Behold the Dreamers(79)
Three weeks into the jobs, his feet began to ache.
“Maybe it’s arthritis,” Neni suggested, since his father had the same condition. Pa Jonga’s fingers and toes had curled up and out from the disease, and Jende always feared it was inheritable. “You have to go see a doctor,” she said after he had spent a whole night groaning, unable to fall asleep.
He agreed, but where was he going to find the time? he asked her. Besides, he didn’t think it could be arthritis. He was not yet forty, he was young and strong; the pain would go away. A bit of massaging after work would be good enough. So she rubbed them with coconut oil and bound them up every night. In the morning they felt better, ready for twelve or more hours of dishwashing.
She begged him to let her go back to work.
She could call the agency and get another home health aide job really fast. Two incomes would be better than one at a time like this, she argued. He said no—he wanted her home. She was his wife; he would take care of her. He couldn’t imagine her leaving a newborn in a daycare they could barely afford and running off to work all day only to return home tired, overwhelmed, and guilt-ridden. And then, no matter how exhausted she was, she’d still have to cater to an infant, a boy, and a grown man. It was his responsibility to protect her from such a life. If he couldn’t then he wasn’t fulfilling his duty, which was how he felt on the nights he returned home to find her worried because the baby was running out of diapers and Liomi needed a new pair of shoes and there wasn’t enough money to buy beef so she could cook rice and beef stew. Whenever he saw her anxiety, he was tempted to take out some of the money from their savings, but he resisted. They would manage with the little he was making at the restaurants. She had to return to school in the fall. His deportation case wasn’t over. The worst might still be ahead.
On the day of his court appearance, he wore the black suit he had worn to work on his first day working for the Edwardses. Neni had washed and ironed it the night before, neatly placing it on the sofa for him to wear in the morning. Neither of them ate dinner that night, their appetites having been vanquished by their fears. He stayed on the phone talking to Winston while she sat at the computer reading stories about individuals who lost their deportation cases and families who found themselves straddling two countries because one of the parents had been deported. Whatever happens, we will take it as it comes, he told her before they went to bed, and she nodded in agreement, her eyes filling up with tears.
“You’re sleeping?” he whispered to her in the middle of the night.
“No. I can’t sleep.”
“What are we going to do?” he asked her, his voice plaintive, clearly desperate to be reminded that they would be okay.
“I don’t know what we’re going to do … I don’t even know.”
They couldn’t move close to each other and fall asleep in a comforting embrace—the baby was sleeping between them—so they held hands around the baby.
In the morning he stood next to Bubakar as the lawyer answered most of the judge’s questions, speaking in an unquestionable American accent. Bubakar and the judge and the attorney for ICE took turns saying things Jende did not understand. The judge set a date in June for Jende to appear before him again. Bubakar thanked the judge. The judge called for the next case. The whole exchange had lasted less than ten minutes.
“You see what I told you?” Bubakar said, grinning as they exited the federal building. “I continue doing this and we continue buying you time. For now, you’re a free man!”
Jende nodded, though he didn’t feel free. It seemed to him a rather pathetic way of being, postponing the inevitable. He would much rather be truly free.
Forty-one
SHE SAT ON THE CROSSTOWN BUS WITH THE GIFT BAG ON HER LAP, WATCHING as shoppers entered and exited clothing stores and corner bodegas, electronics stores and jewelry boutiques, beauty supply stores and fast-food joints. Traffic on 125th Street was slow—the M60 bus was moving and stopping every quarter-minute—but she remained calm, listening as two men behind her chatted about the Obama inauguration.
I wouldn’t have missed it for nothing, the first man said.
My son says to me, I ain’t coming to stand for hours in no cold, the second man said.
Cold?
Can you believe these children? A historic moment and you’re gonna be talking nonsense about no cold weather?
The first man chuckled.
I got bumps all over me still, thinking about when that pastor came up to say prayers, talking about the miracle, how such a day could even be possible— In our lifetime.
In my mama’s lifetime.
You know, whatever happens from here, it almost don’t matter.
No, don’t suppose it does.
’Cause somewhere up there, Dr. King is looking down at Brother Barack and saying, that’s my boy.
That’s right. Our boy did it.
At Lexington, she got off the bus and took the 5 subway downtown. Again, she held the gift bag on her lap, her grip on its handle tight. When she got off at the Seventy-seventh Street stop, she checked the Edwardses’ address and began walking toward Park Avenue. She had never been in this part of town and was awed by its elegance—streets with no dirt; doormen dressed like rich men; a woman in six-inch Louboutin heels strutting as if the world should be hers on a diamond-encrusted platter; everything so close to Harlem and yet ten thousand miles away from Harlem.