get it,” Cindy said.

  “It’s okay, madam,” he said, looking at the phone and quickly pressing the side button to silence it. “It’s only my brother calling me from Cameroon.”

  “No problem, take it.”

  “Okay, thank you, madam, thank you,” he said, fidgeting with his earpiece to pick up before his brother hung up.

  “Tanga, Tanga,” he said to his brother, “I beg, I no fit talk right now … Madam dey for inside motor … Wetin? … Eh? … No, I no get money … I don tell you say things them tight … I no get nothing … I beg, make I call you back … Madam dey for inside motor. I beg, I get for go.”

  He sighed after hanging up, and shook his head.

  “Everything’s okay, I hope?” Cindy asked, picking up her phone to start typing.

  “Yes, madam, everything is okay. I am sorry I disturbed you with the noise. It will not happen again, I promise you. That was just my brother calling with his own troubles.”

  “You seem upset. Is he all right?”

  “Yes, madam, nothing too big. They drove his children away from school because they have not paid their school fees. They have not gone to school for one week now. That is why he is calling me, to send him the money. He is calling me over and over, every day.”

  Cindy said nothing. Jende’s voice had come out cloaked in such helplessness that she probably thought it best to ask no more questions, figured it would be better to let him ponder how to help his brother. She continued typing a message on her cell phone and, after putting the phone away, looked up at him and said, “That’s a shame.”

  “It is shameful, madam. My brother, he went ahead and had five children when he does not have money to take care of them. Now I have to find a way to send him the money, but I myself, I don’t even …” He made a right turn, and she asked him no more questions. For the next two minutes they drove in silence, as they did ninety percent of the time when she wasn’t on her cell phone with a client or a friend.

  “But that’s not right,” she said, her voice suddenly hollow. “Children should never have to suffer because of their parents.”

  “No, madam.”

  “It’s never the child’s fault.”

  “Never, madam.”

  She was silent again as they neared Central Park West. He heard her open her purse, unzip and zip at least one pocket, before taking out her lipstick and compact foundation.

  “I’m sure it’s going to work out for the kids,” she said, reapplying her lipstick and puckering her lips in the compact’s mirror as he pulled up in front of the restaurant. “Something’s going to work out one way or another.”

  “Thank you, madam,” he said. “I will try my best.”

  “Of course,” she said, as if she didn’t believe for a second that he had a best to try.

  When he came around to open the door for her, she reminded him to pick her up in two hours and then, without prelude, pulled out a check from the front pocket of her purse and handed it to him.

  “Let’s keep this between ourselves, okay?” she whispered, moving her mouth close to his ear. “I don’t want people thinking I’m in the habit of giving out money to help their families.”

  “Oh, Papa God, madam!”

  “You can go cash it and send it to your brother while I’m eating. I’d hate to see those poor children miss another day of school because of a little money.”

  “I … I do not even know what to say, madam! Thank you so much! I just … I’m so … I’m just very … My brother, my whole family, we thank you so much, madam!”

  She smiled and walked away, leaving him on the curb with his mouth half open. After she’d climbed the steps and entered the restaurant, he opened the check and looked at the sum. Five hundred dollars. He reentered the car an
d looked at the sum again. Five hundred dollars? May God bless Mrs. Edwards! But his brother had asked for three hundred. Was he to send the whole check because Mrs. Edwards had demanded so? He called Neni, to tell her the story and get her opinion, but she didn’t pick up—she was probably in her school library with her phone on silent, studying for her finals. He didn’t want to wait until he got home to discuss it with her because Mrs. Edwards had asked him to send the money today, and he had to do as he’d been told. His years on earth had taught him that good things happen to those who honor the kindheartedness of others. So, after parking the car, instead of going to Central Park, he half-ran to a Chase branch across from Lincoln Center, cashed the check, and began walking north along Broadway. He stayed on the east side of the street, rushing and sweating under the immaculate sky, forgetting to enjoy his favorite kind of weather because he was too focused on finding a Western Union and getting back to Mrs. Edwards on time. Somewhere in the mid-Seventies, he found one and sent his brother the three hundred dollars the children needed. He’d debated the right thing to do as he filled out the Western Union form, and decided it wouldn’t be right to send the full sum Mrs. Edwards had given. He knew his brother too well. He knew Tanga was most likely going to spend the balance on either gifts for a new girlfriend or new pairs of leather shoes for himself, this while his children went to school with rubber shoes held together with twine. Enabling his brother to do such a thing would never be fair to Mrs. Edwards. Besides, it was better he saved the two hundred dollars, because, in another month or two, a brother or cousin or in-law or friend was going to call saying that money was needed for hospital bills or new school uniforms or baptism clothes or private French classes, since every child in Limbe had to be bilingual now that the government had declared that the next generation of Cameroonians had to be fluent in both English and French. Someone back home would always need something from him; a month never went by without at least one phone call asking him for money.