“Well, we can talk about what that means on the way back,” Vince said, smiling and sitting up as Jende moved toward a parking spot. “But please, whatever we discussed about law school and India, that’s just between me and you for now.”
Jende nodded, turned around, and extended his hand, which Vince shook before exiting the car. When Vince returned to the car an hour later, his mouth was heavy from the anesthesia that had been used to numb him before his wisdom tooth extraction, and he could barely talk. He fell asleep within minutes, his right hand holding the ice pack soothing his lightly swollen face. At intervals, Jende looked through the rearview mirror at Vince’s face, and every time he imagined Liomi in about eighteen years. He knew he would never permit Liomi to throw away a chance at a successful career and a good life to go walking around India talking about Truth and Suffering, and yet he couldn’t fully denounce what Vince was doing. Looking at the young man sleeping, he felt proud of him, even as he worried for him.
Seventeen
THE CITY THAT SUMMER OVERFLOWED WITH THE HOT AND THIRSTY: panting on subway platforms, battling the sun with wide hats and light clothes, rushing to scaffoldings for shade, dashing into department stores not for the sales advertised on windows but for the AC. Those unable to escape to beaches and countrysides congregated in places where the humidity could briefly be forgotten: world music concerts with musicians from far-flung lands like Kazakhstan and Burkina Faso; rooftop revelries where everyone seemed absolutely certain of their good looks and sophistication; street fairs with too much grilled chicken and not enough moving air; sunset cruises with last-minute tickets and mediocre cocktails. There was much to do in the city, and yet the desperation remained among many to be out of it, to be in a place where the mission was pleasure and not endurance, to sit where the air moved without burden and the water went on for thousands of miles, a place like the villages of the Hamptons.
Jende could take a paid vacation in the first two weeks of August, Clark informed him as they drove down Lexington on a mid-June morning. The family would be spending late July and pretty much all of August in Southampton (Cindy and the boys, mostly), as well as random days in early July, so it should be an overall light summer of work.
“I am very grateful, sir,” Jende said without a change in his countenance, though inwardly he was grinning wider than the Great Rift Valley. It would be the first time in America he’d be paid to do nothing, though he knew he wasn’t going to sit around idle for two weeks—he was going to call the livery cab company he used to work for and get shifts so he could add to the funds he and Neni were saving for his deportation case.
“You should ask Cindy if she needs a housekeeper for that last week in July and the first three weeks in August, when Anna takes her vacation,” Clark added minutes later. “She usually gets someone from the agency. Maybe your wife would like to do it and make some extra money?”
“Oh, yes, sir. My wife … she would … we would be very grateful, sir.”
Cindy did need someone, and Neni needed a break from the oft-gloomy task of feeding and bathing incapacitated senior citizens, though it was the prospect of earning more money in four weeks than she made in three months that prompted her and Jende to discuss the offer for only five minutes before agreeing that she would skip the second summer semester (since her student visa allowed her to) and go to Southampton. She called Cindy Edwards that evening—after Jende had coached her on what to say, what not to say, how to say the right things well—introduced herself, and said she would like the job. Cindy offered her the job, though not before telling her what was involved: maintaining a spotless five-bedroom house, grocery shopping for specific items that must be gotten right, daily laundry, cooking specific recipes, serving guests in a dignified manner, babysitting a ten-year-old as needed, twelve-hour workdays with lots of downtime.
“I will do it all very well, madam,” Neni said, holding the phone tightly against her ear.
“I trust you will. Jende’s a hard worker, and I imagine you’re no different.”
“Only, madam, it’s just one more thing,” she said.
“What’s that?”
“I’m four months pregnant, madam. It’s not going to be a problem for me, but—”
“Then it won’t be for me, either,” Cindy said, ending the matter, and then telling Neni that in the last week of June she would need to take the Long Island Rail Road with Anna to the Hamptons so she could get acquainted with Cindy’s needs and expectations.
“Make sure you only do what they say you do and exactly the way they say you do it,” Jende said to Neni just before she descended the steps into the subway to travel to the Hamptons to begin her four-week stint. “No more, no less.”
“Ah, you, too,” she said, laughing. “What do you think I’m going to do over there?”
“It’s not a laughing matter, Neni. Just do your work well. That’s all I’m saying. Don’t do or say anything that doesn’t concern you. These people are our bread and tea.”
“Don’t worry,” she said, still laughing at his serious demeanor, which she found both cute and unnecessary. “I won’t disgrace you. It’s not like I’ve never been around rich people.”
Which was true—her family used to be rich in the eighties and early nineties. Back then her father was a customs officer at the seaport in Douala, and, thanks to all the gratuities (not bribes—her father swore he never once got his palms greased) he and his colleagues took from merchants bringing goods into the country, he was able to multiply his annual government salary by ten and ensure that his family lacked no good thing. They lived in a brick house with tiled outer walls and floors, and running water. They owned electrical appliances and a working telephone, and her father even owned a car (a dilapidated blue 1970s Peugeot, but still a car and thus a symbol of prosperity in Limbe). They were the first family in their Down Beach neighborhood to own a TV set. Neni still remembered those early days of television in the late eighties, when CRTV broadcasted only from six o’clock to ten o’clock in the evening. By five-forty-five every evening, the neighborhood children would be in their living room, sitting on the floor, waiting for “telleh” to begin. When the TV static, which the children called “rice,” slowly disappeared to reveal the Cameroonian flag, the children would giggle with delight, and the adults, packed on the sofa and chairs all around the living room, would tell them to be quiet. Television was on. No one was allowed to make noise when television was on. Children were supposed to watch the news in silence while the adults discussed the atrocities in South Africa every time a picture of Nelson Mandela came up, wondering when those bad white people were going to set that good man free. Children were supposed to watch documentaries in silence; watch fast-talking cartoons, which they called “porkou-porkou,” in silence. They had to be quiet during whatever British or French or American series CRTV was broadcasting, soap operas and sitcoms which they barely understood but nonetheless giggled at whenever kissing scenes came on and groaned whenever someone was punched. The only time children were allowed to talk was when a music video came on. Then, they were encouraged by the adults to stand up and dance to Ndedi Eyango, or Charlotte Mbango, or Tom Yoms. And every time they would stand up and bust out their best makossa moves, twirling tiny buttocks and moving clenched fists from right to left with all their might, smiling to no end. To be able to see their favorite musicians singing in a black box, what a privilege.