by Mbue, Imbolo
“I mean, marriage is good, don’t get me wrong,” Leah went on, as Jende barely listened because he was praying the story was fake and Cindy would be able to tell that someone was out to hurt men like Clark. “They’ve been through a lot, you know. Clark almost died one time—ruptured his appendix so bad it burst; he had to be rushed into emergency surgery. And I think, if I remember clearly, that was the year Mighty was born a preemie. Apparently, Cindy only wanted one child, and they didn’t plan for Mighty—at least that’s what I heard. Though I bet Cindy is thanking her lucky stars she had a second child, now that Vince has run off to India and Mighty’s the only one left … Anyway, the poor thing spent a whole month in the hospital. Clark and Cindy, God bless them, they pulled through together. But that’s marriage, right? He tells me to send her calls to voicemail, but when you see them at company parties, you’d think they’re the happiest couple in—”
“I’m sorry, Leah—” Jende said, looking at the clock and starting the car.
“Some people are real good at covering up their shit, and these people, if you weren’t in my position, you wouldn’t know a thing judging from how they’re laughing and—”
“I’m sorry, Leah,” Jende said again, “I really have to go get Mighty.”
“Oh, sorry, honey!” Leah chimed. “Go on, but promise you’re going to call me and tell me what happens when Cindy finds out. I’m dying to know!”
Jende dismissively promised to do so and quickly hung up, remembering only minutes later that he hadn’t asked her how her job search was going. The last time they’d spoken, Leah had sounded depressed about not getting any calls back after sending out over fifty résumés, but today she’d sounded cheerful, thanks to sordid details about the lives of others. Women and gossip.
But what if Leah wasn’t just making up gossip to pass the time? He called Winston as he drove uptown, hoping to ask him to read the story online and advise him on what he needed to do, but Winston didn’t pick up. He thought about calling Neni but decided it would be useless—what would she say besides something along the lines of what Leah had said?
He needed to decide what he was going to say to Cindy when he picked her up at five. He had to assume she’d read the story. He had to imagine that she would have questions for him as they drove to Lincoln Center, where she was to meet a friend for dinner and the opera. He had to be prepared to assure her again and again that he had never seen Clark with a prostitute, and that was the truth: He had never seen Mr. Edwards with a prostitute with his own eyes. He had to be ready for Cindy to doubt him, but he had to try as hard as he could to convince her that he knew nothing about it and everything he’d written in the blue notebook was the absolute truth.
“Good evening, madam,” he said as he held the car door open for her.
She did not reply. Her countenance was as hard as marble, her eyes covered with sunglasses in the light darkness, her lips pursed so tightly it was unimaginable they had ever broken into a smile.
“Lincoln Center, madam?”
“Take me home.”
“Yes, madam.”
He waited for her questions, but nothing came—not one word during the forty-minute traffic-laden ride to the Sapphire, not even a word on her phone. He imagined she had turned her phone off, and he couldn’t blame her for silencing the world at such a time—her friends were probably trying to reach her to express their shock, tell her how awfully sorry they were, say all manner of things that would do nothing to take away her disgrace. What good would it do her to listen to all that? And if they weren’t calling her, they were calling each other to say, can you believe it? Clark of all people? Poor Cindy must be utterly devastated! But how could he? Do you think the story is true? What’s she going to do now? And they would go on and on, saying the same kind of things his mother’s friends used to say in their kitchen in Limbe when one of their mates’ husbands had been caught atop a spread-eagled woman. In New Town, in New York, the women all seemed to agree that the friend had to find a way to move on, forgetting that the wreckage of so devastating a betrayal cannot easily be cleared away.
As they approached the Sapphire, Jende looked at Cindy in the rearview mirror, hoping she would say something, anything, to open up the opportunity for him to profess his innocence, but she remained silent. He had not anticipated this silence and, even if he had, he wouldn’t have imagined it would be more dread-inducing than the questions.
They got within a block of the Sapphire and still she remained silent, her face fully drawn down and turned toward the window and the cold dark world outside.
“I’m taking you to the office at eleven-thirty tomorrow, madam?” he asked as he pulled in front of the building.
She did not respond.
“I have the book with all the entries for the day, madam,” he said as he held the car door open for her to exit. “I wrote down everything he—”
“Keep it,” she said as she walked away. “I’ve got no use for it anymore.”
Thirty-four
FIRST HE THOUGHT IT WAS JUST A COLD—THE BOY HAD BEEN SNIFFLING ever since they pulled out from in front of the Sapphire. Then he thought Mighty was making playful sounds to amuse himself, so he asked no questions. Most mornings Jende would have asked him how he was feeling, if he was all right, but today his mind was on nothing but the quagmire in which he was wobbling and the adversities that were certain to engulf him if he couldn’t extricate himself from the Edwardses’ marriage and protect his job. He had to talk to Winston as soon as he was alone in the car, get advice on what to say or do, or not say or not do, when he picked up Cindy later in the morning.
“Do you have any tissues?” Mighty asked him at a traffic light.
Jende pulled one out of the glove compartment and turned to give it to him.
“Mighty,” he said, surprised to see a tear running down the boy’s left cheek. “What is wrong? What happened?”
“Nothing,” Mighty whispered, wiping his eyes.
“Oh, no, Mighty, please tell me. Are you okay?”
Mighty nodded.
Jende pulled to the side of the street. They needed to be at the school in ten minutes to avoid being late, but he wasn’t going to let a child go to school crying. His father once did that to him, let him cry all the way to school when he was eight, the day after his grandfather died. He had begged his father to let him stay home for that one day, but his father had refused: Sitting at home and not learning how to read and write is not going to bring your mbamba back, Pa Jonga had said to Jende and his brothers as he left the house with other male relatives to go dig a grave. Jende had begged his mother to let him stay home after his father left, but his mother, never one to disobey her husband, had dried her son’s eyes and told him to go to school. Even now, thirty years later, he still remembered the despondency of that day: wiping his eyes with the hem of his uniform as he walked up Church Street with his mukuta school bag; friends telling him “ashia ya” over and over, which made him cry even more; floundering in grief as he watched his classmates excitedly raise their hands to answer arithmetic questions and tell the teacher who discovered Cameroon (“The Portuguese!”); sitting under the cashew tree during recess, thinking of his mbamba while other boys played football.
He turned off the car and got into the backseat. “Tell me what is wrong, Mighty,” he said. “Please.”
Mighty closed his eyes to squeeze out his tears.
“Did someone say something to you? Is someone bothering you at school?”
“We’re not going anymore …,” Mighty said. “We’re not going to St. Barths.”
“Oh, I am so very sorry to hear that, Mighty. Your mother just told you that?”
He shook his head. “They didn’t tell me. I just … I can tell. I heard everything last night.”
“You heard what?”
“Everything … her screaming … she was crying …” His face was fully red, his nose flaring and unflaring as he struggled to compose himself and handle h
is heartache with as much dignity as a ten-year-old could. “I stood outside their door. I heard Mom crying and Dad saying that … that maybe it was time to stop everything, that he couldn’t play games anymore … and Mom, she was just crying and screaming so loud …”
Jende took the tissue Mighty had in his hand. “Married people fight all the time, Mighty,” he said as he wiped the tears rolling down Mighty’s cheeks. “You know that, right? Just the other night me and Neni, we had a fight, but the next morning we were friends again. You know your mommy and daddy are going to be friends again, right?”
Mighty shook his head.
“I will not worry myself too much if I was you. They will become friends again, I promise you. You will go to St. Barths, and I will hear about all the fun—”
“It’s going to be the worst Christmas ever!”
“Oh, Mighty,” Jende said, pulling the child to his chest. He thought for a moment that someone might see him and call the police—a black man with a white boy against his chest, inside a luxury car, on the side of a street on the Upper East Side—but he hoped no one would, because he wasn’t going to push the child away as his tears ran full force. He was going to let Mighty have a good cry, because sometimes all a person needs to feel better is a really good cry.
“Can I come visit you and Neni this weekend?” Mighty asked, wiping his nose with the back of his hand after he’d finished his cry and Jende had dried his eyes again.
“Me and Neni would be so glad to have you, Mighty. That is a very good idea. But your parents, we cannot lie to them.”
“Please, Jende, just for a little bit?”
“I am sorry, Mighty. I would really like for you to come, but I cannot do something like that.”
“Not even for one hour? Maybe Stacy could come, too?”
Jende shook his head.
Mighty nodded sadly, wiping the last of the fluids on his face.
“But you know what we could do?” Jende said, smiling. “Neni could make you some puff-puff and fried ripe plantains, and I will bring it to you tomorrow. Maybe you can eat some in the car going to school and eat the rest coming back home. Will that make you happy?”
The boy looked up at him, nodded, and smiled.
Thirty-five
THEY NAMED HER AMATIMBA MONYENGI, HOPING IT WAS THEIR DEAD daughter who had returned to bring them happiness: Amatimba for “she has returned” and Monyengi for “happiness,” both in their native Bakweri. They would call her Timba, for short.
She was born on the tenth of December at Harlem Hospital, two blocks from their apartment. On the twelfth of December they walked home from the hospital, father cradling newborn daughter in a carrier, mother holding firstborn son by the hand. In their apartment were their friends, who had come to celebrate with them. Winston was in Houston for the holidays, to continue wooing Maami back, but nine friends were packed in the boiling living room to eat and rejoice and welcome Timba to earth.
“Take as much time off as you need,” Clark said when Jende called to share the news. “Mighty’s going to be on his winter break soon, Cindy is taking some time off work. We’ll be fine.”
“Thank you so much, sir,” Jende replied, unsurprised at his employer’s generosity. “Merry Christmas to you and to Mrs. Edwards.”
Jende called Cindy, too, to personally tell her the news. She did not return his voice message, but Anna stopped by with a box of size-two diapers a couple of days later, which he and Neni assumed was from the Edwardses.
“How can we ever thank Mr. and Mrs. Edwards?” Neni asked him after Anna had cooed to Timba and hurriedly left to avoid missing her train home to Peekskill.
“We can’t ever,” he said. “Let’s just remember to always thank God for them and for everything we have.”
“Truly, we have to,” she said.
The next day a letter from Immigration arrived for him.
On the basis of being admitted to the United States in August of 2004 with authorization to remain for a period not to exceed three months and staying beyond November 2004 without further authorization, it has been charged that he is subject to removal from the United States, the letter said. He was to appear before an immigration judge to show why he should not be removed from the country.
The date was set for the second week of February.
“There’s nothing to worry about, my brother,” Bubakar assured him again when Jende called that evening to discuss the letter. “I have handled cases like this before. I know what to do.”
“What are you going to do?” Jende asked.
“There’s not much to do during this first hearing—it’s only a master calendar hearing. The judge just wants to verify your name, your address, ask us to admit or deny the charge against you; different kinds of protocol things like that. Then he’s going to schedule another date to see you again for who knows when. Like I told you before, my brother, between the backlog in the court and me filing one appeal after another if we need to, we’re going to buy you a whole lot of time in this country.”
How much was all this going to cost? Jende wanted to know. If they had to file appeals, one after another to buy time, how much would they each be?
“It’s going to cost good money, my brother. Immigration is not cheap. You just have to do what you gotta do and pay it. I know my fee is not as cheap as some of those nincompoops who go out there and stammer in front of the judge, but you stick with me and I’ll help you through this, that’s my promise. We are in this together, my brother. Step by step, together, eh?”
Jende called Winston after getting off the phone with Bubakar. He did not know what to do, he told his cousin, whether to continue believing in Bubakar or change course.
“I don’t know, Bo,” Winston said. “I think this man is taking you down a bad road.”
“But he says he has handled many cases like mine. And they all got approved in the end.”
Winston was incredulous. Bubakar, he had decided, was a useless loudmouthed buffoon. A former colleague of his who had left Dustin, Connors, and Solomon to start an immigration law practice had recently told him that asylum applications could not be won with preposterous tales like that of a man running to America because he was afraid his father-in-law was going to kill him.
Who does he think sits in Immigration offices? the former colleague had asked after Winston told him all the pertinent details about Jende’s case. Sure, those folks aren’t the smartest cookies in the can of federal employees, but they’re very intelligent and they’ve heard enough false stories of persecution and seen enough beautiful young women proclaim endless love to ninety-year-old men for the sake of green cards that they can tell a contrived story from one that resembles the truth. And sure, the former colleague had added, asylum has been granted to applicants running away from nothing, but for heaven’s sake, a made-up story should be much better than the laughable crap Bubakar had given Jende. What was also unfathomable about the case, the man went on, was why Jende’s asylum application process took so long. He’d heard of immigration cases disappearing into black holes and applicants waiting months and years for interviews and decisions, but Jende’s was quite extreme, which means either he was one unlucky guy or he had a ridiculously lazy lawyer. Could this former colleague take him on as a client? Jende asked when Winston told him all this. No, was the former colleague’s reply. His specialty was investor visas—helping foreign billionaires and multimillionaires obtain entrance and legal status in America through investment, business development, and trade; more lucrative stuff, you know? Jende’s case, the former colleague had said, was for a much smarter storefront lawyer than Bubakar.
“Why didn’t he use a political asylum story?” Winston asked Jende, a question that would have been more useful at their first meeting with Bubakar. “Isn’t that what most people seeking asylum use? Langaman’s younger brother, the one in Montana, he’s claiming he left pays because Biya was going to put him in Kondengui for challenging him. That paysan never went n
ear a voting booth in pays but he’s now saying he was a member of SDF and submitting evidence of how his friends were beaten and locked up for months and how he, too, could be if he returns to Cameroon. Anyone entering this country can make up any story about what their life was like back in their country. You can say you were a prince, or someone who ran an orphanage, or a political activist, and the average American will say, oh, wow! Heck, I tell ngahs all the time that I was a political activist in Cameroon, when they start asking me things like ‘So, how’s the political situation in Cameroon?’ Instead of thinking up something like that for you, that useless idiot told you to stick to a story about running away from your father-in-law.”
“Winston may be right,” Neni said after Jende told her about their conversation, “but if a river has carried a load halfway downstream, why not let it take it all the way to the ocean?”
Jende agreed. Their fate was in the hands of others—what use would it be to get another opinion and find themselves weighing bleak option against bleak option? They would stay with Bubakar; it was all going to work out. They encouraged each other to be hopeful, to believe that they would one day realize the dream of becoming Americans. But that night they each had nightmares that they told the other nothing of the next morning. Jende dreamed of knocks on the doors and strange men in uniform taking him away from his fainting wife and crying children. Neni dreamed of returning to a largely deserted Limbe, a town devoid of the young and ambitious, scantily populated with those too old, too young, and too feeble to flee to distant lands for the riches that could not be gotten in Limbe. In one dream, she saw herself at the annual canoe race at Down Beach, dancing alone as empty canoes approached the shore. When she woke up, she pulled her sleeping daughter closer to her bosom and kissed her. Timba was going to enter Limbe one day as a proud Cameroonian-American returning to see the land of her ancestors, she told herself. Not as the child of failed asylees tossed out of the country like food that had turned sour.