Imbolo Mbue - Behold the Dreamers

On the third Thursday in May — as he was driving Cindy across Fifty-seventh Street to lunch with her best friends, Cheri and June, at Nougatine — he noticed that virtually everyone on the street seemed happy. Maybe they weren’t truly happy, but they looked happy, some practically sprinting in the warmth of the day, delighted to be comfortable again. He was happy, too. It was almost seventy degrees and, as soon as he dropped Cindy off, he was going to take the car to a garage, pay for parking with his own money, and rush into Central Park to breathe in some fresh air. He’d sit on the grass, read a newspaper, have his lunch by a lake or pond, and—

His cell phone rang.

“Madam, I am so … so very sorry, madam,” he said to Cindy, realizing he’d forgotten to turn it off. He searched frantically in his jacket pocket, scolding himself as he pulled it out. “I swear I turned it off this morning, madam. I was sure I turned it off right before—”

“You can get it,” Cindy said.

“It’s okay, madam,” he said, looking at the phone and quickly pressing the side button to silence it. “It’s only my brother calling me from Cameroon.”

“No problem, take it.”

“Okay, thank you, madam, thank you,” he said, fidgeting with his earpiece to pick up before his brother hung up.

“Tanga, Tanga,” he said to his brother, “I beg, I no fit talk right now … Madam dey for inside motor … Wetin? … Eh? … No, I no get money … I don tell you say things them tight … I no get nothing … I beg, make I call you back … Madam dey for inside motor. I beg, I get for go.”

He sighed after hanging up, and shook his head.

“Everything’s okay, I hope?” Cindy asked, picking up her phone to start typing.

“Yes, madam, everything is okay. I am sorry I disturbed you with the noise. It will not happen again, I promise you. That was just my brother calling with his own troubles.”

“You seem upset. Is he all right?”

“Yes, madam, nothing too big. They drove his children away from school because they have not paid their school fees. They have not gone to school for one week now. That is why he is calling me, to send him the money. He is calling me over and over, every day.”

Cindy said nothing. Jende’s voice had come out cloaked in such helplessness that she probably thought it best to ask no more questions, figured it would be better to let him ponder how to help his brother. She continued typing a message on her cell phone and, after putting the phone away, looked up at him and said, “That’s a shame.”

“It is shameful, madam. My brother, he went ahead and had five children when he does not have money to take care of them. Now I have to find a way to send him the money, but I myself, I don’t even …” He made a right turn, and she asked him no more questions. For the next two minutes they drove in silence, as they did ninety percent of the time when she wasn’t on her cell phone with a client or a friend.

“But that’s not right,” she said, her voice suddenly hollow. “Children should never have to suffer because of their parents.”

“No, madam.”

“It’s never the child’s fault.”

“Never, madam.”

She was silent again as they neared Central Park West. He heard her open her purse, unzip and zip at least one pocket, before taking out her lipstick and compact foundation.

“I’m sure it’s going to work out for the kids,” she said, reapplying her lipstick and puckering her lips in the compact’s mirror as he pulled up in front of the restaurant. “Something’s going to work out one way or another.”

“Thank you, madam,” he said. “I will try my best.”

“Of course,” she said, as if she didn’t believe for a second that he had a best to try.

When he came around to open the door for her, she reminded him to pick her up in two hours and then, without prelude, pulled out a check from the front pocket of her purse and handed it to him.

“Let’s keep this between ourselves, okay?” she whispered, moving her mouth close to his ear. “I don’t want people thinking I’m in the habit of giving out money to help their families.”

“Oh, Papa God, madam!”

“You can go cash it and send it to your brother while I’m eating. I’d hate to see those poor children miss another day of school because of a little money.”

“I … I do not even know what to say, madam! Thank you so much! I just … I’m so … I’m just very … My brother, my whole family, we thank you so much, madam!”

She smiled and walked away, leaving him on the curb with his mouth half open. After she’d climbed the steps and entered the restaurant, he opened the check and looked at the sum. Five hundred dollars. He reentered the car and looked at the sum again. Five hundred dollars? May God bless Mrs. Edwards! But his brother had asked for three hundred. Was he to send the whole check because Mrs. Edwards had demanded so? He called Neni, to tell her the story and get her opinion, but she didn’t pick up — she was probably in her school library with her phone on silent, studying for her finals. He didn’t want to wait until he got home to discuss it with her because Mrs. Edwards had asked him to send the money today, and he had to do as he’d been told. His years on earth had taught him that good things happen to those who honor the kindheartedness of others. So, after parking the car, instead of going to Central Park, he half-ran to a Chase branch across from Lincoln Center, cashed the check, and began walking north along Broadway. He stayed on the east side of the street, rushing and sweating under the immaculate sky, forgetting to enjoy his favorite kind of weather because he was too focused on finding a Western Union and getting back to Mrs. Edwards on time. Somewhere in the mid-Seventies, he found one and sent his brother the three hundred dollars the children needed. He’d debated the right thing to do as he filled out the Western Union form, and decided it wouldn’t be right to send the full sum Mrs. Edwards had given. He knew his brother too well. He knew Tanga was most likely going to spend the balance on either gifts for a new girlfriend or new pairs of leather shoes for himself, this while his children went to school with rubber shoes held together with twine. Enabling his brother to do such a thing would never be fair to Mrs. Edwards. Besides, it was better he saved the two hundred dollars, because, in another month or two, a brother or cousin or in-law or friend was going to call saying that money was needed for hospital bills or new school uniforms or baptism clothes or private French classes, since every child in Limbe had to be bilingual now that the government had declared that the next generation of Cameroonians had to be fluent in both English and French. Someone back home would always need something from him; a month never went by without at least one phone call asking him for money.

As he sat in the car with the two hundred dollars in his pocket, he fervently hoped Cindy wouldn’t ask if he’d sent all the money because he would either have to tell her a half-truth or give her a long explanation of how this business of sending money to relatives back home worked and how some relatives had no consideration for those who sent them money because they thought the streets of America were paved with dollar bills.

Cindy reentered the car twenty minutes later and immediately got on her phone.

“I’m still speechless, Cheri,” she said. “Completely speechless … My gosh! Mike? Of all people? … Oh, God, I feel so awful for her … Of course she’s in a daze! I’m in a daze. I thought she looked a bit down when I walked in, but to hear this … She doesn’t deserve it! … No! … She’s been nothing but wonderful to him. Thirty years of marriage, and you wake up one day and say you’re in love with someone else? I’d die … Yes, I’d die! … Okay, maybe I wouldn’t die, but I certainly wouldn’t be getting out of bed the next day to meet up with you guys for lunch … Oh my God! Of course! Oh, gosh, that could be me … I feel like it’s going to be me one day, Cher. I’ll wake up one day and Clark will tell me he’s found someone younger and prettier, oh, God! … Yeah, out with the old, in with the new … I don’t care if she’s forty-five, she can’t be more beautiful than June … Me, neither. I’ve never met even one of those skanks who was anything worth writing home about … I mean, some of them … It’s never about the looks. We went to dinner last night with the Steins, and the waitress, she was definitely not that pretty except for a cute accent from some Eastern European place. But you should have seen how Clark was looking at her … Maybe early thirties … Every time she came over, Cher … No, I’m not kidding you … Of course he still does it, right in front of me … Subtle? Not last night; I had to go to the bathroom to gather myself … Yeah, that’s how bad it was. Humiliating … Maybe it was all in my head because I didn’t want to be there, but the way he was talking to her, smiling at her, curious about her tattoo … It was! A big reminder to me, you know … I just don’t know …”