She tiptoed into the bedroom and picked up her backpack, which was lying next to Liomi’s cot. He was sleeping on his side, breathing silently (unlike his father), curled under a Batman comforter, his mouth open an inch, his right palm on his right cheek as if he were pondering matters of great import in his dream. Quietly, she moved closer to him, pulled the comforter to his chest, smiled as she watched him sleep, before returning to the living room.
For three hours she studied, first reading at the dinette in preparation for her next history class, afterward moving to the desktop by the window to finish the English Composition essay she had started in the library, then returning to the dinette to study precalculus, referencing her class notes, her textbook, and practice problems and solutions she had printed from the Internet. The silence in the apartment was like a celestial choir, the perfect background music to her study time—no one to disturb her, interrupt her, ask her to help do this or please come over right now. No sound but the faint noises of Harlem in the nighttime.
Drinking a despicable beverage was a little price to pay for this joy of quiet. Two students in her precalculus class had formed a study group and invited others to join, but she hadn’t bothered replying to their emails—she couldn’t give up this pleasure of being alone just to be able to study with others. It wasn’t even as if there was much to gain from a study group. She had joined one earlier in the semester, for her Introduction to Statistics class, and it had been nothing but an improper use of time. Barely thirty minutes into the group’s first study session (in the students’ lounge), one of the members had suggested they order Chinese, as if their hunger couldn’t be put on hold for two hours. Neni had been sure the other members would say they weren’t interested, but all of them—two young white women, an African-American youngish woman, a teenage-looking young man of indeterminable ethnicity—were in agreement that it was a great idea. She’d had no choice but to order moo shu pork and spend ten dollars she didn’t want to spend, because she knew the sight of the others eating would make her hungry and ultimately chew into her concentration for the duration of the session. The group had stopped studying to order, stopped studying again to eat. While they ate, they chatted about American Idol. Who was better than whom. Who was most likely going to win. Who was definitely not going to win. Their conversation didn’t return to the upcoming test for a whole hour. Perhaps losing an hour of study time was nothing to them. It was something to her.
Around three-thirty, she went to the kitchen for another cup of coffee. Opening the can of instant coffee the second time was better, but the ground beans were still a foul-smelling thing, and no one could convince her otherwise.
She returned to the dinette, took a sip of the coffee. She rested her head in her right hand, closed her eyes, and exhaled. For a minute she kept her eyes closed, staring at the billions of tiny bright spots floating in the blackness. How good would it be to stay in this stillness for much longer, she thought; with nothing to do, nowhere to go. Her mind was always active, it seemed—what needed to be done, by when, how long it would take to get done. Even when she sang during her chores, she was mindful of the next chore. And the one after that. Life in America had made her into someone who was always thinking and planning the next step.
She opened her eyes.
She’d had enough studying for now, she decided. The precalculus test wasn’t for another two weeks. She was in a good place with her preparation. She’d do a round of practice problems on Sunday, another round the night before the test and, come test day, she’d be ready.
Nine
HE KNEW BAD NEWS COULD COME EVEN ON THE HAPPIEST OF DAYS. HE knew it could arrive even when sadness was as far from the heart as Ras ben Sakka is from Cape Agulhas.
He knew any given day could be like the day his brother sent a text message asking him to call back as soon as possible. That had been a good day, a warm sunny Saturday. He was at the Red Lobster in Times Square with Neni and Liomi, eating with his favorite people at his favorite restaurant. He had immediately called his brother back and listened to him say, in a panicked voice, that their father had come down with an ugly case of malaria and could barely talk. Pa Jonga’s eyes had rolled to the back of his head, Jende learned, and he was now in a conversation with his long-dead father. He needed to be rushed to a private hospital in Douala; money for the hospital could be borrowed from a businessman in Sokolo if Jende could talk to the lender and promise to send the funds for repayment as soon as possible. I beg you, Jende, his brother had said, you get for promise for send the money now-now-so, or Papa go die by daybreak.
Jende had not been able to finish his food after that call. Neni had asked the waiter to wrap up the sautéed shrimp while Jende ran, first to an ATM, to withdraw money from their savings account, and then to a bodega bearing a Western Union logo on its window, to transfer the funds to Cameroon. He ran along Eighth Avenue like a deranged man, pushing aside tourists so he could send the money as soon as he could even though the time would make no difference since his brother would not be able to retrieve the money till Monday.
His father had survived, and Jende had been reminded that, indeed, bad news has a way of slithering into good days and making a mockery of complacent joys. But the day Bubakar called, that Tuesday in April 2008, was not a special day. Jende was at work, the weather was cold, the streets of Manhattan as brutal to drive on as any other day.
He was parked on a street corner, reading Clark’s discarded Wall Street Journal, when he saw Bubakar’s name flashing on his phone. He picked up the phone warily, knowing it had to be big news, good or bad: Immigration lawyers, like doctors, did not call to say hello.
Bubakar said hello, asked about his day. His voice was somber and serious, lacking the ehs and abis he often added at the end of sentences, and from that Jende could tell something was amiss. Even when Bubakar asked about Neni and Liomi and tried to make small talk about life as a chauffeur, Jende could tell the man was merely sterilizing a spot on his heart so he could inject painful words.
“I finally received the letter,” Bubakar said.
“What did they say?”
The asylum application was not approved, the lawyer told him. The case was being referred to an immigration judge. Jende would need to appear in court because the government was going to begin removal proceedings against him. “I tried my very best, my brother,” he said. “I truly did. I’m sorry.”
Jende said nothing—his heart was pounding too fast for his mouth to open.
“I know it’s not good news, my brother, but don’t worry,” he went on. “We’ll keep fighting. There is a lot we can do to keep you in the country.”
Still, Jende could muster no words.
“It’s very hard, I know, but we must try to be strong, okay?”
The silence remained.
“Stay strong, my brother. You’ve got to stay very strong. I know it’s a mighty shock. Really, the decision is shocking me, too, very much right now. But what can we do? The only thing we can do right now is to keep fighting.”
Finally, Jende muttered a barely audible something.
“Huh?”
“I say, this means I have to leave America?”
“They say that, yes. They don’t believe your story that you’ll be killed by Neni’s family if you go back to Cameroon.”
“I thought you said it was a good story, Mr. Bubakar. In fact, you yourself told me that they would believe me. We left the interview happy. You told me I had answered the questions very well and that the Immigration woman looked like she believed me!”
“Yes, but like I told you the last time we spoke, I didn’t think it was a good sign when she told us to go home and wait for the decision in the mail instead of asking us to come back to the asylum office in a couple of weeks to pick it up. I didn’t want to read too much into it—”
“You told me not to worry too much about the fact that it was taking them too much time to mail us the decision, because Immigration is very slow. That’s what you said!”