Imbolo Mbue - Behold the Dreamers

“What are you guys doing in my house?” she teased them as Vince gave her a hug and stooped to high-five Liomi.

“I can’t believe I’m in Harlem!” Mighty said. “Did you make puff-puff ?”

Neni and Jende laughed. “That’s for breakfast,” Jende said. “This evening we have food that you will eat and your belly will get so full it will explode.”

“Cool!”

If the Edwards boys were fazed by the obvious signs of poverty in the apartment (the worn-out brown carpet; the retro TV sitting on a coffee table across from the sofa; the fan in the corner struggling to do the job of an AC; the fake flowers hanging on the wall and doing nothing to brighten the living room), they did not show it. They acted as if they were in any of the apartments they visited on Park or Madison, as if it were just a different kind of beautiful apartment in a different kind of nice neighborhood. Mighty ran to the bedroom with Liomi to see Liomi’s toys and called out to his brother that wow, everyone gets to sleep in the same bedroom here, how cool! Vince sat with Jende on the faded green sofa, drinking Malta and eating roasted peanuts with him, talking about America the good country, America the bad country, America the country that no one could argue was the most powerful country in the world.

When Neni was done putting the food in serving dishes and placing them on the table, Jende announced it was time to eat.

“We are going to eat Cameroon style,” he said to Vince and Mighty. “In Cameroon we do not usually sit around the table, like you do in America. Everyone takes their food and sits where they like, on a chair, on the floor. They eat how they like, with a spoon or a fork or with their hands—”

“I wanna sit on the floor and eat with my hands!” Mighty said, and Liomi immediately added that he wanted to do the same thing. So Neni put a tablecloth on the floor, moved the food from the table, and they all sat in a circle on the floor and ate, laughing out loud with full mouths as Jende told them stories from his boyhood, like how he and Winston used to go stealing mangoes when they were eleven and how one time his foot got caught in an animal trap and he had to run all the way back home with a trap stuck to his foot, only to arrive and have his father beat him before going to fetch the man who owned the trap to come take it off. Vince chuckled, and Mighty and Liomi laughed so hard they almost choked, but Neni only rolled her eyes because she’d heard the story before and every time the story had a different ending.

“Papa has the best stories!” Liomi exclaimed.

“I wanna hear more!” Mighty said.

Vince looked at his watch, then at Jende and Neni, and shook his head. “I’m sorry, bud, we’ve got to leave now.”

“Why?”

“I’m sorry, I’ve got other plans. I’ve got to take you back home to Stacy.”

“But Neni!” Mighty cried, looking at Neni, who averted her gaze. Vince stood up and walked to the kitchen to wash his hands.

“I don’t wanna go back just yet,” Mighty said to Jende and Neni, looking beseechingly from one to the other. “Please, can I stay a little longer?”

“Your mother and father will not be happy, Mighty,” Jende said.

“But they won’t even be back home till after midnight. Dad may not even come back till tomorrow, and Mom said she might not be home till after two in the morning. I heard her tell Stacy that. So I can stay till ten or eleven and they won’t even know it.”

“I’m sorry, bud,” Vince said, coming out of the kitchen. “I’ve got other plans. This was fun, right? I’ll pick you up Monday evening and we’ll do something fun again, okay?”

Mighty did not respond. He pouted and turned his face away, rubbing his fingers, which were fully covered with palm oil from the ekwang .

“Maybe I’ll come to your house for a playdate, too,” Liomi said to Mighty, perhaps in an attempt to cheer him up or perhaps because Mighty had mentioned that he had the latest and cooler model of some of the toys Liomi had, most of which Cindy had given Neni. Whatever his intention, he said it so sweetly and sincerely that Neni almost laughed but, seeing how upset Mighty was, thought it best not to openly laugh at her child’s innocence in believing he would someday get an invite to a playdate at the Edwardses’. But then, she thought, she couldn’t be so sure Cindy wouldn’t invite Liomi over. Without ever meeting Liomi, Cindy had been sending him toys and clothes, some of them brand-new. When Liomi had come down with a case of pneumonia barely a month after Jende started working for them, Cindy had sent Jende home one evening with a basket of fruits and teas and healthy snacks. She’d written Liomi a letter, after he sent her a handmade thank-you card, praising his handwriting and saying Jende must be doing a great job raising him.

“Why can’t Jende take me home later?” Mighty asked, still pouting and ignoring Vince’s pleas to stand up and wash his hands. “I’m going to go home, and it’s going to be boring sitting—”

“But you told me you have fun with Stacy,” Neni said.

“Yeah, but not this kind. Please, Neni. We didn’t even get to make puff-puff .”

“Maybe I’ll come back to the Hamptons next summer,” Neni said. “Then we’ll get to do everything all over again, right?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Jende stood up and held out his hand to Mighty to help him stand up. “There will be another time, Mighty,” he said to the boy. “By the grace of God, there will be many more times.”

Mighty stood up and followed Jende to the kitchen sink, where he washed his hands.

After an hour and a half of fun, the Jongas hugged the Edwards boys goodbye and wished Vince a good time in India, and the Edwards boys thanked the Jongas for a really cool dinner party.

As they were about to leave, Mighty remembered something.

“How’s there going to be another time like this when Vince is leaving?” he asked Neni. “My mom and dad are never going to bring me here.”

Smiling, Neni told him that he was going to have to take the subway and come all by himself then, which made Mighty grin — the idea of taking the subway alone from the Upper East Side to Harlem to have Cameroonian food must have sounded totally awesome.

IT HAPPENED IN THE MIDDLE OF SEPTEMBER, AROUND THE TIME WHEN the night air begins to ruthlessly wipe out memories of summer and once-happy chimes of ice cream trucks begin to sound like elegies.

Two weeks before it happened, he had a lifelike dream, the kind of dream he would remember in detail even months after. He was back in Limbe, strolling through the market with his friend Bosco, who, oddly, was slender and tall and looked nothing like the tree trunk of a man he was in real life. It was a market day, a Tuesday or a Friday — he could tell from how crowded the market was and how slowly cars moved through it, drivers impatiently honking and pushing their heads out of windows to swear at each other, screaming, Commot for my front before I cam jambox ya mouth; ya mami ya; ya mami pima!

As they strolled past the brick store that sold chocolate spread, imported wine, and other luxurious foods, Bosco pointed out that there were no singing gamblers in the market that evening. Jende looked at the spot where the singing gamblers usually gathered, next to the women selling jaburu and strong kanda and assorted smoked fishes. There was no one there. No men from some unknown place, wearing agbadas, beating djembe drums, and singing in perfect harmony as they tried to entice passersby to come spend a little bit of money to play games that could win them a whole lot of money.