Imbolo Mbue - Behold the Dreamers

It seemed illogical to Neni that the same amount of money in America could buy only three plantains, which wasn’t enough to feed Jende alone for one day. She hadn’t expected the prices in New York to be the same as in Limbe, but she found it difficult not to be bothered whenever she bought a pound of shrimp for the equivalent of 5,00 °CFA francs — the monthly rent for a room with a shared outdoor bathroom and toilet for all the residents in a caraboat building. You have to stop comparing prices, Jende advised her whenever she brought up the issue. You keep on comparing prices like that, he’d say, you’ll never buy anything in America. The best thing to do in this country, whenever you enter a store, is to ignore the exchange rate, ignore the advertisements, ignore what everyone else is eating and drinking and talking about these days, and buy only the things you need. She began doing so and, after perhaps her tenth visit to Pathmark, she stopped thinking about the exchange rate and learned how to plan meals around what was on sale.

In those first weeks in New York, she always walked the thirteen street blocks north and three avenue blocks west to get to the store. Pushing her shopping cart with one hand and holding Liomi with the other — both of them wearing matching floral spring jackets Jende had bought before their arrival — they walked leisurely whenever the weather allowed so she could take in as much of Harlem as possible: the brownstones with black railings; satisfied patrons admiring their hairdos in beauty parlors; friendly old men, nodding hello; happy Harlemites, smiling at her. Jende had warned her to be careful walking northward because there was talk of gangs and shootings in the housing projects around 145th, but because she never saw anyone with a gun, she walked without worries, going past young and old chatting on street corners.

At Pathmark, even after her first visit, she was impressed with the American way of shopping: the queues at checkout, everyone calmly awaiting their turn; the orderly aisles with prices next to products so shoppers could easily do a comparison for the best value; the superfluous transparency of food manufacturers, who not only attractively packaged products from cornflakes to tea to canned meats but also provided information on what was and wasn’t in the food, some manufacturers going as far as supplying details on what the product could and couldn’t do to a body. No matter what time of day she went, regardless of how many people were in the store, she found the shopping experience fascinating and weirdly serene, almost unlike what a market shopping experience should be, completely unlike the Limbe market. Which was why she missed the exuberance and disorderliness of her hometown’s open-air market. As much as she loved Pathmark, shopping there made her wish she could be back in the midst of the spectacle that happened on Tuesdays and Fridays in her hometown. Those were the days when the stalls that were only half full on other days filled up with smoked fish and crayfish on one end, plantains and cocoyams and vegetables on another end, and with secondhand clothes from Douala next to the flesh of cows slaughtered that morning. She missed the early-morning rush to get the freshest produce and the pushing and shoving of married women determined to pick the best okrika clothes for their husbands and children. She missed the pleas from traders asking shoppers to choose them over competitors and the cunning bargaining that ensued between buyers and sellers.

How much for this bunch plantains? a buyer would ask.

Give me three thousand, my sister, the seller would say.

Three thousand? Why? I give you seven hundred.

No, my sister, seven hundred no correct; I beg give me one thousand eight hundred.

No, I go give you nine fifty. If you no want, I go leave am.

Okay, okay, take am; I di only give you for this price because I don ready for go house.

Eh, see you, cunning man.

No be cunning, my sister, na true. I no go make any profit today, but how man go do?

Ah, Limbe market. She missed the joy of walking away knowing she had negotiated a good deal for a bag of rice. There was no haggling in Pathmark. The owners stated the prices and no one dared challenge them. It was as if they were a supreme deity, which was a pity, because if she could bargain she would find a way to make her new grocery budget work. Her family now had to eat a lot of chicken gizzards and save drumsticks for special occasions. Liomi would soon have to start eating puff-puff for breakfast, instead of Honey Nut Cheerios, and Jende would need to start drinking less Mountain Dew and more water. As for herself, she would have to hold on tightly to the memories of the shrimp she’d had in the Hamptons, because until good money started coming in again, there would be no shrimp dinners, not even on Sundays and holidays.

Thinking of shrimp as she walked through the store made her think of Anna and the brunch they had worked together. Cindy had told them that they could take home the leftovers, and Anna had let her take all the food, including the bacon-wrapped shrimp, which she, Jende, and Liomi had rapturously finished off that evening. It was also thanks to Anna that she’d had such a successful experience working for the Edwardses — Anna had called her back every time she’d left a message saying she didn’t know how to execute an order Cindy had given. Thinking of all this made Neni wish she and Anna had become friends, but she knew it was no longer possible — any chance of a friendship blossoming had ended the last time they spoke.

“What you do to Cindy last night?” Anna had said without prelude when she called just before six o’clock the morning after Neni left the Edwards apartment. She appeared to be on the train, on her way to work.

“Anna?” Neni whispered groggily, rising from the bed to go to the living room so as not to awaken her children.

“I say, what you do to Cindy yesterday?” Anna repeated. “I want to know.”

Neni sat on the sofa, her hands on her left breast, which was heavy and painful from too much milk, thanks to Timba starting to sleep through the night at two months old. “I don’t understand what you want to know,” she said to Anna.

“I want to know why you come to the house yesterday, what you say to Cindy, why she scream for me to call 911. I try to call you after you leave, but I only get your voice message.”

“I had to get home to my children,” Neni said.

“Okay, you with your children now. So tell me what happen with you and Cindy.”

Neni took a deep breath and shook her head. The audacity of Anna, calling at six in the morning to interrogate her. “You know what, Anna?” she said, looking at the bedroom door to make sure it was closed. “I don’t like to say this to people, because I don’t like it when other people say it to me, but it is not your business.”

“Yes, it is my business,” Anna quickly replied.

“How is it your business what happens between me and Mrs. Edwards? I have my relationship with her, you have your own relationship—”

“If someone come to this house and do something to any of this people, it concern me. I work for them, I make sure I do everything I can so they happy. You come here last night, you leave, you know what happen after?”

“What?”

“I want to know what you do to her,” Anna said again.

“We had an agreement about something, and I only went to remind her of the agreement.”

“Agreement for what?”

“Anna, please—”

“You leave this house and the woman lock herself in bathroom and cry alone for two hours!” Anna said, her voice rising slightly in the train. “I try to go to her, she shout at me to leave her alone. She say the F-word to me! Over and over she say F to me, F to we all. Leave her alone. What I do? Maybe she thinks what you did to her was me and you who did it together?”