By understating the grief, fear, and desire the narrator feels, Howard Meh-Buh lulls the reader into believing that, against all odd, everything will work out for the narrator and his friend, two boys looking for a better life in America. “A Mother’s Face is an Atlas that Leads You Home” delivers the highest hopes and the most crushing disappointment.
We don’t tell our parents shit. Mr. Betah has assured us that everything will be fine, that by mid-October, we should be on our way. I think we should tell someone, but that is as smart as ringing a church bell before attempting to steal their alms. You have made me promise to keep my mouth shut. Travel plans buried down my gut.
You have a stepfather whose name is a tongue-twister. I call him Uncle D, you call him “D Coolest Motherfucker Ever.” He is an applied mathematician, a PhD in partial differential equations who works with a car company in Bonn. “You could ask him for help,” I say one day but you only give me a stare. I hardly know what your stares mean but I think he is a man that would listen if you speak. Sometimes, he tries to explain his job to us. We listen to him talk about heat distribution in automobiles until it is no longer rude of us to beg for his car. We cruise around town, take it to parties and watch our rep run up like mercury in thermometers subjected to heat. Dibs or not, you always end up driving while I ride shotgun, because my mother is not the twin that married the doctor.
My mother is also the twin that stayed. We don’t talk about your mother and I am the one people describe as lost: The history teacher pausing in 1884, right in the middle of Cameroon’s annexation to ask why I look so lost; tribesmen asking the same thing in family meetings when they notice me zoned out of conversation, unable to speak Esu; the implication in Mr. Betah’s voice when he says I am the most American teenager he knows who has never been to America.
I adjust the picture of my mother in my wallet, remember her yell that I am useless. My grades have plummeted like maybe they just discovered gravity, and then plateaued on a D. She calls me useless too, for walking about with you—being the sidekick to a cousin who chose a rich stranger to stay with instead of his own blood, introducing him as father. When your mother died and you chose to stay with Uncle D, my mother sobbed in her room. She doesn’t say this categorically, but I think she felt betrayed, by a sister who had to die and a nephew who lived a lie. Sometimes, I sit on the balcony remembering her laugh, and suddenly understand how bush-fallers call to say they miss achu—Yes, it’s here but I mean the real thing.
I have never been good at a lot of things. Not lab techniques, not map reading, not math. But I can dance myself into circles, and then dance circles around anyone. I can dance myself into a myriad of conformations, so many that in school they call me Geometry. For further endearment, you try to nickname my nickname and call me Geo. But too much seasoning spoils the soup and I am back to sounding like a regular Joe.
And we are popular in school. You for driving an Audi and me because I dance. We stride about knowing how well people love us here, yet knowing too that there is nothing we wouldn’t do to leave. I have been researching contemporary and have dreams where I am dancing on a stadium to a bedazzled crowd. My mother doesn’t know this yet but a postcard of me on that stage accompanied by stacks of dollar bills would be all the abracadabra she needs to transform into someone happier. For now, things like that don’t fly here; my mother has dreams of her own for me, dreams that don’t include me moving my body for people’s pleasure. As for you, you are under no illusions. You know that the Audi you drive is not really your own and neither is the man who gives it to you. Cool or not, he is really just a man your mother married and died leaving you on. His other children are prettier, smarter, more bougie versions of you. You’re the one he keeps around to keep him company when he is not away working in Germany, the one he looks at and feels good about himself, a glorified charity case. He would never let you go. We don’t talk about these things but I can see it in your gait, in your expressions and the way your eyes move, I can hear it loudly in your laugh, that you want an Audi that is your own.
* * *
The rainy season is approaching when Mr. Betah tells us to make the money available if we are still interested. He says it with enough carefreeness to make us care. “Four million is a fucking lot of money, sir,” we tell him, and he looks surprised.
“Four million? To go to America? Price that I have reduced to nothing because I like you boys? And because I see that you are students? Listen my boys, spaces are limited, and there are people willing to pay double if you are no longer interested.” Mr. Betah is tall and lanky with a pot belly that looks manufactured. He used to sell pop fiction novels in motor parks, and now he has fixed an office in the center of town, where he sells the American dream to hungry youths. He shows us pictures of satisfied customers from a badly printed brochure, and we rethink it. We decide to find ways to come up with the money.
At first, it isn’t easy. We sell all of our textbooks right down to our Cameroon Hymnals. When it amounts to nothing, we sneak into the library in the middle of the night, climb up to the mezzanine where the giant science textbooks are shelved: Biological Science, Advanced Chemistry, and so on, we pack them into our bags, tie the bags with ropes and drop them gingerly through the window. We climb down the two stories and I am too nervous to make a joke about ninjas. We take them to the black market that night and sell them for a quarter of the price. We return before the rest of the student body wakes up, before the campus turns chaotic.
The money is enough to make us passports and as early as we need it, enough to bribe the officials to treat our case first. When our passports arrive, the dreams become lucid. The picture of me on the passport is ugly, but that is not the picture that matters. The one of me on the stage becomes sharper, resolutions increased and I can even make out the faces in the crowd. We don’t talk about shit when people are around, investigations are still ongoing regarding the stolen books and no single person suspects us. We keep our heads down; we know the next set of students who would be caught breaking bounds would bear the cost of our thievery, right down to the last blank sheet of paper.
You call Imbolo and I call Joffi, our girlfriends at the time. We sneak into the pantry and push into them against bags of beans. It is dark and moist and smells of raw food and decaying mice. Later, we break up with them, unable to tell them the real reason why. Imbolo slaps you across the face and Joffi cries for days. We arrange and rearrange our things. I buy more ankle socks to hide my Morton’s toe. You buy destroyed jeans and leather jackets, all faux-branded, second-hand and cheap. You try them on in front of the mirror, hands in your pockets, you practice your walk. I nod and we agree they look fabulous on you. You laugh a full laugh, as if pleased that you have cheated the world of ostentation. You buy wooden anklets that you will only wear in America because such things don’t fly here. You plan to get a tattoo—A Death Wish Too Young To Know It’s Becoming—needled across your chest, lyrics from your favorite rapper, Akala.
* * *
It is Saturday and we are brushing our jackets by the laundry line. You are talking about all the things we will do and have in America. You have heard that you can get an Audi on credit and pay just by doing dishes at a local restaurant. You tell me I can dance on the subway and make enough money in a month to buy my mother a piece of land, and maybe even build her a house in a year if I am lucky. I chortle and say, “How Mr. Betah!” You make a face; you are not sure if it is a compliment or an insult. Neither am I.
I don’t want to talk about us in America; I want us to talk about the route to get there. You sigh, frustrated, where were my ears when the man was explaining the itinerary? First, we’ll leave Douala to Mexico, or was it Morocco? We’ll stay there a few days in a place Mr. Betah has arranged for us. His cousin will then pick us up, cross the border with us, bringing us to America where they will help us get jobs as cleaners and security men, until our feet are strong on the American soil, to get finally, the jobs we deserve.
* * *
Ever since the library robbery, the principal is a series of outbursts unfolding. He has slapped a student for strolling past a biscuit wrap without picking it up, shot his sandals at the music prefect for intoning the school anthem on a national anthem day, and then this morning, he kicked every student owing fees out of his campus. Uncle D has completed your fees, but me, I am on my way home. It has been raining since last night and the muddy road is a canvas displaying all the reasons we shouldn’t be here.
When I see my mother, I see the possibility of not seeing her for years. She is bent over the makeshift hearth in a black hair bonnet and an ankara kimono. She has powdered her face so that I can’t see the line on her nose. I hug her and she squeezes me in and I smell the camphor on the fabric. She asks why I am so skinny. “Are they feeding you in that school with all the money I am paying?”
“Speaking of money…” I grin.
The next day, I wake up at 4am and start sweeping. I hear her praying in her room, sense her fingering the rosary beads as she murmurs. It is Thursday, so Luminous Mysteries. When she’s done, she comes to the living room and leans against the archway, asks if I haven’t heard that sweeping when it’s dark outside was sweeping away one’s luck. I tell her if luck came in the form of dirt, our neighbor, Mami Gerald, must be the luckiest woman alive. We laugh. Me, mostly at her spiritual code-switching. I scrub the toilet with PAX, dust the chairs and shine the silverware. When I am done, I think of all the money I can make, cleaning like this in America. I gobble my mother’s I love you off the bowl of egusi soup, swallow it with the water-fufu. I work my fingers numb, trying to squeeze in a decade of chores in a week.
Day before I leave for school, she gives me the balance of my school fees, then starts talking about how much she sees me trying, how proud she is of the person I am becoming, doing house chores and all. I fake look around, ask her if she has seen my mother. My real mother. We laugh.
“Enhe, you too, have you seen my son?”
I wonder if she suspects anything. If she can see our plans sitting in my gut. People say mothers always know these things. But I have come too far to let myself be seen by my mother’s third eye. To let myself be blackmailed by compliments. I thank her. If she could be this happy over chores, how happy will she be when I build her a mansion, filled with servants, so that she would never have to pick another broom in her life. I stretch out my phone and take a few more pictures of us. When we are done, she kisses me and tells me she loves me. And now I am really looking for my mother, and I am sad because there is nothing normal about my mother saying those words. Nothing ordinary. When she leaves, I think of how lonely she will be when I leave. I bury my head in my pillow, and for the first time in a long time, I cry. When I wake up, I write two letters. One to her and the other to Joffi. I hope they find them when we are gone.
* * *
It is mid-October. Mr. Betah says 3.4 million FCFA is left for the visa to be issued and we have barely a week to get everything ready. He tells us he has prepared bank statements and affidavits of support and all sorts of documents just waiting for the money to ripen them. We hand him our passports and start to think of how to get the money. I donate my balance of school fees and you laugh a long, dry laugh, say I must have mistaken visa fee for chicken fee. I ask what we are supposed to do now, and you say we have to start thinking bigger. I don’t see you that night, I look for you everywhere—in the refectory, canteen, in class, but you are nowhere to be found. For a minute, I panic, thinking you have gone without me, until you emerge the next day, your eyes bright and glassy. You tell me to get ready, we are going to see Uncle D tomorrow, he is back from Germany.
You yell D Coolest Motherfucker Ever at him, and he screams his excitement before pulling you to himself, throwing his arms around you laughing. I smile to shield my admiration/jealousy at your seamless rapport. We sit, and he tells you urgently that the suitcase in the corner is for you. When you open it, it has colognes and espadrilles that are more his style than yours. You hug him again and bring some beer from the fridge. As we drink, Uncle D turns to me and starts telling me the story of how you started calling him that.
“You know, the initial name was just Motherfucker?”
“Haha, Just Motherfucker,” I say. “I like the incongruity.”
“He used to say it behind my back and thought I didn’t know.”
“Well technically, you were kind of fu… well never mind.” We laugh.
“This one here has always been a rebel”—he turns to me—“but I like his fire.”
“And the coolest part?”
“Oh that came the first day I let him drive my Audi.”
“Mhm! That part,” you say and we laugh again.
Soon, we are groggy, slurring about other things like school, work, and then Uncle D turns somber, starts to complain about his other children; their insolence, their prodigality.
“Can you believe Ouoguep withdrew five thousand euros from the account just for a trip to Zanzibar? And Lydia never calls me. Ever. I hear she is dating some kid half her age. A bloody PhD candidate, dating someone your age.” He sips. “You’re the only one who ever listens to me. Guess it’s just easier when they’re not yours.” You look at me and this time I know exactly what the look means.
Before he sleeps, you pry the car keys from his hand, kiss him on his forehead as if he were the son. Literal Judas move if I ever saw any. He yells that we be careful how we drive. He doesn’t know that he will never see his Audi again, that he will never see you again.
* * *
We are standing at the airport. We have stolen books, usurped my school fees, and sold your stepfather’s car. We have burned bridges and left paper notes to rebuild them. We have done all these things so we can be at this airport, at this time, waiting for Mr. Betah with our passports. When he comes, he is trailed by fifteen other prospective travelers. We circle around him. He is calling out our names and handing over our passports the way class masters do with students’ report cards. You look at me and I open mine, feel my hands tremble. When I flip the page open, there is no visa stamp. I look at you and flip open the folded paper that is resting in the information page of all of our passports. The letter is from an organization we do not know. There is also a flight ticket that would have us stopping in Ethiopia, India and then somewhere else. Before we can go through properly, Mr. Betah scratches his chin and asks us to return them to him. He’ll be keeping them for us. There is a riot now. We are fidgeting, a middle-aged lady shouting at the top of her voice about how this has got to be a joke. She has heavy suitcases filled with dried, parceled foodstuff. Mr. Betah is calm, bored even, like someone who is too used to this. He tells us to calm down—there was nothing in America that was not in other countries if we really think about it. Isn’t it opportunities we want? All we need do is follow him and he will get us jobs. A man at the back says, “All hustle na hustle, e no matter the place, what matters is the money.” The woman pulls Mr. Betah by this belt and says she will deal with him in this town, before taking her things to leave. You look at me and smile, and then you mouth my thoughts: Three countries.
On the plane, I have a dream where I am dancing on the stadium in a nameless country, to the bedazzlement of a foreign crowd.
* * *
We have been here six weeks now. We are living fairly comfortably in two three-bedroom apartments adjacent to each other. We eat rice cooked with ghee and have sweetmeats for dessert. Every week, one of us is taken and they don’t return. Mr. Betah says it is because he has found jobs for them. We wonder what kind of jobs we will get. Cleaners? Baristas? We play guessing games that no one wins because how does one know the answer unless they are taken?
On the day they call you, I know there is no way I am letting you disappear without me. I ask Mr. Betah to bring me too but he just looks and me and hisses.
“Wait your turn.”
I sneak out and watch you get into the black Pajero. “Definitely cleaner,” I tell myself, and laugh in my head because you hate nothing more than cleaning after others. The rickshaws pass by, and the pullers call out to me in a language I don’t understand. I decide I want to at least to know where you work, maybe convince Mr. Betah to put us in the same place, or somewhere close. So, I hop in the next vehicle that stops in front of me, it is two-seaters and narrow, and looks too flimsy to be a real means of transportation, and yet somehow too solid to be just a toy. I ask the driver in English to follow your car.
You are in a building construction site in a secluded area. I know because the black Pajero is parked in the back. By the time I get close, it is too late. I see your head resting like furniture on the floor. From behind the tractors, I watch them pack your hands and legs in a body bag. Your torso is on the floor too, stained with a kind of reddish mud. I think of the tattoo you wanted, Akala’s words: A Death Wish Too Young To Know It’s Becoming. I can’t move.
* * *
It is evening and the house is filled with laughter. The others have gathered in one apartment, eating doi and playing Jenga—gambling their next move, hoping everything doesn’t crumble to ruins. I cannot eat or sleep or stop my hands from shaking. As soon as the sun rises, I will leave this place. I will leave a letter for them and hope they find it when I am gone. Hope they too find their way out. I don’t know my way around here. I think of my mother, think of everything I want to give her. I pull out her picture from my wallet. Her face is wrinkled—smile lines and frown lines and a birthmark that runs from her glabella to her columella nasi. Her left eye twitches when she is anxious and her jaws clench when she smiles. Her face is an atlas that should lead me home, bring me back to myself. I am shaking. I have never been good at map reading.
Howard Meh-Buh is a Cameroonian writer. His work has won the Morland Writing Scholarship, the Afritondo Short Story Prize, the Kalahari Short Story Competition, and has been shortlisted for the Best Emerging Writers Anthology, amongst others. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Africa Report, Catapult, Bakwa Magazine, and more. He holds an MFA from Texas State, and an MSc from NSU.