Read Online Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue - Free Book Online

lot of dirty shit they’re hiding.”
    â€œI am sorry to hear, Leah.”
    â€œOh, I’m sorry, too, honey,” she said, shrugging and pulling another cigarette from her purse. “And you know the worst part,” she went on, moving closer to Jende and lowering her voice, “one of the VPs I’m friendly with told me there’s talk that there may be some Enron-type stuff going on, too.”
    â€œEnron?” Jende asked, shifting his head to let Leah’s smoke sail by.
    â€œYeah, Enron.”
    â€œEr … who was that, Leah?”
    â€œWho?”
    â€œThis person, Enron … I don’t know who he was.”
    Leah burst out laughing. She laughed so hard Jende feared she was going to choke on her smoke. “Oh, honey!” she said, still laughing. “You really just came to this country, huh?”
    Jende laughed back, embarrassed and amused all at once.
    â€œMaybe it’s best you don’t know what Enron was or what they did,” Leah said.
    â€œBut I would like to know,” Jende said. “I think I have heard the name somewhere, but I do not know what they did.”
    Leah pulled out her phone, looked at the time, and dropped the phone back in her purse.
    â€œThey cooked books, honey,” she said to Jende.
    â€œThey cooked books?”
    â€œYeah,” she said, her lips quivering in an attempt to suppress her laughter. “They cooked their books.”
    Jende nodded for a few seconds, opened his mouth to say something, shut it, opened it again, shut it again, and then shook his head. “I do not think I should ask any more questions, Leah,” he finally said, and the two of them burst out laughing in unison.

Eight
    M IDNIGHT, AND SHE STILL HADN’T STARTED. F IRST IT WAS J ENDE’S WORK clothes she had to iron. Then it was Liomi’s homework she had to help with. After that she had to cook dinner for the next day because, between work and evening classes, there would be no time to cook and clean the kitchen. She had to do everything tonight. She had thought she’d be done with the chores by ten o’clock, but when she looked at the living room clock it was eleven and she hadn’t washed her hair, which badly needed washing. By the time she came out of the shower, the only thing she could think about as she dressed in her sleeping kaba was her bed, but there would be no sleep for her just yet.
    She went into the kitchen and took the instant coffee out of the cabinet above the stove, turning her nose away as she opened the can to put two teaspoons of the ground beans in a mug. Nothing about coffee’s forceful smell and dry, bitter taste pleased her, but she drank it, because it worked. Always did. One cup and she could stay up for two more hours. Two cups and she could be up till dawn. Which wouldn’t be such a bad idea tonight: She needed at least three hours of studying if she were to finish all her homework and start preparing for her upcoming precalculus test. Maybe she’d spend two hours on the homework and one hour on precalculus. Or stay up four hours, do two hours on homework and two hours on precalculus. She needed an A on the precalculus test. An A-minus wouldn’t be good enough. A B-plus definitely wouldn’t do. Not if she hoped to finish the semester with at least a 3.5 GPA.
    She tiptoed into the bedroom and picked up her backpack, which was lying next to Liomi’s cot. He was sleeping on his side, breathing silently (unlike his father), curled under a Batman comforter, his mouth open an inch, his right palm on his right cheek as if he were pondering matters of great import in his dream. Quietly, she moved closer to him, pulled the comforter to his chest, smiled as she watched him sleep, before returning to the living room.
    For three hours she studied, first reading at the dinette in preparation for her next history class, afterward moving to the desktop by the window