Behold the Dreamers(85)
How much for this bunch plantains? a buyer would ask.
Give me three thousand, my sister, the seller would say.
Three thousand? Why? I give you seven hundred.
No, my sister, seven hundred no correct; I beg give me one thousand eight hundred.
No, I go give you nine fifty. If you no want, I go leave am.
Okay, okay, take am; I di only give you for this price because I don ready for go house.
Eh, see you, cunning man.
No be cunning, my sister, na true. I no go make any profit today, but how man go do?
Ah, Limbe market. She missed the joy of walking away knowing she had negotiated a good deal for a bag of rice. There was no haggling in Pathmark. The owners stated the prices and no one dared challenge them. It was as if they were a supreme deity, which was a pity, because if she could bargain she would find a way to make her new grocery budget work. Her family now had to eat a lot of chicken gizzards and save drumsticks for special occasions. Liomi would soon have to start eating puff-puff for breakfast, instead of Honey Nut Cheerios, and Jende would need to start drinking less Mountain Dew and more water. As for herself, she would have to hold on tightly to the memories of the shrimp she’d had in the Hamptons, because until good money started coming in again, there would be no shrimp dinners, not even on Sundays and holidays.
Thinking of shrimp as she walked through the store made her think of Anna and the brunch they had worked together. Cindy had told them that they could take home the leftovers, and Anna had let her take all the food, including the bacon-wrapped shrimp, which she, Jende, and Liomi had rapturously finished off that evening. It was also thanks to Anna that she’d had such a successful experience working for the Edwardses—Anna had called her back every time she’d left a message saying she didn’t know how to execute an order Cindy had given. Thinking of all this made Neni wish she and Anna had become friends, but she knew it was no longer possible—any chance of a friendship blossoming had ended the last time they spoke.
“What you do to Cindy last night?” Anna had said without prelude when she called just before six o’clock the morning after Neni left the Edwards apartment. She appeared to be on the train, on her way to work.
“Anna?” Neni whispered groggily, rising from the bed to go to the living room so as not to awaken her children.
“I say, what you do to Cindy yesterday?” Anna repeated. “I want to know.”
Neni sat on the sofa, her hands on her left breast, which was heavy and painful from too much milk, thanks to Timba starting to sleep through the night at two months old. “I don’t understand what you want to know,” she said to Anna.
“I want to know why you come to the house yesterday, what you say to Cindy, why she scream for me to call 911. I try to call you after you leave, but I only get your voice message.”
“I had to get home to my children,” Neni said.
“Okay, you with your children now. So tell me what happen with you and Cindy.”
Neni took a deep breath and shook her head. The audacity of Anna, calling at six in the morning to interrogate her. “You know what, Anna?” she said, looking at the bedroom door to make sure it was closed. “I don’t like to say this to people, because I don’t like it when other people say it to me, but it is not your business.”
“Yes, it is my business,” Anna quickly replied.
“How is it your business what happens between me and Mrs. Edwards? I have my relationship with her, you have your own relationship—”
“If someone come to this house and do something to any of this people, it concern me. I work for them, I make sure I do everything I can so they happy. You come here last night, you leave, you know what happen after?”
“What?”
“I want to know what you do to her,” Anna said again.
“We had an agreement about something, and I only went to remind her of the agreement.”
“Agreement for what?”
“Anna, please—”
“You leave this house and the woman lock herself in bathroom and cry alone for two hours!” Anna said, her voice rising slightly in the train. “I try to go to her, she shout at me to leave her alone. She say the F-word to me! Over and over she say F to me, F to we all. Leave her alone. What I do? Maybe she thinks what you did to her was me and you who did it together?”
“I don’t—”
“I call Stacy, beg her to take Mighty somewhere after hockey so he don’t see his mother like this. I don’t want him to hear Cindy crying in the bathroom because you do something to her.”
“Please don’t make it as if it’s my fault, okay?”
“Oh, so it’s not your fault?”
“It’s not anyone’s fault!”
“You know she got problems,” Anna said, each word coming out angrier than the preceding one. “You know how many problems she got—”
“Wait, you think I don’t have problems, too? Do you know how many problems I have?”
“So you come yesterday for Cindy to solve your problems? That why I see you smile as you leave? Because you make the woman cry after she solve—”
“I did not come for anyone to solve my problems! If I have things that I’m not happy with, I find a way to make them better. I solve my own problems!”