Behold the Dreamers(9)

“I don’t know …”

“Rich father, rich mother, rich husband. I’m sure her whole life she’s never known what it’s like to worry about money.”

Licking his lips, he picked up a piece of plantain from the plate, broke it with his fingers, dunked half of it into the tomato sauce bowl, and hurriedly pushed it into his mouth for processing.

She watched him, amused at the speed with which he was devouring his food. “And then what happened after you dropped Mighty off at school?” she asked.

He came back and picked up Mrs. Edwards, he said, took her to her office and then to an appointment in Battery Park City and to another appointment in SoHo, before taking her home and picking up Mighty from school and driving him and his nanny to a building on the Upper West Side where he got his piano lessons. He took Mighty and his nanny home after the lesson and then picked up Mr. Edwards from his office and drove him to a steak house on Long Island and back to the city around ten. He refilled the gas, parked the car in the garage, and took the crosstown bus from the east side to the west side. Then he caught the uptown 3 subway home.

“Weh!” she exclaimed. “Isn’t that a lot of work for one person in one day?”

Sure, it might be, he told her. But for the kind of money he was being paid, wasn’t it to be expected? She shouldn’t forget, he said, that two weeks ago he was making only half of what Mr. Edwards was paying him, driving the livery cab twelve hours every day.

She nodded in agreement and said, “We can only thank God.”

He lifted his glass of water and took a sip.

“I calculated your thirty-five thousand salary, plus my ten thousand,” she said as she refilled his glass again. “After we pay your taxes and my school fees and rent and send money back home and everything else, we can still save like three or four hundred dollars a month.”

“Four hundred dollars a month!”

She nodded, smiling, amazed, too, at how so much can change in so little time. “We save like that, bébé,” she said, “we try really hard, we can save five thousand a year. Ten years, we could have enough money for down payment for a two-bedroom in Mount Vernon or Yonkers.” She moved her head closer to his. “Or even New Rochelle.”

He shook his head. “We’re going to start paying more for rent one day. How long do you think before the government finds out Mr. Charles is qualifying for cheap housing even though he drives a Hummer? They find out we’re paying him to live here, they kick us out—”

“So?”

“So? Someday we’re going to start paying more than five hundred for rent, and forty-five thousand to live in Harlem will be nothing.”

She shrugged: just like him to think of all the bad things that could happen. “Someday is not today,” she countered. “Before they find out, we would have saved some money. I’ll be a pharmacist by then.” She smiled again, her eyes narrowing as if she were dreaming of that day. “We’ll have our own apartment, two bedrooms. You’ll make more money as a chauffeur. I’ll make a good pharmacist salary. We won’t live in this place full of cockroaches anymore.”

He looked at her and smiled back, and she imagined he believed, too, that someday she would be a pharmacist. Hopefully five years, maybe seven years, but still someday.

She watched him take the last piece of plantain from the plate, use it to clean the tomato sauce bowl, and rush it, together with the last piece of chicken, into his mouth. Looking at him lovingly, she giggled as he finished up the Mountain Dew and burped. “You’re a tanker,” she said to him, poking him in the ribs.

He giggled, too, wearily. Tired as he was, she could see how pleased he was. Nothing pleased him like a delicious dinner after a long day of work. Nothing pleased her like knowing she had pleased him.

After a long pause, during which he leaned back in his seat and stared at the wall with a faint smile, he washed his hands in the bowl of water she had placed on the table and stood up. “Is Liomi in our bed or his bed?” he whispered from the hallway.

“His bed,” she said, smiling, knowing he would be happy for them to have the bed to celebrate on. She picked up his dirty dishes and took them to the sink. E weni Lowa la manyaka, she sang softly, smiling still and swinging her hips as she cleaned the dishes. E weni Lowa la manyaka, Lowa la nginya, Na weta miseli, E weni Lowa la manyaka.

These days she sang more than she had in her entire life. She sang when she ironed Jende’s shirts and when she walked home after dropping Liomi off at school. She sang as she applied lipstick to head out with Jende and Liomi to an African party: a naming ceremony in Brooklyn; a traditional wedding in the Bronx; a death celebration in Yonkers for someone who had died in Africa and whom practically none of the guests knew; a party for one reason or another that she’d been invited to by a friend from school or work, someone who knew the host and who’d assured her that it was okay to attend, since most African people didn’t care about fancy white-people ideas like attendance by invitation only. She sang walking to the subway and even sang in Pathmark, caring nothing about the looks she got from people who couldn’t understand why someone could be so happy grocery shopping. God na helele, God na waya oh, God na helele, God na waya oh, nobody dey like am oh, nobody dey like am oh, ewoo nwanem, God na helele.

When she finished cleaning the dishes she picked up Jende’s jacket, the new black suit she had bought from T. J. Maxx for a hundred and twenty-five dollars, a third of their savings. She cleaned it with a lint brush, sprayed perfume on it, and laid it on the sofa for the next day. She looked at the jacket and smiled, glad she had bought it. She’d wanted to buy a cheaper one at the discount department store on 125th Street, but Fatou had dissuaded her. Why you gonno buy cheap suit for him to drive big man, she had asked. You musto buy from good store lika T. J. Maxx. Buy him fine suit for wear to drive fine car for rich man. And then one day, when he become rich man himself, you gonno buy from better store. You gonno buy his clothes, you gonno buy all you clothes from better, better store. Fine white people store lika Target.