Imbolo Mbue - Behold the Dreamers

Her phone rang, and she promptly picked it up.

“What do you mean you’ll make it up to him?” she shouted. “You promised him you’d be at the recital! You can’t keep telling a child … I don’t care what’s going on at Lehman! I don’t care how awful things might get if Lehman doesn’t … And what about the Accordion Gala? I need to RSVP by the end of the week … Oh, no, please go on the trip, Clark. Just …”

She tossed the phone aside again and sat with her left elbow against the car door, resting her head in her hand. She sat like that for minutes, and Jende thought he heard the sniff of a downcast woman fighting back tears.

Somewhere in the East Forties, she picked up the phone again.

“Hey, Cheri, it’s me,” she said after the voicemail prompt, her voice placid but the anguish therein still evident. “Just calling, nothing much. I finally got the tickets, so we’re good. Call me back if you’re free. I should be home in about … Never mind, you don’t need to call me back. I’m good, just having a real crappy day. You’re probably still out with your clients … Oh well. By the way, let me know if you’d like some company when you go visit your mom next week, okay? I’ll be glad to come with you.”

She dialed another number, and this time the person appeared to pick up.

“Are you home?” she asked. “Oh, right, I forgot … Yeah, we can talk later. Tell Mike I say hello … Nothing … I mean nothing new, just the same old things. I’m just so upset, and on top of everything else that’s going on … No, no, I’m sorry, please go … No, you don’t have to call me back tonight … Yes, really, I’m fine … I’ll be fine, June, promise. Go. Have fun.”

For the remaining ten minutes of the ride she made no phone calls. She sat quietly, looking out the window, watching happy people marching up and down Madison.

THEY HAD CROSSED THE DELAWARE MEMORIAL BRIDGE AND WERE MORE than halfway back from Washington, D.C., cruising through New Jersey with turnpike signs appearing every few miles.

“Tell me about Limbe,” Clark said. “I want to hear about this place where you grew up.”

Jende smiled. “Oh, sir,” he said, his voice rising with nostalgia, “Limbe is such a nice town. You have to go there one day, sir. In fact, sir, you really must go. When you go, you will see a sign welcoming you as you enter. The sign is special, sir. I have never seen a sign like that welcome anybody to any place before. You see it just as you are coming down the road on the way from Douala, after you pass Mile Four. Nobody can miss it above their heads. It is there in big letters, supported by two iron red pillars, going from one side of the road to the other side. It says ‘Welcome to Limbe, The Town of Friendship.’ When you see that sign, sir, ah! No matter who you are, whether you are coming to Limbe just for one day or to stay for ten years, whether you are big or small, you will feel happy that you have made it to Limbe. You will smell the ocean breeze coming from plenty of miles away to salute you. That sweet breeze. It will make you feel like, truly, there is no place in the world like this town by the ocean called Limbe.”

“Interesting,” Clark said, closing his laptop.

“It is, sir,” Jende replied, eager to tell more. He knew Mr. Edwards was open to hearing more. After three months of driving around together, he’d come to realize that whenever the boss needed a short break from his computer or his phone or the papers scattered on the backseat, he asked him questions about his childhood, his life in Harlem, his weekend plans with his wife.

“And then after the welcome sign, sir,” he continued, “as you pass through Mile Two, you will see the lights of the town at night as they are shining all around you. The lights are not too bright or too many. They are just enough to say that this is a town made of magic, an OPEC city, national refinery on one side of the shore, fishermen with their nets on the other side. Then when you enter Mile One, sir, you begin to really feel Limbe proper. It’s something else, sir.”

“Sounds like it.”

“Ah, yes, sir. Limbe is very special, Mr. Edwards. In Limbe, we live simple lives, but we enjoy our lives well. You will see it when you visit, sir. As you keep on driving through Mile One, you will see young men buying grilled corn on street corners and old men playing draughts. The young women have all kinds of fake hair weaved into their hair. Some of them look like mami wata, those mermaids in the ocean. The older women tie two wrappers, one on top of the other. That is how mature women like to dress. Soon after, you will be at Half Mile Junction. There, you will have to decide whether to turn right, toward Bota and the plantations; left, toward New Town, where I am from; or continue straight, toward Down Beach, where you will see the Atlantic Ocean.”

“Fascinating,” Clark said, reopening his laptop.

“I swear to you, sir, it is the best town in Africa. Even Vince says it’s the type of town he wants to live in.”

“Of course he did,” Clark said. He looked up at Jende in the rearview mirror. “When did he say this?”

“Two nights ago, sir. When I was driving him back uptown after dinner.”

“What dinner?”

“He was home to have dinner with Mighty and Mrs. Edwards, sir.”

“Right,” Clark said. He moved his laptop to his left and picked up a folder of documents held together by jumbo paper clips.

“He’s a very funny guy, Vince,” Jende said, smiling. “He thinks Obama is not going to do anything about—”

“So why are you here?”

“I am sorry, sir?”

“Why did you come to America if your town is so beautiful?”

Jende laughed, a brief uneasy laugh. “But sir,” he said. “America is America.”

“I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean.”

“Everyone wants to come to America, sir. Everyone. To be in this country, sir. To live in this country. Ah! It is the greatest thing in the world, Mr. Edwards.”

“That still doesn’t tell me why you’re here.”

Jende thought for a second; he thought about what to say without saying too much. “Because my country is no good, sir,” he said. “It is nothing like America. I stay in my country, I would have become nothing. I would have remained nothing. My son will grow up and be poor like me, just like I was poor like my father. But in America, sir? I can become something. I can even become a respectable man. My son can become a respectable man.”

“And that could never happen in your country?”

“Never, Mr. Edwards.”

“Why?” Clark asked, picking up his buzzing phone. Jende waited for him to finish his conversation, a ten-second discussion during which he only said, “Yes … No … No, I don’t think he should be fired for that.” The phone buzzed again and he told whoever was on the line to call HR and tell them he was going to take care of it. He hung up and asked Jende to continue.

“Because … because in my country, sir,” Jende said, his voice ten decibels lower, far less unbound and animated than it had been before he heard that someone was in danger of being fired, “for you to become somebody, you have to be born somebody first. You do not come from a family with money, forget it. You do not come from a family with a name, forget it. That is just how it is, sir. Someone like me, what can I ever become in a country like Cameroon? I came from nothing. No name. No money. My father is a poor man. Cameroon has nothing—”

“And you think America has something for you?”

“Ah, yes, sir, very much, sir!” he said, his voice escalating once more. “America has something for everyone, sir. Look at Obama, sir. Who is his mother? Who is his father? They are not big people in the government. They are not governors or senators. In fact, sir, I hear they are dead. And look at Obama today. The man is a black man with no father or mother, trying to be president over a country!”