Behold the Dreamers(78)

Neni wanted to tell Jende about Natasha’s message when she returned home from church. She wanted to say that in spite of their circumstances, they should be happy because there was so much happiness in the world and because all of humanity was one. She wanted to say all this and more, but couldn’t, because she wasn’t sure if she believed it. She was hopeless, and there was nothing anyone else’s happiness could do about it.

The Jende who had returned home to her on the night of his firing was a husband pitilessly bowed by life. She had suspected something was wrong that night but she did not deem it right to push an exhausted man to talk, so she let him be. He went to bed without eating, saying nothing to her except that he’d had a bad day and was very tired.

“I won’t be working for Mr. Edwards anymore,” he told her at five o’clock the next morning, when she woke up to feed Timba.

What happened? she wanted to know. Oh, God. What happened? How were they going to manage? How could this be happening now? With the court date only a couple of months away?

Nothing happened, he told her. Mr. Edwards is a good man and has been very happy with his service. He just did not need him anymore.

“But why!”

“He didn’t say why. He just thanked me and said he won’t be needing me anymore.”

“Oh, Papa God. Why, oh, Papa God, why?”

They would survive, he assured her. Mr. Edwards had given him a nice goodbye check which was equal to two months’ salary. By the time the money ran out, he should be back driving a cab in the Bronx. He only had to call Mr. Jones and get his old job back.

“Have we not come this far?” he asked her, holding her by the shoulders and looking into her eyes. “If someone had told us back when we were in Limbe and I was collecting garbage that we would be in New York City, would we have believed it?”

She shook her head and closed her eyes to release her tears. Timba was cooing on the bed next to them, still living in a perfect world.

“It’s Mrs. Edwards!” she said.

“It doesn’t matter, bébé.”

“It’s her!”

“Come,” he said, drawing her to his chest.





Forty


MR. JONES, THE OWNER OF THE LIVERY CABS, HAD NO SHIFTS FOR HIM. “People are lining up around the block to drive a cab,” he said. “Too many people. Don’t even got enough cars to rent to everyone.”

“Not even graveyard shift?” Jende asked. “I’ll take anything.”

“I only got five cars. Five cars and fourteen people who wanna drive them.”

Jende tried to coax him into taking shifts from other drivers to give to him. “But I used to take good care of the car, Mr. Jones, remember? No accidents. No scratches.”

“Sorry, bro. Ain’t no more shifts. Nothing for the next two months. I’ll call ya if someone calls to cancel, promise. Keep you on standby.”

Neni came into the bedroom as he was ending the call. His head hung so low it seemed in danger of falling off. She sat beside him on the bed.

“We still have a good amount of money saved,” she said, placing her hand on his lap.

“So what?”

“So, let’s not worry too much, eh?”

“Yes,” he said, standing up. “Let’s not worry until all the money is gone.”

He went into the living room, sat on the sofa, and turned on the TV. Less than a minute later he turned it off—he couldn’t watch. To be sitting at home jobless seemed the worst punishment of all. The idleness. The worthlessness. Watching television when others were at work felt completely profane—it was what little children and old people and sick people did, not able men.

“You want me to make you some fried ripe plantains and eggs?” Neni whispered, stooping beside him with her hands on his knees. She was trying too hard, he could tell. It wasn’t for her to save him. He had to save himself.

“No,” he said, standing up and walking toward the door. “I need some air.”

The next week, after a series of long restless nights, he got a job washing dishes at two restaurants. One of the restaurants he used to work for, when he first came to New York, back before he got a driver’s license and started driving a cab. On his first day back a colleague told him about an opening at another restaurant in Hell’s Kitchen. He took the subway there right after his shift and got that job, too. With the two jobs, he worked mornings, afternoons, evenings. He worked weekends, too. For six days of the week he left before Liomi woke up and came back after he was in bed. For working all those hours, he got less than half of what he used to make working for Clark Edwards.

Better this than to be like all those people with no jobs in this bad economy, he consoled himself. Still, it was an undignified fall. To be wearing a suit and holding a briefcase every day, driving to important places, eavesdropping on important conversations, only to now find himself scraping leftovers from plates and loading them into a dishwasher. To once have driven a Lexus to executive meetings, only to now stand in a corner cleaning silverware. To once have had hours of free time to sit in the car and catch up on his phone calls, call Neni to check on her day, call his parents to check on their health, call his friends back in Limbe for the latest news, only to now have a mere fifteen minutes here and there to sit and rest his hands or have a free meal from the kitchen.