Behold the Dreamers Read Online Free PDF Page B

He took Mighty and his nanny home after the lesson and then picked up Mr. Edwards from his office and drove him to a steak house on Long Island and back to the city around ten. He refilled the gas, parked the car in the garage, and took the crosstown bus from the east side to the west side. Then he caught the uptown 3 subway home.
    â€œWeh!” she exclaimed. “Isn’t that a lot of work for one person in one day?”
    Sure it might be, he told her. But for the kind of money he was being paid, wasn’t it to be expected? She shouldn’t forget, he said, that two weeks ago he was making only half of what Mr. Edwards was paying him, driving the livery cab twelve hours every day.
    She nodded in agreement and said, “We can only thank God.”
    He lifted his glass of water and took a sip.
    â€œI calculated your thirty-five thousand salary, plus my ten thousand,” she said as she refilled his glass again. “After we pay your taxes and my school fees and rent and send money back home and everything else, we can still save like three or four hundred dollars a month.”
    â€œFour hundred dollars a month!”
    She nodded, smiling, amazed, too, at how so much can change in so little time. “We save like that, bébé, ” she said, “we try really hard, we can save five thousand a year. Ten years, we could have enough money for down payment for a two-bedroom in Mount Vernon or Yonkers.” She moved her head closer to his. “Or even New Rochelle.”
    He shook his head. “We’re going to start paying more for rent one day. How long do you think before the government finds out Mr. Charles is qualifying for cheap housing even though he drives a Hummer? They find out we’re paying him to live here, they kick us out—”
    â€œSo?”
    â€œSo? Someday we’re going to start paying more than five hundred for rent, and forty-five thousand to live in Harlem will be nothing.”
    She shrugged: just like him to think of all the bad things that could happen. “Someday is not today,” she countered. “Before they find out, we would have saved some money. I’ll be a pharmacist by then.” She smiled again, her eyes narrowing as if she were dreaming of that day. “We’ll have our own apartment, two bedrooms. You’ll make more money as a chauffeur. I’ll make a good pharmacist salary. We won’t live in this place full of cockroaches anymore.”
    He looked at her and smiled back, and she imagined he believed, too, that someday she would be a pharmacist. Hopefully five years, maybe seven years, but still someday.
    She watched him take the last piece of plantain from the plate, use it to clean the tomato sauce bowl, and rush it, together with the last piece of chicken, into his mouth. Looking at him lovingly, she giggled as he finished up the Mountain Dew and burped. “You’re a tanker,” she said to him, poking him in the ribs.
    He giggled, too, wearily. Tired as he was, she could see how pleased he was. Nothing pleased him like a delicious dinner after a long day of work. Nothing pleased her like knowing she had pleased him.
    After a long pause, during which he leaned back in his seat and stared at the wall with a faint smile, he washed his hands in the bowl of water she had placed on the table and stood up. “Is Liomi in our bed or his bed?” he whispered from the hallway.
    â€œHis bed,” she said, smiling, knowing he would be happy for them to have the bed to celebrate on. She picked up his dirty dishes and took them to the sink. E weni Lowa la manyaka, she sang softly, smiling still and swinging her hips as she cleaned the dishes. E weni Lowa la manyaka, Lowa la nginya, Na weta miseli, E weni Lowa la manyaka.
    These days she sang more than she had in her entire life. She sang when she ironed Jende’s shirts and when she walked home after dropping Liomi off at school. She sang as she