Behold the Dreamers(16)
Jende laughed back, embarrassed and amused all at once.
“Maybe it’s best you don’t know what Enron was or what they did,” Leah said.
“But I would like to know,” Jende said. “I think I have heard the name somewhere, but I do not know what they did.”
Leah pulled out her phone, looked at the time, and dropped the phone back in her purse.
“They cooked books, honey,” she said to Jende.
“They cooked books?”
“Yeah,” she said, her lips quivering in an attempt to suppress her laughter. “They cooked their books.”
Jende nodded for a few seconds, opened his mouth to say something, shut it, opened it again, shut it again, and then shook his head. “I do not think I should ask any more questions, Leah,” he finally said, and they both burst out laughing in unison.
Eight
MIDNIGHT, AND SHE STILL HADN’T STARTED. FIRST IT WAS JENDE’S WORK clothes she had to iron. Then it was Liomi’s homework she had to help with. After that she had to cook dinner for the next day because, between work and evening classes, there would be no time to cook and clean the kitchen. She had to do everything tonight. She had thought she’d be done with the chores by ten o’clock, but when she looked at the living room clock it was eleven and she hadn’t washed her hair, which badly needed washing. By the time she came out of the shower, the only thing she could think about as she dressed in her sleeping kaba was her bed, but there would be no sleep for her just yet.
She went into the kitchen and took the instant coffee out of the cabinet above the stove, turning her nose away as she opened the can to put two teaspoons of the ground beans in a mug. Nothing about coffee’s forceful smell and dry, bitter taste pleased her, but she drank it, because it worked. Always did. One cup and she could stay up for two more hours. Two cups and she could be up till dawn. Which wouldn’t be such a bad idea tonight: She needed at least three hours of studying if she were to finish all her homework and start preparing for her upcoming precalculus test. Maybe she’d spend two hours on the homework and one hour on precalculus. Or stay up four hours, do two hours on homework and two hours on precalculus. She needed an A on the precalculus test. An A-minus wouldn’t be good enough. A B-plus definitely wouldn’t do. Not if she hoped to finish the semester with at least a 3.5 GPA.
She tiptoed into the bedroom and picked up her backpack, which was lying next to Liomi’s cot. He was sleeping on his side, breathing silently (unlike his father), curled under a Batman comforter, his mouth open an inch, his right palm on his right cheek as if he were pondering matters of great import in his dream. Quietly, she moved closer to him, pulled the comforter to his chest, smiled as she watched him sleep, before returning to the living room.
For three hours she studied, first reading at the dinette in preparation for her next history class, afterward moving to the desktop by the window to finish the English Composition essay she had started in the library, then returning to the dinette to study precalculus, referencing her class notes, her textbook, and practice problems and solutions she had printed from the Internet. The silence in the apartment was like a celestial choir, the perfect background music to her study time—no one to disturb her, interrupt her, ask her to help do this or please come over right now. No sound but the faint noises of Harlem in the nighttime.
Drinking a despicable beverage was a little price to pay for this joy of quiet. Two students in her precalculus class had formed a study group and invited others to join, but she hadn’t bothered replying to their emails—she couldn’t give up this pleasure of being alone just to be able to study with others. It wasn’t even as if there was much to gain from a study group. She had joined one earlier in the semester, for her Introduction to Statistics class, and it had been nothing but an improper use of time. Barely thirty minutes into the group’s first study session (in the students’ lounge), one of the members had suggested they order Chinese, as if their hunger couldn’t be put on hold for two hours. Neni had been sure the other members would say they weren’t interested, but all of them—two young white women, an African-American youngish woman, a teenage-looking young man of indeterminable ethnicity—were in agreement that it was a great idea. She’d had no choice but to order moo shu pork and spend ten dollars she didn’t want to spend, because she knew the sight of the others eating would make her hungry and ultimately chew into her concentration for the duration of the session. The group had stopped studying to order, stopped studying again to eat. While they ate, they chatted about American Idol. Who was better than whom. Who was most likely going to win. Who was definitely not going to win. Their conversation didn’t return to the upcoming test for a whole hour. Perhaps losing an hour of study time was nothing to them. It was something to her.
Around three-thirty, she went to the kitchen for another cup of coffee. Opening the can of instant coffee the second time was better, but the ground beans were still a foul-smelling thing, and no one could convince her otherwise.
She returned to the dinette, took a sip of the coffee. She rested her head in her right hand, closed her eyes, and exhaled. For a minute she kept her eyes closed, staring at the billions of tiny bright spots floating in the blackness. How good would it be to stay in this stillness for much longer, she thought; with nothing to do, nowhere to go. Her mind was always active, it seemed—what needed to be done, by when, how long it would take to get done. Even when she sang during her chores, she was mindful of the next chore. And the one after that. Life in America had made her into someone who was always thinking and planning the next step.