Behold the Dreamers(89)
Vince bowed his head and cleared his throat. He looked up and smiled at the congregation. He spoke about the mother whom he had been so blessed to have. “She was imperfect,” he said. “Flawed, yes. But beautiful. So beautiful. Like we all are.”
In the last pew, Jende closed his eyes and prayed for Cindy’s soul to rest in peace.
From where he sat, a somber black face surrounded by somber white faces, he could see the red vase holding the ashes of the woman who, until some weeks before, used to hand him a check to buy his daily bread; the woman who had given his nieces and nephews a year of education and his son a suit from Brooks Brothers. He could see half of the back of Clark’s head and the top of the white mop of hair belonging to Clark’s mother. He couldn’t see Mighty’s head, but his eyes had welled up with tears as he watched the boy ascend the steps to sit at the piano. He’d felt sorry not only for the woman in the vase but also for the young boy, the cheerful child he’d spent many mornings driving to school, a child who now had to live with the shame brought on by the nature of his mother’s death.
“I looked at him and I thought, what is this poor child going to do?” he said to Neni as they lay in bed facing each other that night.
Neni did not respond.
“It’s not your fault,” he said. “I keep on telling you that. It was Mrs. Edwards’s time to go.”
“You think you’re helping someone by keeping their secret …”
“You helped her—”
“I didn’t help her.”
She sat up, her breast pads peeking out of her nursing bra. “Let’s give the money to the church,” she said in a tearful voice.
He turned from his side to his back, looking at the ceiling.
“I think we should give the money away,” she said again.
“You women are something else, eh?” he said, chuckling and shaking his head.
“It’s not a woman thing,” she snapped.
“Your guilt will soon go away.”
“If I had known she was dying …”
“She would have died either way, okay?” he said, his eyes closed, his voice trailing off. “Whether or not she gave you the money, she would have died.”
Forty-seven
THOUGH SHE’D HEARD OF HONOR SOCIETIES, SHE DIDN’T KNOW WHAT they did, so when she received a letter from Phi Theta Kappa inviting her to become a member, she immediately called Betty.
“It means you are smart, oh,” Betty said.
“Really?”
“Yes, madam, really! They only invite people who have good grades. Why are you acting surprised as if you don’t know there’s a good brain inside that oblong head of yours?”
“Jealousy will kill you, Betty,” Neni said, laughing.
“Right after it kills you.”
When Jende came home that night, she showed him the letter, concerned about what he would say about the hundred-dollar application fee but excited for him to see the validation of her academic prowess, thanks to him working hard to send her to school.
“I don’t even know if I should bother trying to join,” she said, feigning disinterest.
“But this is good, bébé,” he said. “The letter says you are one of the top students in your college. Why didn’t you tell me that? Even with you not going to school this semester they’re still thinking of you.”
“So I can spend the one hundred dollars to join?”
“Spend three hundred,” he said, wrapping his arms around her waist and kissing her. “If there ever was a reason to pinch out a little something from the savings, this is it. If you can join and get one of these scholarships that they say they give to their members …”
“That’s the same thing I was thinking, the scholarships. Imagine, bébé! If I could get a scholarship to help us pay for September, or even January, wouldn’t that be something?”
“Maybe I’ll finally know again what it’s like to have a good night’s sleep.”
The next day she submitted her membership application online and, days later, received an envelope welcoming her to the society and telling her about all the benefits. She immediately went to the website the letter directed her to and, there, she saw the scholarships—dozens of scholarships for students with her grade point average, and students with her level of progress, and students with her major and career interest. For most of the scholarships, though, the deadline had passed. For the ones whose deadlines were still open, she needed to be nominated by a dean.
“Then go see the dean and beg him to nominate you,” Jende said after she told him what she’d discovered.
“But I don’t know any dean,” she said, trying not to get upset at his patronizing tone.
“You go to your school, Neni, and ask someone who this dean who nominates people is. You go to the man and tell him your situation, okay? You tell the man that you have to return to school in September to remain legal in the country. Tell him you are very smart and you want to be a pharmacist but your husband doesn’t make good money anymore. Let him know how bad you want to be a pharmacist, and how bad your husband wants you to be a pharmacist. You have to say anything you can, because you don’t know if the man is going to have a soft heart.”