Behold the Dreamers(60)



“Maami?” Jende asked.

“How did you guess?”

“As if I only met you today. What other woman will make your eyes sparkle like that?”

Winston smiled. “I found her on Facebook,” he said.

“Facebook?” Jende said. “This Facebook thing is something else, eh? Neni, didn’t you just find your cousin who moved to Checko, Checkslo … some country over there?”

Neni nodded on the sofa, without taking her eyes off her Oprah magazine. “He doesn’t call home or send his mother money,” she said, “but the mbutuku has time to show the whole world pictures of his new shoes and clothes on Facebook.”

“I’m telling you it’s something else, this Facebook wahala,” Winston said. “I join the thing for one minute, I see one friend from BHS, connect to another friend, before I know I’m looking at Maami’s picture, her makandi still as manyaka ma lambo as it was in high school. Kai!” He clapped his hands and spread them to show the full width of the buttocks. “That same night I call her, we talk till two o’clock in the morning.”

“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?”

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