Imbolo Mbue - Behold the Dreamers

Around three-thirty, she went to the kitchen for another cup of coffee. Opening the can of instant coffee the second time was better, but the ground beans were still a foul-smelling thing, and no one could convince her otherwise.

She returned to the dinette, took a sip of the coffee. She rested her head in her right hand, closed her eyes, and exhaled. For a minute she kept her eyes closed, staring at the billions of tiny bright spots floating in the blackness. How good would it be to stay in this stillness for much longer, she thought; with nothing to do, nowhere to go. Her mind was always active, it seemed — what needed to be done, by when, how long it would take to get done. Even when she sang during her chores, she was mindful of the next chore. And the one after that. Life in America had made her into someone who was always thinking and planning the next step.

She opened her eyes.

She’d had enough studying for now, she decided. The precalculus test wasn’t for another two weeks. She was in a good place with her preparation. She’d do a round of practice problems on Sunday, another round the night before the test and, come test day, she’d be ready.

HE KNEW BAD NEWS COULD COME EVEN ON THE HAPPIEST OF DAYS. HE knew it could arrive even when sadness was as far from the heart as Ras ben Sakka is from Cape Agulhas.

He knew any given day could be like the day his brother sent a text message asking him to call back as soon as possible. That had been a good day, a warm sunny Saturday. He was at the Red Lobster in Times Square with Neni and Liomi, eating with his favorite people at his favorite restaurant. He had immediately called his brother back and listened to him say, in a panicked voice, that their father had come down with an ugly case of malaria and could barely talk. Pa Jonga’s eyes had rolled to the back of his head, Jende learned, and he was now in a conversation with his long-dead father. He needed to be rushed to a private hospital in Douala; money for the hospital could be borrowed from a businessman in Sokolo if Jende could talk to the lender and promise to send the funds for repayment as soon as possible. I beg you, Jende, his brother had said, you get for promise for send the money now-now-so, or Papa go die by daybreak.

Jende had not been able to finish his food after that call. Neni had asked the waiter to wrap up the sautéed shrimp while Jende ran, first to an ATM, to withdraw money from their savings account, and then to a bodega bearing a Western Union logo on its window, to transfer the funds to Cameroon. He ran along Eighth Avenue like a deranged man, pushing aside tourists so he could send the money as soon as he could even though the time would make no difference since his brother would not be able to retrieve the money till Monday.

His father had survived, and Jende had been reminded that, indeed, bad news has a way of slithering into good days and making a mockery of complacent joys. But the day Bubakar called, that Tuesday in April 2008, was not a special day. Jende was at work, the weather was cold, the streets of Manhattan as brutal to drive on as any other day.

He was parked on a street corner, reading Clark’s discarded Wall Street Journal, when he saw Bubakar’s name flashing on his phone. He picked up the phone warily, knowing it had to be big news, good or bad: Immigration lawyers, like doctors, did not call to say hello.

Bubakar said hello, asked about his day. His voice was somber and serious, lacking the eh s and abi s he often added at the end of sentences, and from that Jende could tell something was amiss. Even when Bubakar asked about Neni and Liomi and tried to make small talk about life as a chauffeur, Jende could tell the man was merely sterilizing a spot on his heart so he could inject painful words.

“I finally received the letter,” Bubakar said.

“What did they say?”

The asylum application was not approved, the lawyer told him. The case was being referred to an immigration judge. Jende would need to appear in court because the government was going to begin removal proceedings against him. “I tried my very best, my brother,” he said. “I truly did. I’m sorry.”

Jende said nothing — his heart was pounding too fast for his mouth to open.

“I know it’s not good news, my brother, but don’t worry,” he went on. “We’ll keep fighting. There is a lot we can do to keep you in the country.”

Still, Jende could muster no words.

“It’s very hard, I know, but we must try to be strong, okay?”

The silence remained.

“Stay strong, my brother. You’ve got to stay very strong. I know it’s a mighty shock. Really, the decision is shocking me, too, very much right now. But what can we do? The only thing we can do right now is to keep fighting.”

Finally, Jende muttered a barely audible something.

“Huh?”

“I say, this means I have to leave America?”

“They say that, yes. They don’t believe your story that you’ll be killed by Neni’s family if you go back to Cameroon.”

“I thought you said it was a good story, Mr. Bubakar. In fact, you yourself told me that they would believe me. We left the interview happy. You told me I had answered the questions very well and that the Immigration woman looked like she believed me!”

“Yes, but like I told you the last time we spoke, I didn’t think it was a good sign when she told us to go home and wait for the decision in the mail instead of asking us to come back to the asylum office in a couple of weeks to pick it up. I didn’t want to read too much into it—”

“You told me not to worry too much about the fact that it was taking them too much time to mail us the decision, because Immigration is very slow. That’s what you said!”

“They don’t even have the decency to apologize and explain why it took them a whole eternity to make one decision—”

“You didn’t make it sound that bad, Mr. Bubakar! You told me that the woman was very satisfied with my answers!”

“I thought so, my brother. I thought she was. But who knows how those bastards at Immigration really think? We give them a story and hope they believe it. But some of them are wicked people, very wicked. Some people in this country don’t want people like me and you here.”

“What is going to happen to me now? Are they going to arrest me and force me inside a plane? Will I get a chance to say goodbye …”

“Oh, no, God forbid! Inshallah, it’ll never get to that. No, for now you’re going to get a date when you have to stand in front of an Immigration judge. ICE lawyer will be there, pushing for the judge to throw you out of the country. I will be there, standing next to you, pushing for you to remain. I’m going to do everything I can to convince the judge that the people at USCIS are wrong and that you belong in America. The judge will either side with ICE lawyer and deny your asylum application or he’ll side with us and approve the application so you can remain in the country and get a green card. Inshallah, the judge will side with us.”

“So you are saying it’s going to be you versus the lawyer from the government?”

“That’s correct. Me versus their lawyer. Better man go win all.”

“Oh, Papa God!”

“I know, my brother, I know, believe me. But you have to put your faith in me. You must, okay? We’re going to do this together. Have we not made it this far together?”

Jende took in a deep breath. The car seat had turned into a bed of needles.

“Did I not help you make it this far?” Bubakar said. “Did I not petition USCIS to give you a work permit when they were taking too long to get to your case? Eh? Is it not because of that work permit that you were able to get a driver’s license and now have a better job?”