THOUGH HE LOVED NEW YORK CITY, EVERY WINTER HE TOLD HIMSELF HE was going to leave it for another American city as soon as he got his papers. The city was great, but why spend four months of the year shivering like a wet chicken? Why go around wearing layers upon layers of clothing like the madmen and -women who roamed the streets of New Town, Limbe? If Bubakar hadn’t cautioned him that it was best he remained in the city (it might complicate matters if they tried to move his case to another jurisdiction, the lawyer had said), Jende would have been long gone, because there was no reason why a man should willfully spend so many days of his life in a cold, costly, congested place. His friends, Arkamo in Phoenix and Sapeur in Houston, agreed with him. They begged him to move to their warm, inexpensive cities. You come over here, Arkamo told him, and you’ll taste real American enjoyment. Life in Houston, Sapeur said, is sweeter than sugarcane juice. At least half a dozen times every winter, they told him he would forget all about that worwor New York the moment he arrived at their city’s airport and strolled on its clean streets and moved around freely in February without a winter jacket. So convincing were they that on the coldest days of the winter, he and Neni Googled Phoenix and Houston to learn more about the cities. They looked at the pictures Arkamo and Sapeur sent of their spacious houses and gargantuan SUVs and, try as he might, Jende found it impossible to not envy them. These boys, and others he knew in those cities, came from Limbe around the same time as him. They made the same kind of money he made (or less, working as certified nursing assistants or stockroom associates at department stores), and yet they were buying houses—three-bedroom ranch-style houses; four-bedroom townhouses with backyards where their children played and where they hosted Fourth of July barbecues teeming with grilled corn and soya. Arkamo told Jende how easy it was to get a mortgage these days, and promised that as soon as Jende was ready, he would connect him with a loan officer who could get him a zero-down-payment mortgage on a sweet mini-mansion. It all sounded wonderful to Jende (one of the many things that made America a truly great country), but he knew such an option wouldn’t be available to him without papers. Arkamo and Sapeur already had papers—Arkamo through a sister who became a citizen and filed for him; Sapeur through marrying an American single mother he met when he showed up at a nightclub dressed in a three-piece orange suit and red fedora. They could afford to get high-interest loans that would take thirty or more years to pay off because they were green card holders. Jende would buy a nice house in one of those cities, too, if he had papers. As soon as he could, he would move, most likely to Phoenix, where Arkamo lived in a gated community. There would be no more freezing days for him; no more mornings of vapor spewing out of his open mouth as if he were a kettle of boiling water. Neni had her dreams of a condo in Yonkers or New Rochelle because she didn’t want to leave her friends, and she loved New York too much, cold or warm, but he knew he would leave behind the city and its hopeless predicaments if he weren’t stuck in an immigration purgatory.
Every winter, he was certain of this.
But then the spring came, and his dreams of Phoenix evaporated like the dew in Marcus Garvey Park. He couldn’t imagine a city more beautiful, more delightful, more perfect for him than New York. Once the temperature rose above fifty-five, it was as if the city had awakened from a deep slumber and the buildings and trees and statues were singing as one. Heavy black jackets flew away and colorful clothes rushed in. All over Manhattan, people seemed on the verge of a song or a dance. No longer pressed down by the cold air, their shoulders opened up and their arms flung freely and their smiles shone brightly because they felt no need to cover their mouths while talking. Sad, Jende often thought, how winter takes away so many of life’s ordinary pleasures.
On the third Thursday in May—as he was driving Cindy across Fifty-seventh Street to lunch with her best friends, Cheri and June, at Nougatine—he noticed that virtually everyone on the street seemed happy. Maybe they weren’t truly happy, but they looked happy, some practically sprinting in the warmth of the day, delighted to be comfortable again. He was happy, too. It was almost seventy degrees and, as soon as he dropped Cindy off, he was going to take the car to a garage, pay for parking with his own money, and rush into Central Park to breathe in some fresh air. He’d sit on the grass, read a newspaper, have his lunch by a lake or pond, and—
His cell phone rang.
“Madam, I am so … so very sorry, madam,” he said to Cindy, realizing he’d forgotten to turn it off. He searched frantically in his jacket pocket, scolding himself as he pulled it out. “I swear I turned it off this morning, madam. I was sure I turned it off right before—”
“You can get it,” Cindy said.
“It’s okay, madam,” he said, looking at the phone and quickly pressing the side button to silence it. “It’s only my brother calling me from Cameroon.”
“No problem, take it.”
“Okay, thank you, madam, thank you,” he said, fidgeting with his earpiece to pick up before his brother hung up.
“Tanga, Tanga,” he said to his brother, “I beg, I no fit talk right now … Madam dey for inside motor … Wetin? … Eh? … No, I no get money … I don tell you say things them tight … I no get nothing … I beg, make I call you back … Madam dey for inside motor. I beg, I get for go.”
He sighed after hanging up, and shook his head.
“Everything’s okay, I hope?” Cindy asked, picking up her phone to start typing.
“Yes, madam, everything is okay. I am sorry I disturbed you with the noise. It will not happen again, I promise you. That was just my brother calling with his own troubles.”
“You seem upset. Is he all right?”
“Yes, madam, nothing too big. They drove his children away from school because they have not paid their school fees. They have not gone to school for one week now. That is why he is calling me, to send him the money. He is calling me over and over, every day.”
Cindy said nothing. Jende’s voice had come out cloaked in such helplessness that she probably thought it best to ask no more questions, figured it would be better to let him ponder how to help his brother. She continued typing a message on her cell phone and, after putting the phone away, looked up at him and said, “That’s a shame.”
“It is shameful, madam. My brother, he went ahead and had five children when he does not have money to take care of them. Now I have to find a way to send him the money, but I myself, I don’t even …” He made a right turn, and she asked him no more questions. For the next two minutes they drove in silence, as they did ninety percent of the time when she wasn’t on her cell phone with a client or a friend.
“But that’s not right,” she said, her voice suddenly hollow. “Children should never have to suffer because of their parents.”
“No, madam.”
“It’s never the child’s fault.”
“Never, madam.”
She was silent again as they neared Central Park West. He heard her open her purse, unzip and zip at least one pocket, before taking out her lipstick and compact foundation.
“I’m sure it’s going to work out for the kids,” she said, reapplying her lipstick and puckering her lips in the compact’s mirror as he pulled up in front of the restaurant. “Something’s going to work out one way or another.”
“Thank you, madam,” he said. “I will try my best.”
“Of course,” she said, as if she didn’t believe for a second that he had a best to try.