“Don’t worry about it. I know it wouldn’t have been an easy email to write.”
“No, it wasn’t only that. I know how much you and your mother used to be really tight—Mighty told me that one time the two of you went on a vacation without him.”
“It’s true,” Vince said with a laugh. “We went to Fiji the summer before I started college.”
“I have heard of Fiji. Was it nice?”
“We had a blast—snorkeling and scuba diving every day and feasting on some crazy delicious seafood at night; pretty much living right in the ocean.”
“That sounds like a very nice vacation.”
“It was awesome. I remember one morning, this guy on the beach tried to hit on my mom and I came over and pretended she was my girlfriend. It was hilarious.” He chuckled. “My mom used to be pretty cool.”
For a moment neither of them said anything.
“But what really happened between the two of you?” Neni asked.
Vince did not immediately respond. “She stayed the same and I became a different person,” he said. “I guess that’s the long and short of it.”
“You miss her.”
“Yeah, but what can we do in life but accept?”
“I don’t know, Vince. You like to talk about this acceptance thing, but it’s just not easy to accept when bad things happen, I don’t care what anyone says. All those people who walk around saying they accept their life as it is, I don’t know how they do it.”
“I can’t even believe how much I think about home these days. Obviously, it has to do with my mom not being around, but when I came back here, that first week, I called home way more than I promised myself I ever would.”
“Because you felt sorry for Mighty?”
“Yeah. I couldn’t imagine what his life would be like, you know? My mom gone, my dad working all the time. Even if Mighty has my mom’s friends and Stacy and Anna, I knew it wouldn’t be the same.”
“Only your mother can love you a certain way.”
“Maybe. But the Universe gives us different sources of Love to unite us all as One. Who are we to decide what the source of our Love should be at any given time? Love is Love, and at any given point we have everything we need. Though, I must admit, Mighty does not like spending time with my mom’s friends as much as he did with you and Jende.”
“Maybe if they give him fried ripe plantains and puff-puff, he will like them more,” Neni said, and they both laughed.
“Actually,” Vince said, his voice turning serious, “that’s what I’m calling you about.”
“About fried ripe plantains and puff-puff?”
“No,” he replied with a little laugh. “About Mighty.”
“You know I’ll do anything that I can do for you two, so please ask me.”
“Thing is,” Vince said, “Stacy is moving to Portland, and we need a new nanny for Mighty.”
“Okay?”
“I spoke to my dad a couple of days ago about it. He was going to call an agency to find someone else, but I thought about you, and we both agreed you’d be ideal for the job.”
“But I’m not looking for a job,” Neni hastily replied.
“I know—we’re not asking you to take a full-time job. It would be awesome if you could do it full-time, but I imagine with two kids, you don’t want to work full-time right now.”
“I don’t.”
“I get it. It’s totally cool. If you can’t do it full-time we can make it work another way: We’ll get Mighty someone else full-time and you’ll only need to spend time with him a few hours a week.”
“Like how many hours?”
“Whatever works for you and my dad and Mighty.”
“I’m still confused. You don’t think one nanny is enough for Mighty?”
“No, that’s not the thing. Okay, here’s the thing. We think it’ll be good for him to have some kind of constant, nurturing mother figure in his life.”
Neni said nothing.
“His grief counselor agrees it might help him with his healing. He’s a kid, he needs it. Not someone to replace my mom—no one can do that, of course—just a woman he loves and who he knows loves him very much, too.”
“But what about your father’s sister?” Neni asked. “Or your mother’s friends?”
“My aunt’s in Seattle, and my mom’s friends, don’t get me wrong, they have their virtues, but it’s not the same thing. It just isn’t. You two had a special connection, and my dad and I … we really wouldn’t mind paying you even if it’s just to take Mighty and Liomi to dinner every so often or bring him up to Harlem and give him an evening like the one we had that night.”
“You told your dad about that night?”
“I did. Only recently, though.”
“And he wasn’t angry.”
“No. Funny, but he was really glad we got to have the experience.”
Neni nodded, but did not say anything.
“You don’t have to decide right now,” Vince said. “Maybe think about it for a couple of days, talk it over with Jende, and I’ll call you next week. Does that sound good?”
Neni shook her head.
She couldn’t tell Vince it sounded good because she didn’t need a couple of days to decide. Even before Vince was done explaining, she knew what her answer would be: no. She couldn’t do it. The judge’s decision was coming any day now, which meant that her days in America were most likely numbered. Jende was confident the judge would grant the request—so confident, in fact, that he had started searching for airline tickets and had asked her two nights ago how much she thought their bed would go for on Craigslist. Even if the judge denied the request, or Jende decided to withdraw the petition for whatever reason, she still wouldn’t take the job, because she couldn’t do such a thing to a dead woman. Mighty was Cindy’s baby, and Cindy had gone to her grave hating her. How could she in good conscience look Mighty in the eye after what she’d done to his mother? How would Vince feel if Anna ever told him what she had witnessed? She hadn’t killed Cindy, but maybe she had, and it wouldn’t ever be right to walk back into Cindy’s home, no matter how much she cared about Mighty.
She knew that when she died, her soul would never find peace if her enemy shamelessly walked into her home and took over her place in her children’s life.
Fifty-six
HE FOUND OUT ON A FRIDAY AFTERNOON: THE JUDGE HAD GRANTED HIS request for voluntary departure.
“You’ve got to leave by the end of September,” Bubakar told him. “September thirtieth, he says. He was going to give you one hundred and twenty days to leave but—”
“It’s no problem, Mr. Bubakar,” Jende said, grinning his Great Rift Valley–wide grin. “I am ready.”
“I don’t know what happened. He changed his mind. You only got ninety days now.”
Jende moved to the edge of the park bench to make room for a man in a purple suit. “Ninety days is fine, Mr. Bubakar,” he said. “Truly, I don’t need any more time.”
“Good. I know it’s too fast but I can’t do anything about it, my brother. I’m sorry.”
“No, please don’t worry for me, Mr. Bubakar. I saw an advertisement for good tickets on Air Maroc. The price was so good, I bought our tickets for the day they gave me the cheapest price. We are leaving in August.”
“Ah? You’re really ready to leave, eh?”
“When you told me last week that you were ninety-nine point nine nine percent sure the judge was going to approve my request, I just started looking for tickets. I even bought a new suitcase yesterday.” He laughed.
“I’m happy to hear you sound so happy, my brother,” Bubakar said. “Some people, when they buy the ticket, they cry until the day they enter the plane.”
“But what can I do, Mr. Bubakar? My people say if God cuts off your fingers, He will teach you how to eat with your toes.”
“Abi, if I was a Christian, I would say amen to that. And how is the madam? Is she as happy to go back home as you are?”
Jende chuckled. “She is not happy,” he said, “but she is packing up.”
“Just make sure she doesn’t spend all your money buying things,” Bubakar warned. “Because women, you have to be careful with them and all the things they say they must have before they go back home. Anything that makes them look good is a necessity.”