Behold the Dreamers

by Mbue, Imbolo

  “Thank you,” Clark said, smiling back. “I hope so, too.

  “By the way, Jende,” Clark called as Jende began walking toward the door. “I forgot to ask you. Why are you going back home?”

  Jende did not need time to think about the best answer. He immediately turned around, walked back to the desk, and told the truth. “My application for asylum was not approved, sir.”

  “Asylum? I had no idea you were applying for asylum.”

  “I never mentioned it to you, sir. It is something which I kept between me and my wife and my lawyer. I did not think I should bother you with something like that.”

  “No, of course, I understand. I’m just surprised. What does it mean it was not approved? Are you being deported?”

  “No, sir, I’m not being deported. But I cannot get a green card unless I am granted asylum, and for that to happen I will have to spend many years and a lot of money going to immigration court. And then maybe the judge will still decide to not give me asylum, which means the government will deport me in the end. It’s not how I want to live my life, sir, especially when you add the fact that it’s just not easy for a man to enjoy his life in this country if he is poor.”

  “But isn’t there some other way you can try to get a green card?” Clark said after picking up his ringing phone and telling the person on the line he would call back. “I know how badly you wanted to raise your children here.”

  “I did what I could, sir, but—”

  “Surely there has to be a way to keep a decent hardworking man like you in America.”

  Jende shook his head. “There are laws, sir,” he said.

  “Listen,” Clark said, sitting up. “I’ve got a good friend from Stanford who’s an associate director at Immigration. If you had told me you had a case, I would have contacted him for you to get advice, or at least ask for a recommendation for an excellent lawyer. I had no idea.”

  Jende looked down and shook his head, a rueful smile on his face.

  “It might not be too late,” Clark went on. “Maybe you could reschedule your flight, give me some time to contact my friend and see if we can still help you?”

  “I think it’s too late, sir.”

  “But there’s no harm in trying, is there?”

  “The judge will not allow it, sir, and even if he did …”

  “You’re ready to leave.”

  Jende smiled. “The truth, sir,” he said, “is that my body may still be here, but my heart has already gone back home. It is true I came here to escape a hard life and I did not want to go back. But when I had no choice but to go back, I found myself happy thinking about home, sir. I will miss America, but it will be good to live in my own country again. I already picture myself going to visit my father’s grave to show him my daughter. I see myself walking around Limbe with my friends, getting a drink, taking my son to the stadium. I am no longer afraid of my country the way I used to be.”

  “But what about the children?”

  “They will be fine, sir. We already have my daughter’s American passport. She will come back here when she is ready and maybe one day she will file petition for her brother. If not, my son will go to Canada and my wife can go visit America and Canada every few years.”

  Clark nodded, smiling.

  Jende looked at his watch and made for the door again, but Clark asked him to wait a second. He went over to his briefcase, which was lying on a chair to the right of his desk, sat down for a minute as he wrote something, and returned with a white envelope, which he handed to Jende. “Take this,” he said, “and take care of your family.”

  “Oh, sir … oh, thank you so much,” Jende said, taking the envelope with both hands, his head bowed. “Thank you so much, Mr. Edwards.”

  “Don’t mention it. Have a safe journey.”

  “Oh, I was just wondering, sir,” Jende said as Clark took a step toward the door, “have you heard anything from Leah? Me and my wife, we wanted to invite her to our go-away party, but her house phone has been disconnected.”

  “Yeah, I heard from her a couple of months ago,” Clark replied. “She sent me her résumé to help her get a job here, but I don’t think anything came out of me forwarding it to HR, what with the hiring freeze and all.”

  “So maybe she is still not working?”

  “I think so. Tough job market out there, especially for someone her age. My guess is that she’s probably picked up and moved out of the city so she wouldn’t run out of money.”

  Jende shook his head, surprised. Leah hadn’t mentioned a plan to move away the last time they spoke, on Christmas Day. She had sounded fine, but she must have been downcast about her future—no job prospect, diminishing savings, her Social Security income still a few years away. She must have been scared, though she hadn’t given that impression. Could that have been why she was so happy about going to see the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center? Could it be because she was about to immerse herself in a spirit of hope and, for just a few hours, forget about her circumstances?

  “If you ever see her, sir,” Jende said, “can you please tell her I say goodbye and that I am sorry for not saying goodbye to her directly? Please tell her I have gone back to Cameroon but maybe one day, by the grace of God, I will come to visit America and we will meet again.”

  “Let’s hope I can remember all that.”

  “I feel so bad, sir, when I think about her,” Jende said.

  “The economy’s getting better,” Clark replied, turning toward the door.

  “That’s what they say, sir, but … I hope she will be okay soon.”

  “I’m sure she’ll be fine,” Clark said as the men arrived at the door, where they wished each other the very best and shook hands for the last time.

  Sixty-one

  SHE GAVE HER POTS AND COOKING UTENSILS TO BETTY, HER DINNERWARE and silverware to Fatou. Winston and Maami took her spices and the food in the pantry: the garri, palm oil, crayfish, fufu, egusi, pounded yams, and smoked fish. Olu came for her old textbooks and the desktop—a nephew of her husband’s would soon be arriving from Nigeria to study nursing at Hunter.

  Natasha was happy to receive her unworn kabas. They weren’t worth the space they would take up, she told the pastor, who was excited about adding the colorful dresses to her wardrobe. The dinette set she sold on Craigslist, as well as the dresser in the bedroom, the TV, the microwave, and Liomi’s cot. Their winter clothes, old summer clothes, and worn-out shoes she took to Goodwill; the old sofa she had Jende put out on the curb for anyone in need of an old sofa.

  By the night before their departure, the apartment was empty except for their luggage in a corner of the bedroom. Whatever they hadn’t given away was in the garbage except for the bed, which they would be leaving for the new tenants.

  The new tenants had arrived with Mr. Charles to see the apartment and while there they had asked Neni at least a dozen questions: How much of a pain was it dealing with five flights of stairs every day? Any weird neighbors? Where was the best place to order Thai or Chinese takeout late at night? Was Harlem really better these days like everyone was saying? They were a young couple—early to mid-twenties, pretty, giddy, white, with matching long hair—fleeing Detroit and in pursuit of a life as successful musicians. When Neni asked what kind of music they sang, they smiled and said it was hard to label, some combination of techno, hip-hop, and the blues. They called themselves the Love Stucks.

  She was tempted to resent them but then they offered to buy the bed for twice what someone else was offering on Craigslist. They paid her cash right away, then shared a kiss in her bedroom. As they were leaving she heard Mr. Charles reminding them to never mention the arrangement to anyone because if he lost the subsidized apartment everyone would lose out on a great deal. The woman promised they would never say a word; she couldn’t believe they’d just landed an affordable apartment in New York City.

  Less than eighteen hours before their flight and Neni was now alone in the living room. Timba was a
sleep in the bedroom; Jende had taken Liomi to dinner at a restaurant on 116th Street, for one last meal of attiéké and grilled lamb. After dinner they planned to have their last scoop of American ice cream on 115th Street; maybe a slice of cheesecake, too.

  With all the bags packed, all the travel clothes laid out, all the itineraries printed out, there was little left to do. Neni sat on the floor, her back against the wall, looking around the living room. It seemed smaller and darker. It felt strange, like being in a faraway cave in a forest in a country she’d never been to. It felt as if she was in a dream about a home that had never been hers.

  She looked toward the window, thinking of something she might have forgotten to do. There was nothing. Perhaps a goodbye she hadn’t said? There was none. Her friends had offered to come spend this last night with her, reminisce and laugh, because who knew if/when they’d ever see each other again? She had thanked them but said no. She had said her last goodbye, to Fatou, the day before. They had shared a long hug, and Fatou had said, how you gonno make me cry lika baby? She didn’t want to say any more goodbyes. Not to Fatou, or Betty, or Olu, or Winston, or any other friend.

  She wanted to go to sleep, wake up, shower, get the children ready, pick up her luggage, and leave.

  Sixty-two

  THEY BADE NEW YORK CITY GOODBYE ON ONE OF THE HOTTEST DAYS OF the year. Late August, around the same time he had arrived five years before. They boarded an Air Maroc flight from JFK to Douala via Casablanca. On the cab ride to the airport, she stared out the window in silence. It was all passing her by. America was passing her by. New York City was passing her by. Bridges and billboards bearing smiling people were passing her by. Skyscrapers and brownstones were rushing by. Fast. Too fast. Forever.

  He felt nothing.

  He forced himself to feel nothing.

  He sat in the front seat with the seed money for his new life packed in a red JanSport backpack, twenty-one little bundles of cash tied with brown rubber bands. Each bundle contained a thousand dollars of his fortune: eighteen thousand from Cindy Edwards and their savings; fourteen hundred dollars from the people at Judson; two thousand from Clark Edwards.

  “Why don’t you just send it through Western Union and pick it up when you arrive?” Winston had asked him.

  “Never,” he had said. “You want Cameroon government to know I have this kind of money and come after me?”

  “You and your fears,” Winston had said, laughing. “What will they do if they know? They can’t tax money you transfer.”

  “That’s what you think, eh? Wait until Biya decides to change the law. Then the government is going to start asking for ten percent of all Western Union transfers.”

  “Ah, Bo! The government can never do such a thing.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I don’t know. But, now that you say it, I don’t blame you for being cautious. One can never trust any government—I don’t trust the American government and I definitely don’t trust the Cameroon government.”

  “No, but it’s our government and it’s our country. We love it, we hate it, it’s still our country. How man go do?”

  “It’s our country,” Winston agreed. “We can never disown it.”

  At four in the morning of the day after they left New York, they arrived in Cameroon. And as they had been warned, the country was no different from the one they had left.

  Douala International Airport was still steamy and overcrowded. Customs officers there still demanded bribes that weary travelers gave for lack of energy to fight a devious system. Men and women in bright African fabrics still crowded the exit from customs, calling out to their recently arrived loved ones, shouting in English, French, pidgin English, and any of the two hundred indigenous languages of the country, saying, I’m over here, we’re all over here. Overjoyed parents, and sometimes what seemed like whole extended families, still waited outside the arrival terminal to welcome sons and daughters who had traveled overseas and returned to bring them pride, pushing and shoving to get to a long-awaited hug. Young boys dressed in rags still lingered around the airport parking lot, seeking gullible arrivals who would believe their claims of hunger and homelessness and spare them a dollar or euro. The drive from Douala to Limbe was still arduous, with drivers and pedestrians swearing at each other, young and old alike fighting for space on the dusty and congested streets of Bonaberi.

  Jende’s brother Moto met them at the airport with a borrowed Ford pickup truck for the two-hour drive to Limbe. The Ford was the only vehicle he could find that could fit the family and their seven suitcases bearing clothes and shoes. More of their possessions would be arriving months later in a shipping container: the old Hyundai; four large boxes of discount store clothes and shoes; three boxes of preserved food, all bought in dollar stores; two suitcases containing Liomi’s toys and games and books; a car seat, stroller, and Pack ’n Play bought from Craigslist for Timba. There were also three suitcases containing the clothes Cindy had given Neni and the things Neni had purchased in Chinatown: fake Chanel, Gucci, and Versace purses; cheap jewelry, sunglasses, and shoes; human-hair wigs and weaves; creams, perfumes, and makeup. These purchases were what she would use to prove to the loose women of Limbe that she was not at their level. Cindy’s things she planned to reserve for special occasions. She would wear them to weddings and anniversaries to show those girls that even though she had returned home and was living among them, she was not one of them—she was now a woman of class, with real designer items, and none of them could compete with her.

  Just after seven o’clock, while Neni and the children slept, the pickup went under the red and white sign above the highway that said “Welcome to Limbe, The Town of Friendship.” Memories of the sign had given Jende comfort during his first days in America, a comfort meshed with the belief that he would one day be driving toward it in circumstances different from when he’d driven away from it.

  “Welcome indeed,” he said to himself, as the lights of his hometown appeared in the distance. Moto moved one hand from the steering wheel and gave him a congratulatory tap on the shoulder.

  “What did you say, Papa?” a drowsy and awakening Liomi asked.

  Jende turned from the front seat and looked at his son. “Guess where we are,” he whispered.

  “Where?” Liomi asked, struggling to open his eyes.

  “Guess,” Jende whispered again.

  The boy opened his eyes and said, “Home?”

  Acknowledgments

  The author is grateful to her wonderful agent, Susan Golomb, for opening up mighty gates for her, and Susan’s former and current assistants (Krista Ingebretson, Scott Cohen, Soumeya Bendimerad Roberts), for all the hard work they’ve done, and continue to do, for her. Profound gratitude to David Ebershoff, for being not only a magnificent editor but also a kind human; and to Caitlin McKenna, his diligent assistant. The author thanks her publisher, Susan Kamil, for giving her an incredibly humbling opportunity, and Susan’s entire team at Random House, for their dedication and enthusiasm. Special thanks to Molly Schulman, Hanna Pylväinen, and Christopher Cervelloni, for reading early drafts of this story and providing wisdom and encouragement. Finally, the author will be eternally grateful for her (marvelous!) husband and (beautiful!) children; the unconditional love of her mother; the unwavering support of her sister and brother-in-law; the kindness and benevolence of so many good people in her extended family; strangers and acquaintances whose stories and generosity inspired this novel; and her utterly awesome friends, who ran to her rescue far too many times and kept her laughing during this most extraordinary journey.

  About the Author

  IMBOLO MBUE is a native of Limbe, Cameroon. She holds a BS from Rutgers University and an MA from Columbia University. A resident of the United States for more than a decade, she lives in New York City. This is her first novel.

  imbolombue.com

  Facebook.com/imbolombue

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