by Mbue, Imbolo
When she arrived at the church office, the assistant pastor ushered her into a conference room where a box of letters and envelopes was sitting on the table.
“I can’t thank you enough for stopping by,” he said as he showed her how to fold the fundraising letters and stuff them into the envelopes. “We’re badly in need of volunteers.”
“I am glad I can help,” Neni said. “I did not know if you needed any help when I called this morning.”
“No, it’s perfect timing. Where’s the baby?”
“I left her at home with my friend. I just wanted to go out alone for a little bit.”
“Understandable. I’m not sure I can handle the monotony of being home with a baby every day.”
“Is Natasha in today?”
“She’s at an interfaith conference, but she should be back in about an hour. I’ll let her know you’re in here when she comes back.”
Forty-five minutes later, Natasha peeked in from the hallway. “Neni, how sweet of you to come out to help!” she said.
“Hi, Natasha.”
“I need to get some work done right now but drop by before you leave, let’s catch up, okay?”
Alone in the conference room, Neni folded the letters twice and slid them into the yellow preaddressed envelopes, trying not to think about her conversation with Anna the previous morning. The woman had upset her so much she was still fuming a day later.
“What have you been up to?” Natasha asked, motioning to a chair at her desk when Neni entered her office to say goodbye.
“Everything is good,” Neni said.
“Kids are good? Your husband?”
Neni nodded.
“You’re enjoying the new year so far?”
“I’m okay.”
Natasha looked at her dubiously, stood up and closed the door. “How are you, really?” she asked. “What’s the situation with your husband’s papers?”
“I’m trying not to worry about it, but it’s not easy.”
“Any new developments?”
“We are still just waiting and hoping … But one of my friends, she told me about a solution that can help us.”
“That’s wonderful. What’s the solution?”
“I don’t know if you will like it.”
“It’s not for me to like, Neni,” Natasha said with a smile. “It’s for me to listen to you and help you listen to your heart.”
“I haven’t even told my husband …”
“I understand. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t feel comfortable.”
Neni looked at Natasha’s reassuring smile and decided she might as well. “My friend,” she said quietly, “she has a cousin.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“I can marry him.”
“Marry him?”
Neni nodded. “I can get a green card through him if I marry him.”
“Hmm, I see.”
“I just … I have to divorce my husband for a few years. Then I can marry my friend’s cousin and he will file papers for me.”
Natasha nodded, pulling a scrunchy from her wrist to put her hair in a ponytail. She stood up and walked to a water cooler by the door. “You want a cup of water?” she asked Neni. Neni shook her head and watched as Natasha filled a disposable cup and downed the water in one gulp. “Refreshing,” the pastor said with a broad smile as she tossed the cup into a garbage can and retook her seat.
Neni waited, the beating of her heart suddenly noticeable to her.
“You’re thinking of marrying another man for a few years,” Natasha said.
“It’s my friend’s idea. Only, I don’t know if it is right or wrong.”
“Oh, I think we’re way past the point of right and wrong,” Natasha said, chuckling.
“Someone I know used to say that to me a lot.”
“Rumi.”
“Who?”
“Jalaluddin Rumi, the Sufi mystic. He’s the one who said, ‘Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.’ Which was his own way of saying, ‘Let’s not dwell too much on labeling things as right or wrong.’”
“But everything in life is either right or wrong.”
“Is it?”
“It’s not?”
“Why would you want to divorce your husband and risk your marriage for papers, Neni? Why? Is America that important to you? Is it more important to you than your family?”
Neni lowered her eyes and stared at the floor. She could hear pedestrians on Thompson Street, chatting as they walked past Natasha’s office window.
“So much could go wrong with this plan,” Natasha said.
“That’s what I told my friend when she suggested it to me. Because I have another friend from work, and her sister did the same thing. She left her husband and children back in their country and came to America and married a Jamaican man for papers so she could bring her husband and children here. But when everything was finished, the Jamaican man refused to give her divorce unless she gave him more money. He wants fifty thousand dollars.”
“That’s awful.”
“Yes, because now she cannot go back to her country and marry her husband back and bring her family here. She’s over here and they are still over there and the woman is just praying that the Jamaican man will stop being so greedy because she really wants to be with her husband and children.”
“And knowing a story like this, you’re still willing to take the risk?”
“My friend’s cousin is a nice man.”
“Oh, I bet! And the Jamaican man is in all likelihood a wonderful man.”
“I just don’t know what to do,” Neni said.
“Sometimes the best thing to do is nothing.”
Neni feigned a smile. Doing nothing was not an option, but it wouldn’t be respectful to contradict Natasha. Besides, it was best she stopped talking about their papier situation lest she say something Jende wouldn’t want revealed. “The guy who used to talk to me about right and wrong,” she said, attempting to change the topic, “he has a little brother who hated doing nothing.”
“We don’t like doing nothing in this country.”
Neni and Natasha laughed together.
“I used to work for the boys’ family and I was always doing something with the younger one, but I liked it—he was very funny. One time I took him to a playdate with his friend and his friend’s mother offered him some food and he said, no thanks, he was not going to eat anything because he preferred to eat my food when we got home. He thought I was the best cook.”
“I bet he’s right,” Natasha said, to which Neni smiled.
That night, while Liomi was counting and tickling Timba’s toes, Neni sent Mighty an email. Within seconds a response came back:
Sorry, we were unable to deliver your message to the following address
This user doesn’t have a yahoo.com account ([email protected])
Below this line is a copy of the message.
* * *
Hi Mighty,
How are you? How is school?
I hope you are being a good boy and obeying your father and your mother. I heard your mother is not feeling very well. Remember what I told you that mothers are the most special things in the world so be nice to your mother.
Take care, Neni
Forty-five
CINDY ELIZA EDWARDS DIED ON A COLD AFTERNOON IN MARCH 2009, alone in her marital bed, five weeks after Neni Jonga walked out of her apartment. Her husband was in London, on a business trip, as she lay dying. Her firstborn son was in India, walking the Path to Enlightenment. Her younger son was at the Dalton School, being groomed to become a man like his father. Her father, whose identity neither she nor her mother ever knew, had been dead for two decades. Her mother, who she believed loved her too little, had been gone for four years. Her half-sister, completely out of her life since the death of their mother, was still in Falls Church, Virginia, living a life of mat
erial comfort better than the one they had lived together as children but far less comfortable than the one Cindy had been living in New York City. Her friends were all over Manhattan, shopping at Saks and Barneys, lunching and drinking fine wine, planning dinner parties and galas, attending meetings for charities, looking forward to their next vacation to an exotic locale.
“But I don’t understand!” Neni said over and over as Winston recounted to her and Jende everything he knew based on the story Frank had told him that evening, a day after the passing.
Asphyxiation due to vomit, Frank had said, according to the medical examiner. High levels of opiate and alcohol had been found in her body, leading the examiner to believe she had swallowed multiple Vicodin pills, drunk at least two bottles of wine, fallen asleep, and accidentally drowned in her own vomit.
Anna had discovered her lying flat on the bed, her arms flung wide and hanging stiff off the bed, her eyes and mouth open, dried vomit crusted on her chin, neck, and the neckline of her silk nightgown. With Clark out of town, Anna had immediately called Frank, screaming and crying. Frank couldn’t get out of an important meeting at work, so he had asked his wife, Mimi, to hurry to the Edwards apartment. Mimi had gone there and found their friend dead.
“Oh, Papa God!” Neni cried.
“But how could she die that kind of useless death?” Jende asked.
“Why didn’t she go to the doctor? She had all that money and she died in her own bed! Why didn’t one of her friends try to force her? Why didn’t anyone see that there was something wrong with her? What kind of country is this?”
According to Frank, Winston said, Cindy had closed the blinds on the world. Even Mimi, who was one of her good friends, had not seen her in months. Mimi had to show up at the Edwards apartment unannounced after weeks of her calls and emails not being returned, and after having almost a dozen three-way phone conversations with Cheri and June, who were restless and increasingly apprehensive because they couldn’t understand why Cindy wouldn’t tell them what was going on. The women had agreed that Cindy needed an intervention, and Mimi, three days before Cindy’s death, had walked into Cindy’s bedroom with Anna’s encouragement. There, she had seen her friend ashen and limp, near broken, in a white silk nightgown, sitting on her bed and staring at nothing in particular. Cindy had told her she was living in a darkness she couldn’t get out of, and Mimi had begged her to please go see a psychiatrist because she appeared to be dealing with a severe case of depression. Cindy had refused, saying she wasn’t depressed, but Mimi had pleaded for her to at least do it for the sake of her children. Think about Mighty, Mimi had said. Think about how it must feel for him to see his mother like this. Cindy had cried and, for her sons’ sake, agreed to go to a treatment center outside Boston, because with the end of her marriage seeming inevitable, her son in India not returning her calls and emails, her whole life beginning to seem more and more meaningless, she needed to do something now if she ever hoped to taste happiness again. She made Mimi promise not to tell anyone what they’d discussed, not even Frank, not even Cheri or June. She was going to apologize to everyone for ignoring their calls and emails and tell them everything as soon as she felt better.
Neni’s hand remained on her chest throughout the story, her mouth agape. When Winston was done recounting it, she wiped the tears that had been running down her cheeks with the hem of her skirt.
“Should I call Mr. Edwards tonight?” Jende asked.
“No,” Winston said. “Maybe in a few weeks or months. Too much is happening for them right now. Frank only told me all this because I saw him when he stopped by the office on his way to pick Clark up from the airport. He’ll let me know when the date for the memorial service is, and I’ll let you know.”
Jende shook his head sadly. “But how is Mr. Edwards going to manage?”
“Frank said the man was crying so hard over the phone,” Winston said. “It sounds like no matter what happened between them, he truly loved his wife.”
Forty-six
MIGHTY EDWARDS WORE A GRAY SUIT AND PLAYED A BEAUTIFULLY IMPERFECT Claude Debussy’s “Clair de Lune” at the memorial service, which took place a week later. In the front pew, Clark sat with his sunglasses on. The mourners, all two hundred or so of them, sat glum under the hundred-foot-high roof of the Church of St. Paul the Apostle on the corner of Sixtieth Street and Columbus Avenue. Around them were depictions of the Savior and the Holy Mother, above them two rows of pendant lighting, and to their right, on a little table, a prayer book where all who were burdened, all who were weary, all who were brokenhearted, could leave prayer requests and pleas for blessings.
The priest thanked God for loving Cindy Edwards and calling her to spend eternity with Him. What a great rejoicing must be happening in heaven, he said. After the congregation had sung “Nearer, My God, to Thee” and a soloist had sung “Peace, Perfect Peace,” Frank and Mimi’s daughter, Nora Dawson, in a black body-fitting long-sleeved mini dress, her blond hair blow-dried straight like that of her deceased godmother on some of the best days of her life, walked to the altar and read from John, chapter fourteen, verses one to three: Jesus’ promise to his disciples.
“‘Do not let your hearts be troubled,’” she read. “‘Believe in God; believe also in me. My father’s house has many rooms. If that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me so that wherever I am, there you will be also.’ Amen.”
When the moment for eulogy arrived—after the priest had assured the mourners in his message that indeed, Jesus had prepared a special room for Cindy in heaven; after communion had been served; after Cheri had read a poem she’d commissioned titled “No one warned me loving you would leave me this broken”—Vince Edwards stood up and walked to the front.
He had no sheet from which he read. He spoke in anecdotes. Of the mother who roughhoused with him with her pearls on, back when he was a little boy. Of the mother who took him hiking in the Adirondacks just so she could lose her last ten ounces of belly fat. Cindy’s clients, models and actresses who had filled a pew in the center of the church, giggled. He spoke of his mother’s passion for healthy living, her commitment to her clients to help them eat better, have better lives, look better, and be better because they looked better. He spoke of her love for her friends, her love for those who needed her. He spoke of her love of the arts—the forced trips to the Met, her failed attempt to get him to learn the violin, her successful attempt to get Mighty to play the piano so he could one day show the world his talent at Carnegie Hall. Someone in the front clapped. Others joined.
Vince bowed his head and cleared his throat. He looked up and smiled at the congregation. He spoke about the mother whom he had been so blessed to have. “She was imperfect,” he said. “Flawed, yes. But beautiful. So beautiful. Like we all are.”
In the last pew, Jende closed his eyes and prayed for Cindy’s soul to rest in peace.
From where he sat, a somber black face surrounded by somber white faces, he could see the red vase holding the ashes of the woman who, until some weeks before, used to hand him a check to buy his daily bread; the woman who had given his nieces and nephews a year of education and his son a suit from Brooks Brothers. He could see half of the back of Clark’s head and the top of the white mop of hair belonging to Clark’s mother. He couldn’t see Mighty’s head, but his eyes had welled up with tears as he watched the boy ascend the steps to sit at the piano. He’d felt sorry not only for the woman in the vase but also for the young boy, the cheerful child he’d spent many mornings driving to school, a child who now had to live with the shame brought on by the nature of his mother’s death.
“I looked at him and I thought, what is this poor child going to do?” he said to Neni as they lay in bed facing each other that night.
Neni did not respond.
“It’s not your fault,” he said. “I keep on telling you that. It was Mrs. Edwar
ds’s time to go.”
“You think you’re helping someone by keeping their secret …”
“You helped her—”
“I didn’t help her.”
She sat up, her breast pads peeking out of her nursing bra. “Let’s give the money to the church,” she said in a tearful voice.
He turned from his side to his back, looking at the ceiling.
“I think we should give the money away,” she said again.
“You women are something else, eh?” he said, chuckling and shaking his head.
“It’s not a woman thing,” she snapped.
“Your guilt will soon go away.”
“If I had known she was dying …”
“She would have died either way, okay?” he said, his eyes closed, his voice trailing off. “Whether or not she gave you the money, she would have died.”
Forty-seven
THOUGH SHE’D HEARD OF HONOR SOCIETIES, SHE DIDN’T KNOW WHAT they did, so when she received a letter from Phi Theta Kappa inviting her to become a member, she immediately called Betty.
“It means you are smart, oh,” Betty said.
“Really?”
“Yes, madam, really! They only invite people who have good grades. Why are you acting surprised as if you don’t know there’s a good brain inside that oblong head of yours?”
“Jealousy will kill you, Betty,” Neni said, laughing.
