Free Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue Page A

program. Call Winston? No. He was working. It wouldn’t be right to call him with bad news at work; besides, there was nothing he could do. There was nothing anyone could do. No one could save him from American Immigration. He would have to go back home. He would have to return to a country where visions of a better life were the birthright of a blessed few, to a town from which dreamers like him were fleeing daily. He and his family would have to return to New Town empty-handed, with nothing but tales about what they’d seen and done in America, and when people asked why they’d returned and moved back into his parents’ crumbling caraboat house, they would have to tell a lie, a very good lie, because that would be the only way to escape the shame and the indignity. The shame he could live with, but his failings as a husband and father …
    He looked out the window at the people walking on Amsterdam Avenue. None of them seemed concerned that the day might be one of his last in America. Some of them were laughing.
    That night, after he’d told Neni, he watched her cry the first tears of sadness she’d ever cried in America.
    â€œWhat are we going to do?” she asked him. “What do we have to do?”
    â€œI don’t know,” he replied. “Please dry your eyes, Neni. Tears are not going to help us right now.”
    â€œOh, Papa God, what are we going to do now?” she cried, ignoring his plea. “How can we keep on fighting? How much more money do we need to spend now that it’s going to be a court case?”
    â€œI don’t know,” he said again. “I’m going to call Bubakar soon to discuss more. The news hit me so bad … it was as if someone was pressing a pillow against my face.”
    They would have to use the money they had saved, they agreed. All of it: the couple thousand dollars they had put away by sticking to a monthly budget and which they hoped to one day put toward a renovation of his parents’ house, a down payment on a condo in Westchester County, and Liomi’s college education. If they had to get rid of their cable and Internet and take second jobs, they’d do that. If they had to go to bed hungry, they’d do that, too. They would do everything they could to remain in America. To give Liomi a chance to grow up in America.
    â€œShould we tell Liomi now, so he can be prepared if we have to leave?” Neni asked.
    Jende shook his head and said, “No, let him stay happy.”

Ten
    S HE DRAGGED HERSELF THROUGH THE CITY, FROM WORK TO SCHOOL TO home, because she needed to carry on as if nothing had changed, as if their lives hadn’t just been opened up to unravelment. She couldn’t summon a smile, sing a song, or string together two thoughts without the word “deportation” finding its way in there, and yet she propelled herself forward the morning after the news, dressed in pink scrubs and white sneakers for a long day of work, an overloaded backpack strapped on her shoulders so she could study at work while the client slept. Fatigued but unbowed, she traveled every day that week from Harlem to Park Slope to Chambers Street, even though she had a headache so vicious she groaned on subway platforms whenever trains screeched toward her. Once, on her way to work, she considered getting off the train to run into a Starbucks bathroom and have a good cry but she resisted the urge, because what good had all the tears done? What she needed to do was start sleeping better, stop staying up all night dreading the most horrid things that had not yet happened. We’ll take it as it comes, Jende said to her every day, but she didn’t want to take it as it came. She wanted to be in control of her own life, and now, clearly, she wasn’t, and simply thinking about the fact that someone else was going to decide the direction of her future was enough to intensify her headache, leave her feeling