Behold the Dreamers

by Mbue, Imbolo

  He’d given Neni more money for shopping than he’d intended; doing so was the only thing that had made her smile in days—him telling her she could spend five hundred dollars buying whatever she wanted to buy. She’d ended up spending eight hundred, buying things not easily found back in Limbe: dollar-store toys for the children so they wouldn’t have to play with mud and sticks; foods in jars and all the sweet cereals Liomi had become accustomed to; clothes for as many years into the future as they would need in order to preserve their American aura.

  For herself, she bought beauty creams and anti-aging moisturizers in Chinatown—concoctions she hoped would preserve her beauty and youth for a long time and keep her elevated in looks among the women back home. News had reached her that loose young women were now aplenty in Limbe, good-looking and shameless wolowose women who made wives nervous. Sure, Jende was a man of little lust, never once looking at even the largest cleavage (not in her presence, at least) in all their married life, but she’d also never had to worry about another woman trying to steal him. Why would any woman try to lure him away when there were thousands of men in New York City with more money? But in Limbe, it would no longer be so. The loose young women there would be eager to pounce on him. He would no longer be a poor boy from a caraboat house in New Town but a man who had returned from America with a lot of dollars. Those wolowose girls would be all over him, giggling and exposing their teeth, saying things like Mr. Jende, how noh? You look good, oh! She would have to give him no reason to move his eyes sideways, especially now that she didn’t have the assets those young women had. She would never look like them again, because motherhood had squeezed out the appeal from her breasts and drawn lines of exhaustion on her belly. Her body was no longer a marvel, thus her best weapon in the battle for her husband’s eyes wouldn’t be her nakedness but her glowing spot-and-wrinkle-free face and the clothes and accessories she would put on the body from which she planned to lose five pounds in the coming month.

  She had to return to Limbe prepared.

  “Don’t forget the girls in you country, they gonno rub fine America cream, too,” Fatou said when Neni went across the street to her apartment to give her a purse she’d bought for her as a belated birthday gift and told her how prepared she was to fight to keep her marriage strong. “They know how to buy cream and spray perfume, too, and look lika America woman.”

  “They go near him,” Neni said, “I’ll kill them.”

  Fatou looked at Neni’s wide determined eyes and laughed. “I no gonno ever get that kinda problem,” she said. “No woman gonno try to steal my Ousmane. Who want Ousmane, with his leg lika broomstick? No woman. So I keep him.”

  Neni laughed. For a minute, in a good friend’s presence, she forgot how fearful she was about her future and laughed. Having a man other women wanted was a curse masquerading as a blessing, she told herself. But it was a source of pride, nonetheless. Jende was going to be somebody in Limbe when they returned. He was going to be a businessman. He would get a nice brick house for them in Sokolo or Batoke or Mile Four, and she would have a maid. Over dinner at Red Lobster on a Sunday evening, while Winston and Maami watched the kids, he had told her all that. “I promise you with all my heart and soul, bébé,” he had said to her. “You will live like a queen in Limbe.”

  She had fidgeted with her food, unwilling to look into his eyes. “What can I do now?” she said to him. “We have to go whether I want it or not.”

  “Yes, bébé, but I want you to come back happy. I don’t want you to come back crying the way you’ve been crying. I don’t like to see you cry like this, eh? I don’t like it at all.” He pursed his lips and made a childish sad face, which made her laugh.

  “I love New York so much, Jends,” she said. “I’m so happy here. I just don’t … I don’t even know how to …”

  He took her hands and kissed them the way he had seen the leading men do in movies. After paying for their food they walked to Times Square, one of his favorite places in the city. Before Neni came to America, Times Square was his second substitute best friend—after Columbus Circle—a place that never failed to remind him of what he’d left behind. Being there was like being at Half Mile Junction in Limbe, where billboards for Ovaltine and Guinness towered above dusty streets; cabdrivers honked and swore at impudent pedestrians; drinking spots stayed open virtually all night, every weekend; voluptuous prostitutes cursed loudly at tightfisted patrons; and the noise never died.

  At the center of the square, right at the corner of Broadway and Forty-second, Jende and Neni stood side by side and held on to the moment. There would be no Times Square in Limbe, Neni thought. No billboards flashing things she wished she had the money to buy. There’d be no McDonald’s where she could enjoy her beloved McNuggets. No people of too many colors, speaking too many languages, running around to thousands of fun places. There would be no pharmacy career. No condo in Yonkers or Mount Vernon or New Rochelle.

  She buried her face in his shoulder and begged herself to be happy.

  Fifty-seven

  IN LIMBE, THE TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS NENI HAD TAKEN FROM CINDY, plus the eight thousand dollars they’d saved (five thousand from diligently putting away approximately three hundred and fifty dollars every month during the fourteen months Jende had worked for the Edwardses; three thousand from the four weeks Neni had worked for Cindy), would make them millionaires many times over. Even after buying their airline tickets and making all the necessary purchases, they would have enough money for Jende to become one of the richest men in New Town.

  With the new exchange rate at six hundred CFA francs to a dollar, he would be returning home with close to ten million CFA francs, enough to restart their life in a beautiful rental with a garage for his car and a maid so his wife could feel like a queen. He would have enough to start a business, which would enable him to someday build a spacious brick house and send Liomi to Baptist High School, Buea, the boarding school Winston had attended because his late father came from a wealthy Banso clan, the school Jende could not attend because Pa Jonga could not afford it.

  Without any treatment, his back stopped aching.

  A month before he was to leave, Winston called with an idea: Would Jende be willing to manage the construction of a new hotel Winston and one of his friends were building at Seme Beach and then become the hotel manager when it was completed?

  “We’ll talk about salary, Bo,” Winston said. “We’ll pay you good money, more than what you used to make as a laborer at Limbe Urban Council.”

  Jende laughed and promised to think about it. Two days later, when Winston stopped by for a visit, Jende declined the offer. He was appreciative of his cousin’s help, but he wanted to run his own business, get to know what it was like to answer to no man. All his life it had been yes sir, yes madam. A time had to come for him to stand above others and hear yes, Mr. Jonga.

  Upon his return to Limbe, he would start his own business: Jonga Enterprises. His slogan would be “Jonga Enterprises: Bringing the Wisdom of Wall Street to Limbe.” He would diversify and conglomerate and acquire as many competitors as possible. But he’d have to start small. Maybe he’d own a couple of taxis or benskins. Or hire people to farm the eight acres of land his father had left for him in Bimbia. He could sell the food in the Limbe market and ship some of it abroad. Winston encouraged him to move forward with the farming idea first. There were enough taxis in Limbe, and benskins—with their high accident rates which had left many swearing that motorcycles were the devil’s creations—were bound to fall out of favor with the public soon enough. But food, Winston said, would always be needed.

  “Food,” Jende agreed, “and drinking spots.”

  “Will people in Limbe ever get tired of drinking?” Winston said. “I hear drinking spots are opening all over town like no man’s business. They say there’s even a spot that sells Heineken and Budweiser. Heineken and Budweiser? In Cameroon?”

  Jende leaned forward on the sofa to rock the bassinet in which Timb
a was lying belly up and on the verge of fussing. Winston stood up and peered at the baby. He smiled at her, tickled her belly, cooed in response to her toothless grin, and returned to the sofa.

  “That’s how you know this American domination has gone too far, Bo,” Winston said. “Paysans have gone from wanting Guinness and 33 Export to wanting Budweiser and Heineken.”

  “And Motorola RAZR,” Jende said. “My mother asked me to bring back a RAZR for her so she can have the nicest phone among all her friends who she goes to farm with. Don’t ask me why she takes her cell phone to the farm. There’s no network there. She saw a RAZR in a Nigerian movie, she wants it.”

  “Why should she be left behind in the twentieth century?”

  “I told Neni,” Jende went on. “I said, ‘Maybe you won’t even miss New York too much because Limbe now has so many things New York has.’ But no, she doesn’t listen. She continues walking around the house with a long face like something whose name I can’t even remember right now.”

  “Ah, Bo. Please, have a bit of sympathy for her. It’s not easy for her to be—”

  “But isn’t it true? Everything she sees here, she’s going to see in Limbe. The girls in Limbe now, I hear they all look like Beyoncé. And no one wants to drink country mimbo anymore. Palm wine is falling out of fashion. Everyone is American or European now. Emmanu told me a club in West End even sells Cristal glass by glass.”

  “You’re serious?”

  “I’m serious. Victor owns the club. You remember Victor?”

  “Which Victor?” Winston asked. “The one we used to play football against in the inter-quarter league? The one who lives behind the Catholic church and has those buttocks like a woman’s?”

  “That one,” Jende said. “Emmanu swears the club is helele.”

  “How did he come up with the capital?”

  “You didn’t hear the story? The boy went to Bulgaria. Bulgaria or Russia or Australia—somewhere over there. Boy comes back with some serious kolo. Rumor all over town is that he was a dancer. Who knows what kind of dance he did? From the kind of money he brought back, he must have done it very well.”

  “A black man shaking it for white women,” Winston said. “Isn’t that what they want? And Victor could shake it, let me tell you. I’ll never forget the time I was dancing toward this fine ngah at Black and White. I think it was a Christmas Day. The music was booming, man, I was moving it, ready to pounce and make my move.” He stood up and gyrated his hips to show the makossa moves of his younger days.

  Jende watched him, smiling.

  “Then,” Winston said, and paused, his hands spread out, “out of nowhere Victor comes out and does this Michael Jackson move, and the ngah starts laughing. I think it was ‘Thriller,’ because that boy was doing some serious vibrations. The ngah is laughing and laughing, and next thing I know, wait, where is she? The bastard stole the ngah with his Michael Jackson moves, right in front of me! I stood there in the middle of that nightclub, high and dry!”

  Jende laughed until he fully doubled over, gasping for air. “Ah, Limbe,” he said. “I cannot believe I will be there again.”

  “Just don’t become an American Wonder when you go back,” Winston said, laughing as he sat down. “Play it mature, please. That’s all I ask of you.”

  Jende shook his head.

  He would never become an American Wonder, one of those mbutukus who went to America and upon their return home spoke with laughable American accents, spraying “wannas” and “gonnas” all over sentences. They strutted around town wearing suits and cowboy boots and baseball caps, claiming to understand very little of Cameroonian culture because they were now too American. Come and see American Wonder, the song about them went. Come and see American Wonder. Do you know American Wonder? Come and see American Wonder.

  He would never be laughable. He would be respectable.

  Later that evening, after Neni and Liomi had returned home from buying Liomi new sneakers, Jende told Neni the idea of wholesaling food. She kept her head down, saying nothing as she unpacked the sneakers and put them inside a Ghana Must Go bag.

  “Maybe we can even find a way to export some of the food over here, eh?” he said. “Maybe sell in African stores here?”

  “What do you need my opinion for?” she said, lifting her head to look at him as if he disgusted her. “Aren’t you the knower of everything?” Her eyes seemed ready to tear through him like a sharp knife slicing pork belly. It had been less than a week since their moment in Times Square and she was back to despising him for taking her and her children away from America.

  “But bébé,” he said, “I just thought you’d like to know—”

  “Why? No, please, don’t ask me anything. Just do whatever you want to do, okay? Whatever you want, however you want it, just do it. You don’t need to ask me.”

  Thankfully, Liomi was back to wanting to grow up to be like him, so after Neni shut the bedroom door saying she wanted to finish her work in peace and quiet, Jende went into the living room, where he and his son roughhoused on the floor and tickled each other so hard they both gasped for air.

  He called his brother Moto the next day and asked him to begin the search for men to till the land in Bimbia and plant plantains, egusi, and yams. He also asked him to be on the lookout for a three-bedroom brick house with a garage, as well as a maid and a temporary car he would drive until the used Hyundai he had purchased at a New Jersey state auction arrived in a shipping container. Three days later, his brother texted to say he had found a house for rent in Coconut Island, as well as a car, a 1998 Pajero. He would have the house furnished with basic necessities and a housemaid hired by the time the family arrived.

  “Look you,” Fatou said when Neni told her about the house and the maid. “You gonno leave small one-room and go stay for mansion? Why Ousmane not do this for me, too?”

  “So ask Ousmane to take you back home then,” Neni retorted.

  “Ousmane no want go back home,” Fatou said. She paused and looked at the empty luggage lying on the living room floor. “If only me, I go back. I go to my village, build house near my mother and my father. I live quiet life, die quiet die. If only me, I go home très bientôt.”

  Neni watched the perpetual sparkle in Fatou’s eyes dim as she said this, and she knew her friend was serious; for the first time that afternoon, she did not mean what she was saying as a joke. Fatou missed her parents, especially now that they were in their eighties and needed her and her two brothers to take care of them. She and her brothers worried about them, but there wasn’t much they could do from far away—one of her brothers was in France, the other in Oklahoma. Her parents had to depend on distant relatives to take care of them using the money transfers Fatou and her brothers sent every few months. They had to live like people who had never borne children, which shamed Fatou every time she got a call from a relative saying one of them had fallen sick and money was needed to take them to a hospital. Fatou always sent the money within a day, even when she had a bill due: What else could she do?

  After twenty-six years, she was ready to stop braiding hair for a living and go back home, but the decision wasn’t hers alone to make. And even if Ousmane wanted to go back home, her children were Americans who had never been to their parents’ homeland. All seven of them, the three in their twenties and four teenagers, wanted nothing of living in West Africa. Some of them didn’t even consider themselves African. When people asked where they were from, they often said, oh, we’re from right here, New York, America. They said it with pride, believing it. Only when prodded did they reluctantly admit that well, actually, our parents are Africans. But we’re Americans, they always added. Which hurt Fatou and made her wonder, was it possible her children thought they were better than her because they were Americans and she was African?

  Fifty-eight

  THE BAKWERI PEOPLE OF LIMBE BELIEVE AUGUST IS A CURSED MONTH. The rain falls too hard and for too long; rivers rise up too high and too fast. Dry days are fe
w; chilly nights are many. The month is long, dreary, and hostile, and it is for this reason that many in the tribe do not marry, build houses, or start businesses in August. They wait for it to go away, along with its curses.

  Jende Jonga, a Bakweri man, believed nothing in curses.

  August or no August, it was time for him to go back home, and that was that. Walking through the streets of New York during his last days in America, he couldn’t bring himself to feel sad about leaving or wish his experience were ending differently. Enough was enough. He wanted no more of life in a roach-filled apartment in a Harlem neighborhood of fried chicken joints, storefront churches, and funeral homes where young men in cornrows and saggy pants perpetually lingered outside, mourning one of their own and carelessly spitting in his direction. He wanted no more of climbing five flights of stairs to share a bed with his daughter while his son slept in a cot inches away. He wanted no more of smiling for appearances as he stacked dishes and polished silverware, and he certainly wanted no more of riding the subway from work late at night, arriving home sweaty, greasy, and drained.

  To him, living such a life for another year would have been the curse. Not recognizing when to go back home would have been a curse. Not realizing that he would be happier sleeping in a bedroom separate from his children, going to visit his mother and his brothers whenever he wanted, meeting his friends at a boucarou in Down Beach for roasted fish and beer by the ocean, riding around in his own car and sweating outside in January … that would have been the curse.

  You’re really sure you’re not going to miss America? his friends at work asked him repeatedly. Not even the football? He laughed every time they asked. Maybe a bit of football, he would reply. And cheesecake.

  Neni, for her part, could summon no joy as the date of their departure drew close. Her tears flowed without provocation on the subway, at Pathmark, in Central Park, in the apartment in the middle of mundane chores. She felt no excitement at the thought of being reunited with her family and old friends, only apprehension at the notion that she might never be happy in Limbe as she’d been in New York. She worried that she might have too little in common with her friends, being that she was now so different from them, being that she had tasted a different kind of life and been transformed positively and negatively in so many different ways, being that life had expanded and contracted her in ways they could never imagine.