“I won’t do it—”
“Wipe your eyes,” she said. “I won’t tell him. But if I hear that you did one stupid thing in class again …”
He nodded, drying his eyes with the backs of his hands.
“I hope so, because you don’t know how it hurt me today, what the teacher said.”
His lips started trembling, and with one look at them, and his tear-stained face, her heart softened again. She moved closer to him, wiped his cheeks with her palm.
“You’re going to do well in school, Liomi,” she said, drying her palm on her scrubs. “You’re going to graduate high school with A grades and go to a good college and become a doctor or a lawyer. You want to become a lawyer like Uncle Winston or a doctor like Dr. Tobias, don’t you?”
The child shook his head.
“What are you shaking your head for? Don’t you want to be a lawyer or a doctor?”
“I want to be a chauffeur.”
“A chauffeur!” Neni exclaimed. “You want to be a chauffeur?”
Liomi nodded, looking at her confusedly, his brow furrowed and lips slightly parted.
“Oh, Lio,” she said, laughing, enjoying the first light moment of her day. “Nobody chooses to be a chauffeur. You think Papa would choose to be a chauffeur if he could choose to be anything in the world? Papa is a chauffeur not because it is the best thing he can be. Papa’s a chauffeur because he didn’t finish school. And he’ll never be able to finish school now, because he has to work so me and you can finish school. A chauffeur job is a good job for Papa, but it won’t be for you.”
Liomi forced a smile.
“I’ve told you this, and I’ll keep on telling you: School is everything for people like us. We don’t do well in school, we don’t have any chance in this world. You know that, right?”
He nodded.
“Me and Papa, we don’t want you to ever be a chauffeur. Never. We want you to have a chauffeur. Maybe you’ll become a big man on Wall Street like Mr. Edwards, eh? That’ll make us so happy. But first you must do well in school, okay?”
Liomi nodded again and she smiled at him, then rubbed his head. For the first time since Bubakar told Jende about the possible deportation, she was hopeful. Until the day she left the country, she was going to keep believing that she and her family had a chance.
When Jende returned home from work around six o’clock (thanks to Mr. Edwards being out of the country for work and Mrs. Edwards canceling her evening plans because of a cold), she served him his dinner and left for her eight o’clock precalculus class without telling him what Liomi’s teacher had said. In class she sat in the front row, as she did in every class, believing physical proximity to the teacher was directly related to class grades. Except that night, her theory was once more proven wrong: When the instructor returned the previous week’s test, she had a B-minus.
“I just … I don’t understand this grade, Professor,” she said to the instructor after she’d lingered around him long enough for all the other students to leave.
“Do you disagree with the grade?” the instructor asked as he moved a folder into his burgundy man bag.
“No, I don’t think I disagree,” she said. “It’s just that I stayed up all night the night before this test to study. I did many practice problems, Professor.”
“I’m not sure what you’re asking me to do.”
“All this studying and I end up … I hate it when I work so hard for something and I get a result like this. I just hate it! No matter what I do, I just cannot do well in precalculus, and now my whole GPA is going to go down …”
“I’m sorry,” the instructor said as she began walking toward the door.
“It’s okay, Professor,” she said, turning around. “I’m not angry at you.”
“Why don’t you email me? I’ll be glad to meet to see what you’re struggling with.”
She sighed and nodded, fatigue blended with frustration making it hard for her to utter words.
“And cheer up,” the instructor said. “Lots of students would be happy with a B-minus.”
Eleven
AROUND HIM TOURISTS AND NEW YORKERS CHATTED OR IGNORED EACH other, everyone enfolded in their joys and sorrows and apathies. Someone laughed at one end of the subway car, a sweet laugh that on any other day would have made him look around because he loved to see the faces from which happy sounds came. Not tonight—he couldn’t care about the merriment of others. He kept his head down, immersed in his misery. This is what it had come down to, he thought. This is what all his suffering had amounted to. Where did he go wrong? He rubbed his face with his palms. What would he do in Limbe if he returned there? Maybe the Council would have a job for him, but it would probably be a laborer job. No way in heaven and on earth was he going back to sweeping streets and picking up dead cats and dogs. Maybe he’d move to Yaoundé or Douala, get a job as chauffeur for a big man there. That might work … but such a job would never come by without a connection, and he knew no one with a solid link to a minister or CEO or any of the big men who ran the country and always kept at their service chauffeurs/bodyguards to tail them from dawn to dusk and run errands for their wives and mistresses and make their children feel like little princes and princesses. If by chance he could get such a good job, he might be able to rebuild his life in … No, he wasn’t going to think about what he would do in Cameroon. He wasn’t returning. That was never the plan. He’d done everything the way he had planned to. He was in America. Neni was here with him. Liomi was an American boy now. They weren’t going back to Limbe. Oh, God, don’t let them deport me, he prayed. Please, Papa God. Please.
“Can I sit here?” a pleasant voice asked him. He lifted his head and saw a young black man pointing to the seat next to him, where he had placed his bag.
“Oh, yes,” he said, taking the bag and putting it between his feet. “So sorry.”
He bowed his head again. He exhaled. What were his choices? What could he do to stay in America? Nothing, except ask for the judge’s mercy, Bubakar had said. Or maybe he could talk to Mr. Edwards. Yes, he could tell Mr. Edwards the truth about his immigration situation. Mr. Edwards might help him. He might give him money to hire a better lawyer. But Winston had said it was better he stayed with Bubakar. Bubakar may be a useless mbutuku, Winston had said, but he was the architect of the case, and he would know best how to handle it in front of a judge. Winston was sure the judge would not deport Jende—New York immigration judges were known for their leniency, he’d found out.
It was of no consolation.
Jende heard the automated system tell riders to stand clear of the closing doors, please. He lifted his head. The white people were nearly all gone. Mostly black people remained. More black people got in. That was how he knew it was Harlem, 125th Street. He picked up his bag and stood by the door. When he exited at 135th Street, he went into the bodega at the corner of Malcolm X Boulevard and bought a Diet Coke to change his mood, to help him force out a smile when he walked into the apartment and saw Neni sitting at the table waiting for him with a face as crestfallen as a basset hound’s.