Behold the Dreamers(98)
“But bébé—”
“I said, if you ever say this kind of foolish talk to me again, Neni, I swear to God—”
“The money from Mrs. Edwards, it’s my money, too!”
He stood at the door, looking down at her looking up at him. “If you dare open your mouth and say one more thing, Neni!”
“You’ll do what?”
He slammed the door in her face and left her frozen on the toilet seat.
Fifty-two
BUBAKAR AGREED TO DO AS JENDE WANTED. HE WOULD PETITION THE judge to close the deportation case in exchange for Jende leaving the country on his own.
“Voluntary departure is what they call it,” Bubakar said. “You leave quietly within ninety days. The government will be happy. They don’t have to pay for your airfare back to Cameroon.”
“And I can come back to America?” Jende asked.
“Of course,” the lawyer said. “If the embassy gives you a visa again. But will they? I cannot tell you the answer. You will not be banned from returning to the country like you would be if you had just overstayed your visa and left. You can still come back, but will you be able to get another visa after what you did with the last one? Only the embassy in Cameroon can decide that.”
What about his wife and children? Jende wanted to know. Would they be able to come back? The baby could always come back because she was American, Bubakar told him. As for Neni, she should be fine if she formally withdrew from BMCC and left by a certain date after the international students office terminated her record in SEVIS. The embassy would probably give her another visa in the future because they wouldn’t hold it against her that she once came in on a student visa and was unable to finish her studies because she had a baby.
“But your son, Liomi,” Bubakar said. “He will be in the same hot soup as you.”
“Why? He is only a child. They cannot punish him if his parents brought him here. I am the one who made him overstay his visa. It’s my fault, Mr. Bubakar. It’s not his fault.”
“Eh? Na so you think, abi?” The lawyer laughed his usual two-note laugh. “Let me tell you something, my brother,” he said. “American government does not care whether you are a one-day-old baby who was brought here and ended up illegal or whether you were blindfolded and tossed into a shipping container and woke up to find yourself in Kansas City. You hear me? American government doesn’t give the tiniest piece of shit whose fault it is. Once you are here illegally, you are here illegally. You will pay the price.”
“But—”
“That’s why you have to think very carefully about this decision to take your family back home,” he said. “You say this country don pass you, eh? I believe you. Sometimes this country pass me, too. America can be hell, I know. Man nova see suffer until the day ei enter America, make I tell you.”
He laughed again, the kind of laughter released only at the remembrance of awful things past. “I mean,” he went on, “I’ve been here for twenty-nine years. For the first three years, I spent hours every month searching for a one-way ticket back to Nigeria. But you know what, my brother? Patience. Perseverance. That is the key. Persevere it like a man. Look at me today, eh? I have a house in Canarsie. My one daughter is in medical school. My son is a civil engineer in New Jersey. Another daughter is in Brooklyn College. Hopefully, she’ll get into Fordham Law and become a lawyer like me. I’m very proud of them. When I look at them, I do not one bit regret all my suffering. I can say without feeling any shame that life is good for me. I persevered, and look at me now. I’m not going to sit here and lie to you that life is going to get easy for you next month or next year, because it might not. It’s a long, hard journey from struggling immigrant to successful American. But you know what, my brother? Anyone can do it. I am an example that with hard work and perseverance, anyone can do it.”
“Rubbish,” Winston said when Jende told him what Bubakar had said. Of course he did not want Jende to return home. Cameroon did not have opportunities like America, but that did not mean one should stay in America if doing so no longer made sense. “Why does everyone make it sound as if being in America is everything?” he said.
“All this stress,” Jende said. “For what?”
“For you to die and leave bills for your children to pay,” Winston replied.
Even if Jende got papers, Winston went on, without a good education, and being a black African immigrant male, he might never be able to make enough money to afford to live the way he’d like to live, never mind having enough to own a home or pay for his wife and children to go to college. He might never be able to have a really good sleep at night.
“Whenever I talk to someone in pays who is trying to leave their good job and run to America, I tell them, ‘Look out, oh. Look out. Make man no say I no be warn ei say America no easy.’”
“But you didn’t warn me seriously enough,” Jende said, laughing.
“No,” Winston said, laughing back. “I didn’t warn you. I just bought you a ticket so you could come see it for yourself.”
“That is not a lie.”
“But if someone asks me right now if they should leave their job at home and come to America, I swear, Bo, I will beg them to forget about America for now.”