Behold the Dreamers(35)
“Do you like living in Harlem?” he asked her while she was making his dinner, surprising her with his forwardness, a characteristic untypical of children from Limbe.
“It’s nice,” she said.
“Jende says he doesn’t like it too much.”
“He said that?” Neni said, turning from the stove. “Why would he say that?”
“Because he’s honest,” Mighty said with a laugh, “and honesty’s the best policy, right?”
Even when she wished he wasn’t so inquisitive, she couldn’t deny that he was a token of how normal rich children could be. During their first days together, he amused her with questions about African lions and leopards and what kind of animals she had seen roaming around Limbe, questions she was sure he’d already asked Jende at least a dozen times but which delighted her so much that she made up tales about monkeys stealing her lunch when she was a schoolgirl, and a classmate who used to come to school riding on an elephant. I don’t believe it, Mighty would say to such stories, and Neni would make up an even more incredible one. Babysitting him was by far the most enjoyable part of her job, and the part she was certain she impressed Cindy the most in executing. Every time Cindy walked into a room to see her and Mighty laughing or playing, Neni could sense Cindy’s approval because nothing appeared to matter to the madam more than the happiness of her children, their nonstop possession of every good thing life had to offer. If Mighty was laughing and Vince was smiling, there couldn’t be a happier woman on earth than Cindy Edwards. This desire for their happiness (constantly asking if they needed something; always reminding Neni to make their meals and snacks just the way they liked them; giving Mighty three kisses every time either of them left the house) was followed closely only by her obvious need for a sense of belonging, an utterly desperate need she could never seem to quench.
It was a longing that confounded Neni, because on the day they met, Cindy Edwards appeared to be a woman with no desperate needs. From the moment they shook hands in the portico until Cindy left for her dinner, the madam was enveloped in an air of superiority, standing tall and keeping her shoulders back as she walked in long strides, slowly enunciating every word when she spoke, as if she had the right to take as much of the listener’s time as she wished. She pointed with slender manicured fingers bearing a sole emerald ring, nodding like an omnipotent empress as she took Neni around the house to give her polite but specific instructions on what she must do every morning and how she must do it; as she told her things that Anna might have said but which she needed to reiterate, things like what she couldn’t stand in a housekeeper: dishonesty, poor communication, and not acting with poise when company was around.
And yet, despite this portrait of a self-assured woman, Cindy seemed to have a near obsession with being where everyone was and doing what everyone was doing. Within four days, Neni noticed that she was on the phone with a friend at least once a day, wondering if the friend had gotten an invitation to So-and-So’s cocktail party, or This-and-That’s dinner party, or that upcoming gala or wedding. On the few occasions when her friends apparently told her they’d gotten their invites and she hadn’t gotten hers, she seemed to be in physical pain, her deep sighs and suddenly slumped shoulders and sad voice revealing to Neni that despite the fact that she was telling her friends that it was okay, she wasn’t okay because she was probably wondering why she hadn’t been invited, what she’d done to not be invited, if her social status was intact. This desperation to always be a part of something, always maintain a sense of specialness thanks to the action of others, baffled Neni, but she didn’t call Jende to talk about it because she knew he would say what he always said whenever she said she couldn’t understand why people cared about stupid things like the approval of others: Different things are important to different people.
Five days after her arrival, though, she called him to talk about Cindy, terrified.
“I think Mrs. Edwards is very sick,” she whispered from her room in the basement.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
There was no one else in the house, and Mrs. Edwards looked sick, she told him.
“What kind of sick, Neni? Fever? Headache? Stomachache?”
“No, no, not that kind of sick,” she whispered again.
Where was everybody? he wanted to know. Mr. Edwards was in the city, and Mighty and Vince were at the beach, she informed him. What did it matter where they were? she asked in frustration after replying to the question. Mrs. Edwards did not look well, and she was afraid because she didn’t know what to do. The madam looked like she was very sick, but maybe she wasn’t sick. She needed advice from her husband, not one question after another.
“But you’re saying fifty different things,” he said. “Say something that makes sense.”
Mrs. Edwards had told her she was going into her bedroom for a nap and asked that she not be disturbed. Neni had stayed in the basement, doing laundry, before remembering that the sheets in the guest bedroom needed to be laundered. She had opened the door to the second-floor guest room without knocking, assuming Mrs. Edwards was asleep in the master bedroom on the first floor. When she entered, she had seen the frightful sight: the always composed and elegant madam splayed against the headboard of the bed, hair strands lying on her sweaty face, her hands limp on her sides, her mouth half open with saliva halfway down her chin.