Behold the Dreamers

by Mbue, Imbolo

  And Liomi was going to become a real American one day, she whispered in the darkness. He had taken so well to America, hardly missing anyone or anything in Limbe. He was happy to be in New York, excited to walk on overcrowded streets and be bombarded by endless noise. He spoke like an American and was so knowledgeable in baseball and all the state capitals that no one who came across him would believe he was not an American but a barely legal immigrant child, a mostly illegal one, in fact, whose future in the country rested on a judge believing his father’s incredible story of fleeing persecution. They could never take him back to Limbe. If they took him back he might no longer be the happy child he is and was before coming to America. He might become angry, disappointed and hostile, forever resentful toward his parents.

  On the second night after they received the letter, Neni spent most of the hours staring into the darkness, unable to stop thinking these things. The next morning, as she ironed her children’s clothes, she sang the hymns the churchgoing people of Limbe sang when life gave them no answers to their questions. She sang a song about having a very big God who was always by her side and another about Jesus never failing even though the man of the world would let her down. Singing the songs reminded her of the times she had visited a church in Limbe and left feeling better, happy and unburdened, because for two hours she had been surrounded by joyful people who believed their circumstances were about to change because an omnipotent Being was in control. During Timba’s naps, she searched the Internet for a nearby church to visit. There were many to pick from, most professing acceptance of anyone with any kind of belief, all seemingly just eager to fill up their pews. She decided to go downtown to a church in Greenwich Village called Judson Memorial Church, a brown building facing Washington Square Park, because she enjoyed the street music in the Village and loved the fountain at the center of the park, where she’d taken Liomi to play the past June.

  The Sunday before Christmas, while Jende was working, she and the children went to the church. Her mother had warned her not to take the baby too far out of the house before she was three months old, but Neni ignored the advice. She bundled Timba in her carrier and took Liomi by the hand, from the 3 subway to the A. When she got to the West Fourth station, she got out and trudged through Greenwich Village. She walked rapidly, breathing out light clouds in the chilly December morning, eager to get to this place of prayer where she could find respite.

  When she got there, she was disappointed in what she saw. Instead of a house of worship filled with a youthful diverse crowd of New Yorkers rocking and jiving and saying “Amen!,” the vast pewless room was full of middle-aged white people, not rocking and not jiving but rather singing hymns without the slightest attempt to shake their bodies and cast off their cares and sorrows the way the churchgoers of Limbe did every Sunday morning. Avoiding stares, Neni settled in a seat at the back, the baby still in the carrier, Liomi quiet by her side. The pastor was a woman with long gray hair and red-framed glasses who preached about some kind of coming revolution, a message Neni neither understood nor found applicable to her current situation.

  After the service, the pastor came to her and introduced herself as Natasha. Other congregants came over, too, to greet her and to admire Timba sleeping in the carrier. One man said he had worked in Cameroon many years before as a Peace Corps volunteer, far up in the northern region of Adamawa. Neni raised her eyebrows and smiled, surprised and excited to meet someone who had been to her country in a place like that. Though she’d never been to the Adamawa region, she felt as if she’d just reconnected with a long-lost childhood friend.

  “I can’t believe you have been to my country,” she said to the man as she handed her completed visitor information card to an usher. “Some people I meet in America don’t even know there is a country called Cameroon.”

  The man laughed. Yeah, he said, Americans were not renowned for their knowledge of African geography. He even knew of Limbe, he added, though he’d never been there. He wished he’d gone there to sit on its black sand beaches.

  “Everyone was so happy to welcome us,” Neni told Jende that night.

  “Maybe because they don’t have black people there, and they want to have a black family,” Jende retorted. “Those kind of white people are always trying to prove to their friends how much they like black people.”

  “I don’t care,” Neni said. “I like the place. I’m going to go back.”

  “What for? You didn’t even go to church in Limbe. You’re not baptized in any church.”

  “So what if I’m not baptized? Didn’t I use to come with you to Mizpah for Christmas and Easter? And didn’t I sometimes go to the Full Gospel near our house?”

  “That doesn’t mean you were a church kind of person.”

  “Then I’m going to become a church kind of person now. I think it’s good for us to start going to church at a time like this. I was watching on the news the other day about this family that was supposed to be deported and they ran to a church. The church people let them stay in the church—the government could not touch them there.”

  Jende shook his head and let out a short derisive laugh. “So you think that’s what we’re going to do, eh?” he asked. “What kind of stupid idea is that? I’m not going to hide in any church. How long did the people stay in the church?”

  “I don’t know. How am I supposed to know?”

  “You’re the one who thinks it’s a good idea. Why would I do such a thing? A grown man like me, hiding in a church? For what?”

  “For what?” she said. “You want to know for what, Jende? For your children! That’s what for. So your children can continue living in America!”

  She stood up from the sofa as she spoke and took a seat at the dinette, irritated by his declaration and not wanting to sit next to him anymore. He seemed taken aback by her sudden anger, infuriated that she dare challenge him on the matter.

  “You think I don’t care about my children?” he asked her. “You think I won’t do anything for us to stay in America?”

  “No!” she said, jumping up from the chair and pointing her index finger directly at him. “I don’t think you will fight till the end for us to remain here. I think when the time comes, you’ll give up, because you care too much about your pride. But I’ll do whatever I need to do for us to stay in America! I’ll go sleep on a church floor, no matter if I have …” She ran to the bedroom and sat on the bed, next to her sleeping daughter.

  “What are you crying for?” he said, having followed her and looking angrily at her from the bedroom doorway. “What are those stupid tears for, Neni?”

  She ignored him.

  “You think I don’t want to remain in America, too? You think I came to America so that I can leave? I work as a servant to people, driving them all over, the whole day, sometimes the whole week, answering yes sir, yes madam, bowing down even to a little child. For what, Neni? What pride are you talking about? I lower myself more than many men would ever lower themselves. What do you think I do it for? For you, for me. Because I want us to stay in America! But if America says they don’t want us in their country, you think I’m going to keep on begging them for the rest of my life? You think I’m going to sleep in a church? Never. Not for one day. You can go and sleep on the church floor all you want. The day you get tired, you can come and meet me and the children in Limbe. Nonsense!”

  He slammed the door behind him and left her whimpering in the bedroom.

  Alone in the darkness she cried herself to sleep, Timba on her bosom, Liomi in the cot beside the bed. When she woke up early the next morning, Jende was in the living room, sleeping on the sofa.

  Thirty-six

  CHRISTMAS WAS THREE DAYS AWAY AND THE DARKNESS THAT HAD FALLEN upon the city appeared to be on hiatus, outshone by the radiance of lighted trees at Rockefeller and Lincoln centers and the mesmerizing displays in shops along Fifth Avenue. Throughout the boroughs, there were steady, if faint, glimmers of hope shining through the windows of apartment
s where people lived with the belief that the good times would soon return. Even the despondent willed themselves to the streets, to hear something or see someone or go someplace that would remind them that Christmastime was here, springtime was ahead, and in no time it would be summer in New York City again.

  “Welcome and a very merry Christmas to you,” the pastor Natasha wrote in an email to Neni. “I’m so glad you were able to stop by at Judson, and I’d so love to get a chance to know you more. Please schedule a time to come to the office for a little chat.”

  Neni scheduled the meeting for the next day and told Jende nothing of it.

  In the church office, she met the assistant pastor, a redheaded and bearded young man from New Hampshire named Amos. He told Neni he used to be a Buddhist monk before deciding that progressive liberal Christianity was more aligned with his beliefs than Buddhism. Neni was curious about the difference between the two but thought it wise not to ask—asking might lay bare her ignorance about religion and spiritual matters and expose her true motive for coming to the church.

  In private, the pastor Natasha was a more subdued woman than the fiery preacher who had stood at the pulpit and spoken about the need for a revolution that would shake the country to its core. Her mid-back-length gray hair was straight and side-parted, and Neni couldn’t help admiring her courage in growing her gray hair long, and for leaving it gray in a city where there was no shortage of salons eager to rescue middle-aged women from grayness. There were framed pictures of happy families on the bookshelves in her office, families of all kinds: two fathers and a baby; two mothers and a toddler; an old man and an old woman and a dog; a young man and a young woman and a newborn. Natasha told Neni they were all congregants in the church. She asked Neni about her family and what brought her to Judson. I think I want to become a Christian, Neni responded, to which Natasha replied that she did not need to become a Christian to join the Judson family. Neni was relieved, though she still wanted to become a baptized Christian—what if the people at the Full Gospel Church near her house in Limbe were right about heaven and hell? She wanted to be on the safe side so she could get into heaven if it ended up being real. Her family didn’t go to church (except for a brief period after her father lost his seaport job), but she believed there was a God with a son named Jesus, though she had a hard time believing that people speaking in tongues were truly possessed by some Spirit. You can believe whatever you want, and we’ll accept you here, Natasha told her. We take everyone. From anywhere. We don’t care if you believe in heaven and hell and pearly gates. We don’t even care if you believe that the best way to get to heaven is by subway or Metro-North or LIRR, she added, which made Neni laugh.

  Over tea, they spoke about motherhood and marriage. So open was their conversation about the sacrifice of dreams in parenthood and the loss of self in marriage that Neni went further than she thought she would and told Natasha about Jende’s deportation case. She told her about their argument on Sunday and the shame she would experience if she had to return to Limbe; the sense of failure she might never escape for not having given her children a good life, a life full of opportunities, the kind of life that would be all but impossible for them to have in Cameroon. Natasha listened and nodded, allowing the stricken woman to release months’ worth of tears. She offered Neni a tissue and took Timba when—perhaps sensing her mother’s distress—the baby began to cry, too.

  “The American immigration system can be cruel,” she told Neni, rubbing her knee, “but Judson will stand and fight with you. We will stand with you till the end.”

  Neni Jonga walked out of Judson and into Washington Square Park that afternoon with the lightness of a beautifully crafted kite. There was a man playing a flute on a bench, and a young woman in a black down jacket playing a violin. She smiled as she walked through the park listening to them—she hadn’t realized until then how divine classical music was. On the other side of the park, beneath the arch, a group of young people held placards, chanting and protesting the bailout. Bail us out, not our oppressors! Why are you using our taxes to destroy us? Death to Wall Street! Paulson the Antichrist!

  Neni stood by the empty fountain and watched them, admiring their passion for their country. One of them in particular was a pleasure to watch, a dreadlocked young white man who was prancing and shaking his fist at their absent foes. Someday, Neni thought, if Judson could help them stay in America, she would be an American citizen and she would be able to protest like that, too. She’d say whatever she wanted to say about powerful people and have no fear of being thrown into prison the way dissidents were being thrown into prisons in some African countries for speaking out against abominable authoritarian regimes. She wanted to skip around the park, rejuvenated by the hope that had been handed to her by a compassionate woman of the cloth, but she couldn’t—Timba was waking up from the cold, and she had to pick up Liomi from his last day of school and cook dinner.

  When Jende came home from work at close to midnight, she hurriedly dished out his food and sat at the dinette as he took off his jacket, unable to wait any longer to tell him the amazing news of how the people of Judson would help them stay in America.

  “I went down to the church in the Village today,” she began after he’d had a few bites of his dinner.

  “What for?”

  “It wasn’t for anything. The pastor sent me an email to welcome me and said I should come for a visit, so I went.”

  “You didn’t think you should tell me before going?”

  “I’m sorry. You were angry the last time I went. I didn’t want you to get angry again.”

  He glared at her and returned to his potatoes and spinach. She pretended the look wasn’t half as nasty as he’d intended it to be. She had to forgive him easily these days or her marriage would be doomed. She just had to, because he hadn’t been the same man since the day the letter for the deportation hearing arrived. The weight of the letter was crushing him, she could see; he was now a man permanently at the edge of his breaking point. No longer did he reach over to stroke her hair while she nursed the baby. He did not care to playfully punch Liomi in the ribs. The husband who seldom uttered words like “stupid” and “idiot” was now throwing those words left and right, in moments of rage and frustration, directing them at nameless Immigration officials, his lawyer, his family in Cameroon, his son, and, most of all, his wife. He scolded his mother for asking for money to patch the kitchen wall and barked at Liomi when the child asked if his father could take him to an arcade. He pushed his food away if he thought it didn’t have enough salt or pepper, and ignored phone calls from his friends. It was as if the letter of his court appointment had turned him from a happy living man to an outraged dying man intent on showing the world his anger at his impending death.

  “The pastor told me that the church will help us stay in the country,” Neni said.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Our papier situation. I told the pastor about it—”

  “You did what!” he said, banging the table.

  She said nothing.

  He pushed his food aside and stood up.

  “Are you crazy?” he said, pointing to his temple. “Are you losing your mind, Neni? Have you lost your mind? How dare you discuss my papier situation with those people without asking me first? Have you really lost your mind?” He was fuming and breathing heavily. Beneath him, she sat like a lamb before a teeth-baring lion.

  “What’s wrong with you? What is wrong with you these days? You think you have the right to go about discussing something like that with other people without asking me first? Do you know who these people really are? You think because you go to their church for one day you can tell them my private business? Eh, Neni? Are you crazy?”

  She did not offer an excuse. She knew she had gone too far—Bubakar had warned them to guard their immigration story and share it with no one. You tell person say you no get paper, the lawyer had said, the day you get palaver with them, they go call Immi
gration, report you. “No one except me, you, the Almighty, and the American government should know how you entered this country and how you’re trying to stay in it,” he had cautioned them repeatedly. He knew of the consequence of their scheme being leaked to the government by a hateful individual: It could spell the end not only for them but for him, too.

  Neni had agreed with the lawyer’s advice; she believed in the value of keeping certain matters private to protect from negativity and malice. To her, it was not only wise but easy—keeping crucial facts concealed was as effortless to her as singing. Back when she was a teenager, she had told no one besides Jende about her pregnancy with their deceased daughter. She had waited to tell even her parents until she was five months along, tactfully hiding her growing belly with oversize kabas and handbags. It was equally easy for her to hide their immigration travails in New York. Except for Betty and Fatou, she told no one. When asked by other friends about her family’s legal status, she dodged the question by casually saying that their papers would be arriving very soon.

  Despite her shame, she had told Natasha about their plight because she believed there were Americans who wanted to keep good hardworking immigrants in America. She’d seen them on the news, compassionate Americans talking about how the United States should be more welcoming to people who came in peace. She believed these kindhearted people, like Natasha, would never betray them, and she wanted to tell Jende this, that the people of Judson Memorial Church loved immigrants, that their secret was safe with Natasha. But she also knew it would be futile reasoning with a raging man, so she decided to sit quietly with her head bowed as he unleashed a verbal lashing, as he called her a stupid idiot and a bloody fool. The man who had promised to always take care of her was standing above her vomiting a parade of insults, spewing out venom she never thought he had inside him.

  For the first time in a long love affair, she was afraid he would beat her. She was almost certain he would beat her. And if he had, she would have known that it was not her Jende who was beating her but a grotesque being created by the sufferings of an American immigrant life.