Imbolo Mbue - Behold the Dreamers

“She’s not married?”

“She says she has a boyfriend, a little white thing down there in Texas. We’ll see about that when she sees me with her two eyes again.”

Jende chuckled with his mouth full. “When you see her,” he said after he’d swallowed, “just ask her to compare the snakes. Whoever has the longer one that can glide in and out fastest, wins.”

“Jende!” Neni said, widening her eyes and motioning with her lips toward Liomi.

“Uncle has a snake?” Liomi asked, turning from the TV.

“Yes,” Winston said, laughing, “and you’re not allowed to see it.”

“But Uncle—”

“Stop asking stupid questions to grown people and go do your homework,” Jende yelled.

“Don’t shout at him because of that,” Neni retorted after Liomi had gone into the bedroom. “You guys are the ones who started it.”

“Then he should have closed his ears.”

“Why should he close his ears?”

“Because children—”

“Married people!” Winston exclaimed, throwing his oily hands up. “Stop with your bickering before I swear off marriage forever. I’m begging you!”

Neni gave Jende a dirty look and returned to her magazine.

“How bolo, Bo?” Winston asked Jende.

“Condition is critical,” Jende said, before recounting the story of his meeting with Cindy.

Neni put her magazine down to listen. “You have to tell her what you know,” she said after Jende was done telling the story. Her hand was on her belly, her swollen feet on a stool. “I believe it’s my right to know everything about you. It’s her right to know everything about her husband, too.”

Winston nodded as he ripped the skin and meat off a piece of turkey neck.

“Ah, you women,” Jende said. “You worry too much. Why do you want to know all of a man’s business, eh? I don’t want to know all of your business. Sometimes I hear you talking to your friends on the phone and I don’t even want to hear what you’re saying to them.”

“Well, that’s you,” Neni said. “It doesn’t mean it’s the same for everyone. I don’t want to know where you went and who you saw every day and all that but some wives want to know. Some husbands want to know, too. That is okay by me.”

“So you don’t mind if I start asking your friends about you?”

“If you want to call my friends right now and ask them something about me, you can call them. My hands are clean. There is nothing my friends are going to tell you that is different from who you think I am.”

“Eh, truly?”

“What do you mean, ‘Eh, truly’?”

“I mean, if I ask your friends they won’t tell me that you’ve been doing dirty things with one of those African-American men on the street with pants falling down their legs?” he said, winking at her.

Winston laughed.

“New Yorkers, come and hear something!” Neni said, raising her hands. “Why would I ever do that? Why would I take one of the ones with no job and five baby mamas? I beg, oh. If I ever want to try something new, I’ll find me a nice old white man with lots of money and an oxygen tank.”

“Not a bad idea,” Winston said. “We could all split his money when he goes.” Neni and Winston cackled together and gave each other an air high-five.

“But seriously,” Jende said, “women have to learn to be more trusting. They have to trust their husbands that they know what they’re doing.”

“I have to agree with Neni, Bo,” Winston said. “You have to tell her.”

“Have you guys been drinking kwacha ? I cannot ever say anything about what he does. To anyone! I don’t have any business talking about him. I signed a contract when he hired me. You remember?”

“Yes,” Neni said, standing up to clear the table. “So?”

“The contract said I cannot discuss anything about him with anybody, even his wife.”

“Forget the contract,” Winston said.

“Ah, Bo, how can you say that when you’re a lawyer? How can you tell me to do something that you know can make me lose my job?”

“But what are you afraid of telling her?” Neni asked, walking back from the kitchen. “Do you know something that he’s hiding from her?”

Jende did not reply; he’d wanted to tell her for a long time.

When he first found out about the women, he’d thought it would be nice for her to know so they could gossip about it late at night, laugh about Mr. Edwards booking an appointment with a tall woman or a blond woman. Whenever he dropped Mr. Edwards at the Chelsea Hotel, he would tell her about it and they would laugh, and she would be grateful that he would never do such a thing because he was a good man, an honorable man, a man of integrity. But the more he thought about it, the more he realized how differently it could play out if he told her. She might become suspicious, even anxious. She would think: What if Mr. Edwards offered him a prostitute, too, as some sort of gift or bonus? What if Mr. Edwards indoctrinated him, contaminated him, made him feel as if it was every man’s God-given right to satisfy himself as often as he needed to? He could see her becoming needlessly terrified, especially now that her face had grown fat, her legs had grown fat, and her whole body looked like it would be fat for years to come. Which didn’t bother him. Didn’t bother him at all. But he knew that she thought he cared, which was why she bought all those magazines with skinny women on the cover and made sure she didn’t put too much palm oil in the food. Now she was talking about weight loss and calories and cholesterol and sugar-free this and fat-free that and stupid things no one in Limbe talked about. Now she was beginning to worry about nonsense. She was becoming a fearful wife.

He loved her so much (he wouldn’t have traded her even for an American passport), but he could understand why she was afraid. He was the only man she’d ever loved, just like her father was the only man her mother had ever loved. And then what happened? Twenty-four years into their marriage, the year after her father lost his job at the seaport, her mother found out that her father had impregnated a teenager who lived in Portor-Portor Quarters. Her mother had been humiliated; Neni had been humiliated more than her mother, if such a thing were possible. Her mother had caught her crying and yelled at her. Wipe those tears, she’d said. Men are ruled by a thing they cannot control. Neni had wanted to yell back at her mother and tell her to stop justifying her husband acting as if his unhappiness was everyone’s fault. She’d wanted to scream at her for staying married to an angry man who scolded her in front of her children, but she knew that with only a part-time secretarial job and eight children, her mother would struggle to start a new life. So she had dried her eyes and decided on that day that there was one thing she wanted in a man above all else: loyalty. And that was the one thing Jende was best at, above all other men she’d ever known: keeping his promises.

“Do you know something?” she asked him again.

“Why would he share his secret with me?” he said to her. “I’m his driver, not his friend.”

“Then so?” she said. “Tell her. I wouldn’t try to anger Mrs. Edwards if I were you.”

“I agree with Neni,” Winston said. He was now sitting on the sofa with Neni, while Jende sat alone at the table. “The moment Neni told us about the woman and her drugs, I knew something was not right with her.”

“That doesn’t mean—”

“That means that, Bo, this woman can make you lose your job.”

“Rubbish!”

“It’s not rubbish, Jends.”

“Women can be very determined,” Winston said. “If you don’t give her what she wants, you could lose your job. He hired you, but she can fire you, I’m telling you.”