Behold the Dreamers

by Mbue, Imbolo

  “Well, Jende,” she said. “Think about your pregnant wife and your new baby. Think about your family and your situation. Think very carefully, and let me know if you’d like to have a job to support them.”

  She stood up, wished him a good night, and walked out of the room.

  Thirty

  HE RETURNED HOME EARLY THAT EVENING, AROUND EIGHT O’CLOCK, TO find Winston eating kwacoco and banga soup at the table. Two blue enamel serving bowls were on the table—one bowl containing ten-inch-long sticks of grated and boiled cocoyams, the other holding palm nut soup with pieces of smoked turkey neck peeking from beneath the oil swimming on top. There was a plate of snails, too, fried in tomato, onions, cilantro, and shiitake mushrooms.

  “You’ll never guess who I’m going to see next weekend,” Winston said as Jende washed his hands to join him at the table while Neni set up another plate.

  “Maami?” Jende asked.

  “How did you guess?”

  “As if I only met you today. What other woman will make your eyes sparkle like that?”

  Winston smiled. “I found her on Facebook,” he said.

  “Facebook?” Jende said. “This Facebook thing is something else, eh? Neni, didn’t you just find your cousin who moved to Checko, Checkslo … some country over there?”

  Neni nodded on the sofa, without taking her eyes off her Oprah magazine. “He doesn’t call home or send his mother money,” she said, “but the mbutuku has time to show the whole world pictures of his new shoes and clothes on Facebook.”

  “I’m telling you it’s something else, this Facebook wahala,” Winston said. “I join the thing for one minute, I see one friend from BHS, connect to another friend, before I know I’m looking at Maami’s picture, her makandi still as manyaka ma lambo as it was in high school. Kai!” He clapped his hands and spread them to show the full width of the buttocks. “That same night I call her, we talk till two o’clock in the morning.”

  “She’s not married?”

  “She says she has a boyfriend, a little white thing down there in Texas. We’ll see about that when she sees me with her two eyes again.”

  Jende chuckled with his mouth full. “When you see her,” he said after he’d swallowed, “just ask her to compare the snakes. Whoever has the longer one that can glide in and out fastest, wins.”

  “Jende!” Neni said, widening her eyes and motioning with her lips toward Liomi.

  “Uncle has a snake?” Liomi asked, turning from the TV.

  “Yes,” Winston said, laughing, “and you’re not allowed to see it.”

  “But Uncle—”

  “Stop asking stupid questions to grown people and go do your homework,” Jende yelled.

  “Don’t shout at him because of that,” Neni retorted after Liomi had gone into the bedroom. “You guys are the ones who started it.”

  “Then he should have closed his ears.”

  “Why should he close his ears?”

  “Because children—”

  “Married people!” Winston exclaimed, throwing his oily hands up. “Stop with your bickering before I swear off marriage forever. I’m begging you!”

  Neni gave Jende a dirty look and returned to her magazine.

  “How bolo, Bo?” Winston asked Jende.

  “Condition is critical,” Jende said, before recounting the story of his meeting with Cindy.

  Neni put her magazine down to listen. “You have to tell her what you know,” she said after Jende was done telling the story. Her hand was on her belly, her swollen feet on a stool. “I believe it’s my right to know everything about you. It’s her right to know everything about her husband, too.”

  Winston nodded as he ripped the skin and meat off a piece of turkey neck.

  “Ah, you women,” Jende said. “You worry too much. Why do you want to know all of a man’s business, eh? I don’t want to know all of your business. Sometimes I hear you talking to your friends on the phone and I don’t even want to hear what you’re saying to them.”

  “Well, that’s you,” Neni said. “It doesn’t mean it’s the same for everyone. I don’t want to know where you went and who you saw every day and all that but some wives want to know. Some husbands want to know, too. That is okay by me.”

  “So you don’t mind if I start asking your friends about you?”

  “If you want to call my friends right now and ask them something about me, you can call them. My hands are clean. There is nothing my friends are going to tell you that is different from who you think I am.”

  “Eh, truly?”

  “What do you mean, ‘Eh, truly’?”

  “I mean, if I ask your friends they won’t tell me that you’ve been doing dirty things with one of those African-American men on the street with pants falling down their legs?” he said, winking at her.

  Winston laughed.

  “New Yorkers, come and hear something!” Neni said, raising her hands. “Why would I ever do that? Why would I take one of the ones with no job and five baby mamas? I beg, oh. If I ever want to try something new, I’ll find me a nice old white man with lots of money and an oxygen tank.”

  “Not a bad idea,” Winston said. “We could all split his money when he goes.” Neni and Winston cackled together and gave each other an air high-five.

  “But seriously,” Jende said, “women have to learn to be more trusting. They have to trust their husbands that they know what they’re doing.”

  “I have to agree with Neni, Bo,” Winston said. “You have to tell her.”

  “Have you guys been drinking kwacha? I cannot ever say anything about what he does. To anyone! I don’t have any business talking about him. I signed a contract when he hired me. You remember?”

  “Yes,” Neni said, standing up to clear the table. “So?”

  “The contract said I cannot discuss anything about him with anybody, even his wife.”

  “Forget the contract,” Winston said.

  “Ah, Bo, how can you say that when you’re a lawyer? How can you tell me to do something that you know can make me lose my job?”

  “But what are you afraid of telling her?” Neni asked, walking back from the kitchen. “Do you know something that he’s hiding from her?”

  Jende did not reply; he’d wanted to tell her for a long time.

  When he first found out about the women, he’d thought it would be nice for her to know so they could gossip about it late at night, laugh about Mr. Edwards booking an appointment with a tall woman or a blond woman. Whenever he dropped Mr. Edwards at the Chelsea Hotel, he would tell her about it and they would laugh, and she would be grateful that he would never do such a thing because he was a good man, an honorable man, a man of integrity. But the more he thought about it, the more he realized how differently it could play out if he told her. She might become suspicious, even anxious. She would think: What if Mr. Edwards offered him a prostitute, too, as some sort of gift or bonus? What if Mr. Edwards indoctrinated him, contaminated him, made him feel as if it was every man’s God-given right to satisfy himself as often as he needed to? He could see her becoming needlessly terrified, especially now that her face had grown fat, her legs had grown fat, and her whole body looked like it would be fat for years to come. Which didn’t bother him. Didn’t bother him at all. But he knew that she thought he cared, which was why she bought all those magazines with skinny women on the cover and made sure she didn’t put too much palm oil in the food. Now she was talking about weight loss and calories and cholesterol and sugar-free this and fat-free that and stupid things no one in Limbe talked about. Now she was beginning to worry about nonsense. She was becoming a fearful wife.

  He loved her so much (he wouldn’t have traded her even for an American passport), but he could understand why she was afraid. He was the only man she’d ever loved, just like her father was the only man her mother had ever loved. And then what happened? Twenty-four years into their marriage, the year after her father lost his job at the seaport, her mother found out th
at her father had impregnated a teenager who lived in Portor-Portor Quarters. Her mother had been humiliated; Neni had been humiliated more than her mother, if such a thing were possible. Her mother had caught her crying and yelled at her. Wipe those tears, she’d said. Men are ruled by a thing they cannot control. Neni had wanted to yell back at her mother and tell her to stop justifying her husband acting as if his unhappiness was everyone’s fault. She’d wanted to scream at her for staying married to an angry man who scolded her in front of her children, but she knew that with only a part-time secretarial job and eight children, her mother would struggle to start a new life. So she had dried her eyes and decided on that day that there was one thing she wanted in a man above all else: loyalty. And that was the one thing Jende was best at, above all other men she’d ever known: keeping his promises.

  “Do you know something?” she asked him again.

  “Why would he share his secret with me?” he said to her. “I’m his driver, not his friend.”

  “Then so?” she said. “Tell her. I wouldn’t try to anger Mrs. Edwards if I were you.”

  “I agree with Neni,” Winston said. He was now sitting on the sofa with Neni, while Jende sat alone at the table. “The moment Neni told us about the woman and her drugs, I knew something was not right with her.”

  “That doesn’t mean—”

  “That means that, Bo, this woman can make you lose your job.”

  “Rubbish!”

  “It’s not rubbish, Jends.”

  “Women can be very determined,” Winston said. “If you don’t give her what she wants, you could lose your job. He hired you, but she can fire you, I’m telling you.”

  “But what am I supposed to do about that?” Jende said. “Why can’t she ask her own husband what she’s concerned about?”

  “Who knows what kind of marriage they have? The kinds of marriage people have in this country, Bo, very strange. It’s not like back home where a man can do as he sees fit and a woman follows him. Over here it’s reversed. Women tell their men what they want and the men do it, because they say happy wife, happy life. This society is funny.”

  “So what do you think I should do?” Jende asked Winston.

  Winston looked at his cousin intently and scowled. “I just thought of something,” he said, crossing his legs and folding his arms.

  “What?” Jende asked.

  Winston uncrossed his legs, stood up, and untucked his shirt. “This house,” he said, “it’s so hot someone can fry puff-puff in the air.” He walked over to the window and cracked it open by two inches. “You guys should leave this window—”

  “Forget about the window and come tell us something useful!” Neni said.

  “Okay, okay, here’s what I’m thinking,” he said, beaming as he walked back to the sofa and sat next to Neni, loosening his tie in the process. “This is what you should do … but you have to do it without any worrying about if something goes wrong.”

  “This one?” Neni said after a scoff. “His worrying is something else. Just tell us. If he cannot do it, I’ll do it.”

  “No, he has to do it himself.”

  Jende nodded.

  Winston sat up and leaned forward.

  “This is what you do,” he said, looking at Jende. “You go up to the woman. Not tomorrow. Maybe in two days’ time, so she knows you’ve had time to think about it, eh?”

  Jende nodded again.

  “You see her and you look her right in the eye. Don’t do that thing where you’re talking and avoiding people’s eyes, acting like a mbutuku, because you’re afraid.”

  “Can you just tell me the idea already?”

  “You say to her, ‘Madam, I thought about what you want and I understand. But I’m sorry, madam, I cannot do it.’” Here Winston opened his arms and shrugged. Then he creased his brow. “She’s going to say, ‘How dare you, this is the end of you, no more job.’ And then you look at her right inside her eyes and say, ‘Madam, I don’t want to hurt you, but you fire me, I tell everyone about the drugs.’”

  “What!” Jende exclaimed.

  “Mamami eh, Winston!” Neni said, high-fiving Winston.

  “Are you guys crazy?”

  “You want to keep your job or not?”

  “I want to keep my job, but—”

  “But what?” Neni said.

  “I’m not going to do this to a poor woman who looks like she has so much of her own troubles. I mean, you guys are sitting here talking as if she’s just a stranger on the street to me.”

  “She’s nothing to you!” Neni said. “You think tomorrow you lose your job, she’ll remember your name?”

  “You’re just a black man who drives her around,” Winston said. “I’m telling you, Bo, if you know the things I know about this kind of white people, you wouldn’t worry about her.”

  “I’m not worried about her!” Jende said. A line of sweat ran down the right side of his face. “You guys think I’m stupid? I know I’m only a chauffeur. But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t feel sorry for her. I mean, I was looking at her as she spoke to me today, and tears filled my eyes.”

  “Eh?” Neni said, raising the left side of her upper lip. “So you’re sorry for her, eh? You know what, bébé? If she decides you’re going to lose your job, guess whose eyes are going to fill up with tears? Mine!”

  “Mr. Edwards will never fire me because of his wife.”

  “I hope so,” Winston said, looking at his cell phone.

  “He’ll never do it. He’s not that kind of a man.”

  “Don’t trust another man like that, Bo. People have many different colors.”

  “Let’s leave the topic alone, please. I’ll handle it right. I won’t lose my job.”

  Neni pursed her lips, muttered something under her breath, and leaned back with her arms folded.

  “Have I showed you guys Maami’s picture?” Winston asked. He picked up his iPhone and tapped on it a few times to bring up a picture of his high school girlfriend, a pretty painted face with a long weave and plentiful cleavage. He showed it to Neni, who nodded and passed on the phone to Jende, who, knowing Neni’s eyes were on him, carelessly acknowledged that Maami would make a very fine Mrs. Winston Avera.

  “You have to do what Winston says,” Neni said, her arms still folded over her high belly. “The only way you can escape this is to shut her up, because if you tell her something Mr. Edwards doesn’t want her to know, Mr. Edwards will fire you for breaking the contract. If she ever finds out you knew something and didn’t tell her, she’ll fire you for lying to her. She won’t care if you have a family or if—”

  “Neni, please! Let me rest, I’m begging you. My head is aching, okay?”

  “My head is aching, too, okay? I don’t like this situation at all. I know Mrs. Edwards. I know what kind of woman she is. She looks like she is weak, but she gets what she wants from people, one way or another. You cannot make any mistake with your job right now, let me tell you. One little mistake, you lose your job at a time when—”

  “You think I don’t know that!”

  “Everyone calm down,” Winston said. “And Bo, please, don’t talk to our woman like that. Not especially when she’s carrying our fine American baby.”

  “Maybe a woman carrying a baby should know when to stop talking.”

  Neni looked at Jende from head to toe, her momentary disdain unconcealed. She sat up and started lifting herself off the sofa. Winston stood up and pulled her to her feet.

  “Put some sense into that coconut head of his,” she said to Winston. “Because if I say one more thing to him, I swear to you, my mouth will start bleeding like a slaughtered cow’s.”

  Jende and Winston chuckled as Neni bade Winston good night and waddled into the bedroom.

  “How did I get myself involved in other people’s married business like this?” Jende asked Winston after Neni had closed the bedroom door. “This one is beyond me.”

  “Women can be very tricky,” Winston said. “If yo
u don’t give her what she wants, she’ll go to him and make up a story about you so that he’ll do away with you.”

  “Then I’ll become like Joseph in Egypt.”

  “Yes, you’ll be like Joseph in Egypt. But instead of solving a dream about seven years of plenty and seven years of famine, you’ll be living in seven years of hardship.”

  Thirty-one

  ON THE MORNING OF HIS THIRTY-EIGHTH BIRTHDAY, HE STOOD OUTSIDE the car and held the back door open for Clark Edwards, as he did every workday morning. He was dressed in a suit Neni had bought for him at Target as his birthday gift, a gray wool ensemble that he paired with a white shirt and red clip-on tie and completed with a pair of brown dress shoes. Earlier that morning, as he’d stood in front of the mirror admiring himself, Neni had walked into the bedroom and told him he looked more handsome than ever, and he had agreed, giving her a long thank-you kiss.

  “Today is my birthday, sir,” he told Clark.

  “Happy birthday, then,” Clark replied without taking his eyes off his laptop, which was booting up. “I won’t ask how old you are.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Jende replied, smiling. While they waited for the light to turn green at Park and Seventieth, he pondered how best to bring up the topic.

  “I know this is a very busy time for you, sir,” he said, “but there is something I wanted to discuss with you.”

  “Go on,” Clark said, still not lifting his eyes from the laptop.

  “It is about Mrs. Edwards, sir.”

  Clark continued looking at his laptop. “What about her?”

  “Sir, I think she wants to know where you go to. And who you see. And all those kinds of things, sir. She wants me to tell her about what I see you doing.”

  Clark looked at Jende in the rearview mirror. “Really?”

  Jende nodded. “I do not know what to do, sir. That is why I am asking you.”

  He wanted to turn around to see the reaction on Clark’s face—rage? disappointment? frustration?—but he couldn’t; he could only catch a glimpse of the boss’s eyes in the mirror.

  “Tell her what she wants to know,” Clark said.