by Mbue, Imbolo
“Because?”
“Because any job is a good job in Cameroon, Mr. Edwards. Just to have somewhere that you can wake up in the morning and go to is a good thing. But what about the future? That is the problem, sir. I could not even marry my wife. I did—”
“What do you mean, you couldn’t marry? Poor people get married every day.”
“Yes, they can, sir. Everyone can marry, sir. But not everyone can marry the person that they want. My wife’s father, Mr. Edwards, he is a greedy man. He refused for me to marry his daughter because he wanted my wife to marry someone with more money. Someone who can give him money whenever he asks for it. But I didn’t have. What was I supposed to do?”
Clark snickered. “I guess people don’t elope in Cameroon, huh?”
“A rope, sir?”
“No, elope. You know, when you run away and get married without involving your crazy family?”
“Oh, no, no, no, sir, we do it. People do it. We also do ‘come we stay.’ Which means a man says to a woman, ‘Come let us live together,’ but he does not marry her first. But I could never do that, sir. Never.”
“Why?”
“It does not show respect for a woman, sir. A man has to go to a woman’s family and pay bride-price for her head, sir. And then take her out through the front door. I had to show I am a real man, sir. Not take her for free as if she is … as if she is something I picked on the street.”
“Right,” Clark said, snickering again. “So you’ve paid for your wife?”
“Oh, yes, sir,” Jende said, beaming with pride. “Once I come to America and send my father-in-law a nice transfer through Western Union, he sees that maybe I am going to be a rich man one day, he changed his mind.”
Clark laughed.
“I know it is funny, sir. But I had to get my wife. By two years after I came to New York, I had saved good money to pay the bride-price and bring her and my son over here. I sent money to my mother and father, and they bought everything my father-in-law wanted as the bride-price. The goats. The pigs. The chickens. The palm oil, bags of rice. The salt. The cloth, bottles of wine. They bought it all. I even give an envelope of cash double what he asked for, sir.”
“No kidding.”
“No, sir. Before my wife comes to America, my family goes to her family, and they hand the bride-price and sing and dance together. And then we were married.”
Clark’s phone buzzed. “Fascinating story,” he said, picking it up and putting it back down.
“And the truth, sir,” Jende went on, unable to stop himself, “is that the paper I signed as marriage certificate at city hall is not what makes me feel like I marry my wife. That does not mean too much. It is the bride-price I paid. I give her family honor.”
“Well,” Clark said, clicking on his laptop, “I hope she’s been worth it.”
“Oh, yes, sir! She is. I have the best wife in the whole world, sir.”
They drove in silence for the next forty-five minutes. Traffic was sparse in the lower part of New Jersey except for tractor-trailers, which seemed to appear out of nowhere.
“So you think America is better than Cameroon?” Clark asked, still looking at his laptop.
“One million times, sir,” Jende said. “One million times. Look at me today, Mr. Edwards. Driving you in this nice car. You are talking to me as if I am somebody, and I am sitting in this seat, feeling as if I am somebody.”
Clark put aside the laptop and picked up another folder, one with loose sheets. He flipped through the sheets, scribbling on a writing pad. “What I’m curious about still,” he said, without pausing to look up at Jende, “is how you could buy a ticket to come to America if you said you were that poor.”
Once more Jende thought of the best answer. There was no shame in telling the truth, so he told it. “My cousin, sir,” he said. “Winston.”
“The associate at Dustin, Connors, and Solomon?”
“Yes, sir. He is the one who bought me a ticket. He felt sorry for me. My cousin, he is a better brother to me than some of my brothers from the same mother, same father.”
“And how did he get here?”
“He won the green card lottery, sir. Then he joined the army. He used the money—”
“I know,” Clark said. “Frank told me.”
His phone buzzed. He looked down at it and turned his face toward the window. The phone buzzed several more times before he picked it up. “No, I haven’t,” he said to the caller. “Why?” The car in the left lane honked and cut in front of them. “Arizona?” he said. “When did he tell you this? … Never mind, I’ll call him right now … No, I’m not mad. He’s got to have a pretty good reason, which I’d like to hear … Of course I don’t think it’s a good idea … Yes, yes, I’ll talk to him.”
He quickly dialed a number.
“Hi, it’s Dad,” he said. “Give me a call when you can, will you? Mom just told me you turned down the Skadden internship offer, and she’s very upset. Why are you doing this? She says you want to spend a month at a reservation in Arizona? I’m just … I’m not sure what your thinking is—Skadden’s a great opportunity for you, Vince. You can’t just throw it away because you’d rather go sit around in Arizona. Can’t you go there before or after the internship? Please call me back as soon as you get this. Or come to my office tomorrow. Call Leah and check my calendar. Just wish you’d talk to me before making a decision like this. I wish you didn’t go about making major decisions without talking to Mom and me. It’s the very least you can do.”
He hung up and sighed, a sigh as deep and audible as it was hopeless and defeated. “Unbelievable,” he muttered to himself. “Un-be-lieve-able.”
In the front seat, Jende drove in silence, though he yearned to tell Mr. Edwards he was sorry Vince had upset him, that nothing could be harder than a disobedient son.
For twenty minutes they rode up the turnpike in silence, from exit nine toward Rutgers University, to exit ten for Perth Amboy, behind tractor-trailers and beside sedans with napping babies and dogs sticking out their heads for air; above a sky that bore the same cumulus clouds that had been following them like spies for three hours. Clark made a call to Frank, asked if he could arrange an internship for Vince at Dustin, in case Skadden’s was no longer available; in case Vince realized that he had to start acting like a grown man.
“I’m glad you understand what an opportunity you’ve been given,” Clark said to Jende after getting off the phone with Frank. The tallest skyscrapers of Manhattan had just begun appearing as they entered northern New Jersey. “I’m glad someone understands when they’ve been given a great opportunity.”
Jende nodded with every word. He thought about the best thing to say to make Clark feel better, the right thing to say to his boss at a time like this. He decided to say what he believed. “I thank God every day for this opportunity, sir,” he said as he switched from the center to the left lane. “I thank God, and I believe I work hard, and one day I will have a good life here. My parents, they, too, will have a good life in Cameroon. And my son will grow up to be somebody, whatever he wants to be. I believe that anything is possible for anyone who is American. Truly do, sir. And in fact, sir, I hope that one day my son will grow up to be a great man like you.”
Seven
ON A SUNNY DAY IT WAS HARD TO SEE HOW FAR THE LEHMAN BROTHERS office tower extended into the sky. Its walls seemed to soar on forever, like an infinite spear, and though Jende sometimes pushed his head far back and squinted, he couldn’t see beyond the sunlight banging against the polished glass. But on a cloudy day, like the day he finally met Clark’s secretary, Leah, in person, he could see all the way to the top. Even without the sun’s rays falling on it, the building glimmered and Lehman Brothers stood regal and proud, like a prince of the Street.
Leah had called him around noon, saying he needed to drive back to Lehman from wherever he was: Clark had forgotten an important folder in the car and needed it for a three o’clock meeting. “No, I’ll meet yo
u downstairs,” she said after Jende offered to bring it upstairs. “Clark’s going crazy today and I could use some air,” she whispered.
She arrived downstairs while he was leaning against the car with the folder in his hands. He had expected her to be small—tiny, even—based on her high-pitched honeyed voice and the girly manner in which she sometimes giggled at banal things he said, but she was wide and round, like some of the people he’d seen when he landed at Newark; thick and fleshy humans who had made him wonder if America was a country of large people. In Limbe there were perhaps two people of that size in a neighborhood of hundreds, but at the airport, walking from the plane through immigration and customs to baggage claim, he had counted at least twenty. Leah wasn’t as plump as the largest of the women he’d seen that day, but she was tall, a head above most of the women standing in front of the building. She walked toward him waving and smiling, dressed in a lime-green sweater and red pants, sporting a curly bob that reminded him of the crazy wig Neni wore whenever Fatou didn’t have time to braid her hair.
“So good to finally meet you!” Leah chanted, her voice even more sugary than on the phone. Her lipstick matched her pants, and her round face had at least a half dozen layers of makeup, which were woefully failing in concealing the deep lines circling her mouth.
“Me, too, Leah,” Jende said, smiling back and handing her the folder. “I was wondering if you were going to know it was me.”
“Of course I was going to know it was you,” Leah said. “You look very African, and I mean that in the nicest way, honey. Most Americans can’t tell Africans from Islanders, but I can pick out an African from a Jamaican any day. I just know these things.”
Jende chuckled nervously and said nothing, waiting for Leah to say goodbye and leave, which she didn’t. What was she going to say next? he thought. She seemed nice, but she was most likely one of those American women whose knowledge of Africa was based largely on movies and National Geographic and thirdhand information from someone who knew someone who had been to somewhere on the continent, usually Kenya or South Africa. Whenever Jende met such women (at Liomi’s school; at Marcus Garvey Park; in the livery cab he used to drive), they often said something like, oh my God, I saw this really crazy show about such-and-such in Africa. Or, my cousin/friend/neighbor used to date an African man, and he was a really nice guy. Or, even worse, if they asked him where in Africa he was from and he said Cameroon, they proceeded to tell him that a friend’s daughter once went to Tanzania or Uganda. This comment used to irk him until Winston gave him the perfect response: Tell them your friend’s uncle lives in Toronto. Which was what he now did every time someone mentioned some other African country in response to him saying he was from Cameroon. Oh yeah, he would say in response to something said about Senegal, I watched a show the other day about San Antonio. Or, one day I hope to visit Montreal. Or, I hear Miami is a nice city. And every time he did this, he cracked up inside as the Americans’ faces scrunched up in confusion because they couldn’t understand what Toronto/San Antonio/Montreal/Miami had to do with New York.
“So, how do you like working for Clark?” Leah asked, wisely skipping all the questions about Africa.
“I like it very much,” Jende replied. “He is a good man.”
Leah nodded, pulling out a pack of cigarettes from her purse and moving to lean against the car next to Jende. “Mind if I smoke?”
Jende shook his head.
“He’s a good man to work for,” Leah said, puffing out a straight line of smoke. “He’s got his bad days, when he gets on my nerves and I just wanna throw him out the window. Otherwise, I’ve got no complaints. He’s treated me very well. Never thought about leaving him.”
“You have been his secretary for a long time?”
“Fifteen years, honey,” Leah said, “though I can’t say I’ve got too many left, with the way this company is going … The whole place is a big stinky mess.”
Jende nodded and looked toward the building’s entrance, at the twentysomething-year-old young man in a black suit who was pacing to the right of the doors, his anxiety apparent in the way he paused every few steps to stare at the ground. Jende imagined he was on his way to a job interview. Or spending his first day at the company. Or his last.
“Ever since the subprime unit fell apart,” Leah went on, flicking the ashes off her cigarette, “everyone’s been nervous like crazy. And I hate being nervous. Life’s much too short.”
Jende thought about asking her what the subprime unit was and why it had fallen apart but decided it was best not to ask about things he most certainly wouldn’t understand, even if someone illustrated it to him with pictures. “I see how busy Mr. Edwards is,” he said instead.
“Oh, everyone’s busy,” Leah said. “But Clark and his friends up there, they don’t have any reason to be nervous. When it’s time to lay off people, do you think they’re the ones who’ll be going? No, honey, it’ll be us, the little people. That’s why some people are already sending out résumés; I don’t blame them. You can’t ever trust these people.”
“I do not think Mr. Edwards will let you go anywhere, Leah. You are his right-hand woman.”
Leah laughed. “You’re sweet,” she said, smiling and revealing neatly arranged smoke-stained teeth. “But no, I don’t think it’ll be his decision. And you know what? I don’t give a damn. I can’t lose sleep over this company. Everyone’s gossiping, talking about stock prices going down, profits going down, all kinds of stinky things happening in the boardroom, but the top guys won’t tell us squat. They’re lying to us that everything’s gonna be fine, but I see Clark’s emails sometimes, and well, pardon mon français, but there’s a lot of dirty shit they’re hiding.”
“I am sorry to hear, Leah.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, too, honey,” she said, shrugging and pulling another cigarette from her purse. “And you know the worst part,” she went on, moving closer to Jende and lowering her voice, “one of the VPs I’m friendly with told me there’s talk that there may be some Enron-type stuff going on, too.”
“Enron?” Jende asked, shifting his head to let Leah’s smoke sail by.
“Yeah, Enron.”
“Er … who was that, Leah?”
“Who?”
“This person, Enron … I don’t know who he was.”
Leah burst out laughing. She laughed so hard Jende feared she was going to choke on her smoke. “Oh, honey!” she said, still laughing. “You really just came to this country, huh?”
Jende laughed back, embarrassed and amused all at once.
“Maybe it’s best you don’t know what Enron was or what they did,” Leah said.
“But I would like to know,” Jende said. “I think I have heard the name somewhere, but I do not know what they did.”
Leah pulled out her phone, looked at the time, and dropped the phone back in her purse.
“They cooked books, honey,” she said to Jende.
“They cooked books?”
“Yeah,” she said, her lips quivering in an attempt to suppress her laughter. “They cooked their books.”
Jende nodded for a few seconds, opened his mouth to say something, shut it, opened it again, shut it again, and then shook his head. “I do not think I should ask any more questions, Leah,” he finally said, and they both burst out laughing in unison.
Eight
MIDNIGHT, AND SHE STILL HADN’T STARTED. FIRST IT WAS JENDE’S WORK clothes she had to iron. Then it was Liomi’s homework she had to help with. After that she had to cook dinner for the next day because, between work and evening classes, there would be no time to cook and clean the kitchen. She had to do everything tonight. She had thought she’d be done with the chores by ten o’clock, but when she looked at the living room clock it was eleven and she hadn’t washed her hair, which badly needed washing. By the time she came out of the shower, the only thing she could think about as she dressed in her sleeping kaba was her bed, but there would be no sleep for her just yet.
She went into the kitchen and took the instant coffee out of the cabinet above the stove, turning her nose away as she opened the can to put two teaspoons of the ground beans in a mug. Nothing about coffee’s forceful smell and dry, bitter taste pleased her, but she drank it, because it worked. Always did. One cup and she could stay up for two more hours. Two cups and she could be up till dawn. Which wouldn’t be such a bad idea tonight: She needed at least three hours of studying if she were to finish all her homework and start preparing for her upcoming precalculus test. Maybe she’d spend two hours on the homework and one hour on precalculus. Or stay up four hours, do two hours on homework and two hours on precalculus. She needed an A on the precalculus test. An A-minus wouldn’t be good enough. A B-plus definitely wouldn’t do. Not if she hoped to finish the semester with at least a 3.5 GPA.
She tiptoed into the bedroom and picked up her backpack, which was lying next to Liomi’s cot. He was sleeping on his side, breathing silently (unlike his father), curled under a Batman comforter, his mouth open an inch, his right palm on his right cheek as if he were pondering matters of great import in his dream. Quietly, she moved closer to him, pulled the comforter to his chest, smiled as she watched him sleep, before returning to the living room.
For three hours she studied, first reading at the dinette in preparation for her next history class, afterward moving to the desktop by the window to finish the English Composition essay she had started in the library, then returning to the dinette to study precalculus, referencing her class notes, her textbook, and practice problems and solutions she had printed from the Internet. The silence in the apartment was like a celestial choir, the perfect background music to her study time—no one to disturb her, interrupt her, ask her to help do this or please come over right now. No sound but the faint noises of Harlem in the nighttime.
Drinking a despicable beverage was a little price to pay for this joy of quiet. Two students in her precalculus class had formed a study group and invited others to join, but she hadn’t bothered replying to their emails—she couldn’t give up this pleasure of being alone just to be able to study with others. It wasn’t even as if there was much to gain from a study group. She had joined one earlier in the semester, for her Introduction to Statistics class, and it had been nothing but an improper use of time. Barely thirty minutes into the group’s first study session (in the students’ lounge), one of the members had suggested they order Chinese, as if their hunger couldn’t be put on hold for two hours. Neni had been sure the other members would say they weren’t interested, but all of them—two young white women, an African-American youngish woman, a teenage-looking young man of indeterminable ethnicity—were in agreement that it was a great idea. She’d had no choice but to order moo shu pork and spend ten dollars she didn’t want to spend, because she knew the sight of the others eating would make her hungry and ultimately chew into her concentration for the duration of the session. The group had stopped studying to order, stopped studying again to eat. While they ate, they chatted about American Idol. Who was better than whom. Who was most likely going to win. Who was definitely not going to win. Their conversation didn’t return to the upcoming test for a whole hour. Perhaps losing an hour of study time was nothing to them. It was something to her.
