We hope you’ll come back
Home will still be here.”
Twenty-four
THE ONE THING SHE MISSED ABOUT THE HAMPTONS (BESIDES THE BOYS, Mighty especially) was the food—the scrumptious catered food served at the Edwardses’ cocktail parties. All her life she’d thought Cameroonians had the best food but, apparently, she was wrong: Rich American people knew something about good food, too. Despite having to work fifteen hours on the days when Cindy hosted the parties around the pool, she looked forward to them because the food was too good, so ridiculously good that she had called Fatou one evening and told her she was sure she’d died and gone to food heaven, to which Fatou had replied, how you gonno be sure the cook no piss inside food to make it good? Neni was sure the cook hadn’t done anything to the food, since the three chefs Cindy always hired for the parties prepared most of it in the kitchen, and their three servers, with her assistance, took it directly from the kitchen to the backyard. All kinds of foods were there, things she’d seen in magazines and wished she could taste just by looking at the perfectly lighted pictures, wickedly delectable creations like sesame seared tuna with lemon-wasabi vinaigrette; beef tenderloin and olives on garlic crostini with horseradish sauce; California caviar and chives on melba toast; mushroom caps stuffed with jumbo lump crabmeat; steak tartare with ginger and shallot, which she loved the most and devoured without restraint though she’d never once imagined she’d one day find herself eating raw meat like a beast in the forest.
She was certain she’d gotten her fill, thanks to the ample leftovers at the end of all three parties, but she was nonetheless glad when Anna called and asked if she could come help out at a brunch Cindy and her friends were having in Manhattan.
“Are they going to use the same chefs from the Hamptons?” she asked Anna.
“No,” Anna said. “This one is just brunch. Two chefs from here and no servers. So me and you, we going to serve and clean after. The other girl who works for Cindy’s friend used to work with me every year, but she quit last week, so Cindy tell me to call you.”
“All those people for just the two of us to serve and clean after?”
“No worry, not too many people. Just her and the five friends and their husbands and some children. Cindy says one hundred dollars for you, only three hours. It’s fair, no?”
Neni agreed it was beyond fair, and arrived at June’s apartment on West End Avenue the next Sunday afternoon. There were no more than six children there, and Mighty, thankfully, was one of them. He ran to her when he saw her entering the apartment and hugged her so tightly that Neni had to remind him he wasn’t her only baby, she had another baby growing inside her.
“How were your last days in the Hamptons?” she asked him in the kitchen as she and Anna waited for the chefs to hand them the first appetizers.
“Boring,” Mighty said.
“You did not have any fun after I left?”
“Not really.”
“But now I feel bad, Mighty,” Neni said, inflating her cheeks to make a funny sad face. “Your mom really wanted me to take off my last two days, but next time I will stay if that is what Mr. Mighty demands.”
“I’ll demand!” Mighty said.
“Yes, sir. Or maybe you’ll come with me to Harlem instead. That way we can continue making puff-puff for breakfast in the morning and playing soccer on the beach in the evening. Do you want that instead, Mr. Mighty?”
“Really? It’ll be so cool to go to Harlem … but, hold on, there’s no beach in Harlem.”
“Then we will … I will—”
“We’ll watch stupid movies, and I’ll beat you at Playstation and arm wrestling every time!” Mighty said, laughing, a twinkle in his hazel eyes.
“You should never be proud that you beat a woman,” Neni said, contorting her face to feign indignation as she picked up a tray of appetizers. “Come, everyone is going to start eating.”
As she walked the appetizers around the room before setting the leftovers on the table, she smiled and nodded at Cindy’s friends, all of whom she’d met in the Hamptons. They had been kind and polite to her: offering her advice on the benefits of prenatal yoga and telling her where the best yoga studios in the city were (thank you so much for the information, madam, she always said); reminding her it was okay for her to call them by their first names (something she could never do, being that it was a mark of disrespect in Limbe); complimenting her smooth skin and lovely smile (your skin is so smooth and beautiful, too, madam; you have a lovely smile, too, madam); wondering how long it took her to get her braids done (only eight hours, madam). Their friendliness had surprised her—she’d expected indifference from them, these kinds of women who walked around with authentic Gucci and Versace bags and talked about spas and vacations and the opera. Based on movies she’d seen, in which rich white people ate and drank and laughed with nary a glance at the maids and servers running around them, she’d imagined that women who owned summer houses in the Hamptons wouldn’t have anything to say to her, besides ordering her around, of course. After she’d met no fewer than four of them, all of whom had smiled at her and asked how far along she was in her pregnancy, she’d spoken about this unexpected congeniality with Betty, and she and Betty had agreed that the women’s behavior was likely due to the fact that it wasn’t every day they met a beautiful pregnant Cameroonian woman from Harlem. Such women couldn’t possibly be kind and polite to every housekeeper, they surmised. Cindy, on that Sunday afternoon, was the kindest and politest of them all, reminding Neni to do only the easiest work and make sure she didn’t overexert herself. Watching Cindy chatting with her friends and laughing with her head thrown back, Neni had to convince herself that the strange episodes in the Hamptons had indeed happened.
“We have to talk about Cindy,” Anna whispered in her ear in the kitchen.
“What?” Neni quickly asked. “What is wrong with her?”
Anna pulled her by the arm to the far end of the kitchen, away from the chefs and the guests entering and exiting with plates of egg-white omelets and glasses of smoothies.
“She got problems,” Anna whispered.
“Problems?”
“You don’t see no problems in the Hamptons?”
Neni opened her mouth but said nothing.
“You see something in the Hamptons, no?” Anna said, nodding rapidly. “You see it?”
“I don’t know …,” Neni said, confused by the direction of the conversation.
“I come in the morning for work and she is smelling alcohol,” Anna whispered, waving her hand in front of her face as if to disperse an invisible smell.
“Yes,” Neni said, “she likes wine.”
The housekeeper shook her head. “This is not liking wine. This is problem.”
“But—”
“Last week I look in the garbage, three empty bottles of wine. Mighty do not drink wine. Clark is not home. I see him one, two times every week.”
“Maybe—”
“Can someone please refill the punch for the kids and get some more napkins?” one of the chefs called out. Anna gestured for Neni to stay put while she took care of it.
“To be honest,” Neni whispered when Anna returned, “I saw it in the Hamptons, too.”
“Ah! I know I’m not crazy.”
“I didn’t know a woman can drink like that.”
“This family has problems. Big problems.”
“She wasn’t like this before?”
“No. Before, she drink like normal person—little here, little there. Twenty-two years I work for them and I see no problems like this. But always they have other problems. They eating dinner, not too much talking. You don’t see them fight too many times, you don’t see them happy too many times.”
“You think he knows?” Neni asked, looking over her shoulder.