“That is not a lie.”
“But if someone asks me right now if they should leave their job at home and come to America, I swear, Bo, I will beg them to forget about America for now.”
“Maybe wait until after this recession thing finishes.”
“What finish? Is it ever going to finish?”
“One day, surely, the country is going to get better.”
“I don’t know about that, Bo. I just don’t know. In short, even some people who went to law school like me cannot expect a good life in this country anymore. I read stories about Mexicans who crossed the border to enter America, and now they’re trying to cross the border to go back to their country. Why? Because there’s nothing left here for them to come and get.”
“It’s people like you who are lucky,” Jende said. “To have a good job and money.”
“You think I’m lucky?”
“Are you not luckier than the rest of us? If you don’t think you’re lucky, you can come live in this Harlem dumpster and I’ll live near Columbus Circle.”
“I guess I’m lucky,” Winston said after a chuckle. “I work like a donkey from morning to night for the people who are taking everything and leaving only a little for everyone else. But at the end of the day, I go home with piles of their dirty money, so—”
“But how man go do?”
“How man go do? I cannot do anything. And even if I could I probably wouldn’t, because I like the money, even if I hate how I make it.”
“As the Americans would say, ‘Gotta do wha ya gotta do.’”
“I’m just sorry for people like you, Bo,” Winston went on. “This country—” He sighed. “One day, I’m telling you, there will be no more Mexicans crossing the border to come to America. Just wait and see.”
“Maybe it will be Americans running to Mexico,” Jende said.
“I won’t be surprised if that happens one day,” Winston agreed, and they both burst into laughter at the image of a multitude of Americans surging across the Rio Grande.
Jende got off the phone thankful that Winston had supported his decision. He needed the validation—he’d found it nowhere else, not even from his mother. When he had told her of his plan to return home, she had wondered why he was coming back when others were running out of Limbe, when many in his age group were fleeing to Bahrain and Qatar, or trekking and taking a succession of crowded buses to get from Cameroon to Libya so they could cross to Italy on leaky boats and arrive there with dreams of a happier life if the Mediterranean didn’t swallow them alive.
Fifty-three
THE DAY LIOMI WAS BORN SHE HELD HIM AND CRIED FOR OVER AN HOUR. It had been a long pregnancy, almost forty-two weeks of nearly every awful pregnancy symptom imaginable: ghastly morning sickness and vomiting for four months; virtually nonstop headaches for the next two months; back pain that had her unable to roll over in bed and stand up without groaning; swollen feet that couldn’t fit in the size ten shoes Jende had bought for her; a brutal thirty-hour labor. During the last month, she had used a cane to run errands and get around town, not wanting to spend all day in bed and have her siblings and friends laugh at her for acting as if pregnancy were an illness. Stop behaving like an old woman, they surely would have said, lovingly poking fun at her awkward gait and large belly. What would you do if you were pregnant and had five other children to look after? her father had said to her, angrily, when she said she wouldn’t be carrying bags of groceries on her head anymore since pregnant women shouldn’t carry anything too heavy. She hated his snide comments but, without a husband to protect her, she had to remain in his house and be subdued by them. When Liomi finally came out—after two midwives had maneuvered and pressed on her belly for over an hour while her mother and aunt held her legs up and shouted, push, push, if you know how to enjoy the sweet part then you must know how to suffer the bitter part, too—she hugged his bloodied and puffy body and cried so hard she feared she would use up all the water and strength in her body. It’s over, the women in the room said to her, what are you still crying for? But she knew it wasn’t over, and the women knew that, too. It was only the beginning of far more pains, but it would all be worth it as long as at the end of the day her baby was alive and well and she could look into his eyes and see what a wonderful, wonderful gift she’d been given.
“Why then would you want to give him up for adoption?” Natasha asked her.
Neni leaned forward on the couch, pulled a tissue from the box on Natasha’s coffee table, and looked away as she patted her face dry. Five feet away, on Natasha’s desk, the computer had gone to screen-saver mode and was displaying picture after picture of Natasha and her husband, children, and grandchildren. They looked like a happy family.
“I completely understand that you want the best future for your son,” Natasha said. “No one can fault you for wanting what every mother wants. But you have to ask yourself, is this the best way? What are you willing to give in exchange for what you want? And what do you know about this man who you want to talk to?”
“He was my precalculus professor last year,” Neni said quietly, her voice wrapped in distress.
“Mmm-hmm, and what else? Is he a good friend of yours?”
Neni shook her head. “Not a good friend like we talk all the time. But we had coffee on the last day of the semester and promised to stay in touch. He is a very nice man. He was nice to me and when he met my son he was nice to him, too.”
“How much have you been in touch?”
“We email each other a few times, nothing too special. He included me in his email list when he sent pictures of his fortieth birthday celebration with his boyfriend in Paris. I included him in my email also, when I emailed everyone to say that Timba had been born. He emailed me back congratulations and said he cannot wait for the day he has a child, too. Things like that.”
“I see.”
Neni nodded. “He told me that he and his boyfriend, they want to adopt very much, that is why two nights ago, when I was up thinking about my son, this idea just came to me like a lightning. I woke up in the morning and I could not think of anything else.”
“You haven’t told anybody yet, have you?”
“Who can I tell, Natasha? My friends will think I have become a madwoman, and my husband, I don’t even know how I will … That’s why I called you first, if you could help me talk to my husband, let him understand it will be the best thing for our son.”
“Do you really think that, Neni?”
Neni did not respond.
“You really believe that giving your son to this professor, who you barely know, and his partner will make your son happy? Make you happy? Because you’re going to have to—”
“If it means that my son can remain in America and become a citizen by being adopted by an American couple, I will be happy. I will tell him it is for the best for him and he will be happy, too. And I don’t care that they are gay, if they promise to treat him well.”
“But will your husband care that they’re gay? How does he feel about gays?”
“He’s not afraid of them.”
“Yes, but is he … never mind that. My bigger concern is not about them being gay. I think it’s wonderful that they’re gay, just like it’s wonderful that I’m not. What I care about is how this is all going to play out. Assuming you email the professor and meet and he tells you, sure, if you have to go back to Cameroon, my partner and I would love to adopt your boy. Assuming your son is happy with the arrangements, you kiss him goodbye at the airport and get on the plane, how do you think you’re going to feel the moment that plane gets in the air, knowing you might not see him for years?”
“I don’t know how I will feel … I will be worried for him, but … I don’t like to live my life thinking too much about how I’m going to feel. I just have to …”