Behold the Dreamers(70)
The Sunday before Christmas, while Jende was working, she and the children went to the church. Her mother had warned her not to take the baby too far out of the house before she was three months old, but Neni ignored the advice. She bundled Timba in her carrier and took Liomi by the hand, from the 3 subway to the A. When she got to the West Fourth station, she got out and trudged through Greenwich Village. She walked rapidly, breathing out light clouds in the chilly December morning, eager to get to this place of prayer where she could find respite.
When she got there, she was disappointed in what she saw. Instead of a house of worship filled with a youthful diverse crowd of New Yorkers rocking and jiving and saying “Amen!,” the vast pewless room was full of middle-aged white people, not rocking and not jiving but rather singing hymns without the slightest attempt to shake their bodies and cast off their cares and sorrows the way the churchgoers of Limbe did every Sunday morning. Avoiding stares, Neni settled in a seat at the back, the baby still in the carrier, Liomi quiet by her side. The pastor was a woman with long gray hair and red-framed glasses who preached about some kind of coming revolution, a message Neni neither understood nor found applicable to her current situation.
After the service, the pastor came to her and introduced herself as Natasha. Other congregants came over, too, to greet her and to admire Timba sleeping in the carrier. One man said he had worked in Cameroon many years before as a Peace Corps volunteer, far up in the northern region of Adamawa. Neni raised her eyebrows and smiled, surprised and excited to meet someone who had been to her country in a place like that. Though she’d never been to the Adamawa region, she felt as if she’d just reconnected with a long-lost childhood friend.
“I can’t believe you have been to my country,” she said to the man as she handed her completed visitor information card to an usher. “Some people I meet in America don’t even know there is a country called Cameroon.”
The man laughed. Yeah, he said, Americans were not renowned for their knowledge of African geography. He even knew of Limbe, he added, though he’d never been there. He wished he’d gone there to sit on its black sand beaches.
“Everyone was so happy to welcome us,” Neni told Jende that night.
“Maybe because they don’t have black people there, and they want to have a black family,” Jende retorted. “Those kind of white people are always trying to prove to their friends how much they like black people.”
“I don’t care,” Neni said. “I like the place. I’m going to go back.”
“What for? You didn’t even go to church in Limbe. You’re not baptized in any church.”
“So what if I’m not baptized? Didn’t I use to come with you to Mizpah for Christmas and Easter? And didn’t I sometimes go to the Full Gospel near our house?”
“That doesn’t mean you were a church kind of person.”
“Then I’m going to become a church kind of person now. I think it’s good for us to start going to church at a time like this. I was watching on the news the other day about this family that was supposed to be deported and they ran to a church. The church people let them stay in the church—the government could not touch them there.”
Jende shook his head and let out a short derisive laugh. “So you think that’s what we’re going to do, eh?” he asked. “What kind of stupid idea is that? I’m not going to hide in any church. How long did the people stay in the church?”
“I don’t know. How am I supposed to know?”
“You’re the one who thinks it’s a good idea. Why would I do such a thing? A grown man like me, hiding in a church? For what?”
“For what?” she said. “You want to know for what, Jende? For your children! That’s what for. So your children can continue living in America!”
She stood up from the sofa as she spoke and took a seat at the dinette, irritated by his declaration and not wanting to sit next to him anymore. He seemed taken aback by her sudden anger, infuriated that she dare challenge him on the matter.
“You think I don’t care about my children?” he asked her. “You think I won’t do anything for us to stay in America?”
“No!” she said, jumping up from the chair and pointing her index finger directly at him. “I don’t think you will fight till the end for us to remain here. I think when the time comes, you’ll give up, because you care too much about your pride. But I’ll do whatever I need to do for us to stay in America! I’ll go sleep on a church floor, no matter if I have …” She ran to the bedroom and sat on the bed, next to her sleeping daughter.
“What are you crying for?” he said, having followed her and looking angrily at her from the bedroom doorway. “What are those stupid tears for, Neni?”
She ignored him.
“You think I don’t want to remain in America, too? You think I came to America so that I can leave? I work as a servant to people, driving them all over, the whole day, sometimes the whole week, answering yes sir, yes madam, bowing down even to a little child. For what, Neni? What pride are you talking about? I lower myself more than many men would ever lower themselves. What do you think I do it for? For you, for me. Because I want us to stay in America! But if America says they don’t want us in their country, you think I’m going to keep on begging them for the rest of my life? You think I’m going to sleep in a church? Never. Not for one day. You can go and sleep on the church floor all you want. The day you get tired, you can come and meet me and the children in Limbe. Nonsense!”