Behold the Dreamers: Chapter 13 Summary & Analysis

Though Jende loves New York, he tells himself that he’ll go elsewhere after he gets his papers. New York is simply too cold, crowded, and expensive. His friends, Arkamo and Sapeur, regale him with stories about how much sweeter life is in cities like Phoenix and Houston. They send him pictures of “their spacious houses and gargantuan SUVs.” They make the same salary he does, working as certified nursing assistants or stockroom associates at department stores. They tell Jende how he can get “a zero-down-payment mortgage on a sweet mini-mansion.” This all sounds wonderful to Jende and is a reminder of what makes America so great. Still, he knows that none of this will be possible without first getting his papers.

On the third Thursday in May, while driving Cindy across Fifty-seventh Street, Jende’s cell phone rings and he apologizes, believing that he turned it off. She encourages him to pick it up. It’s his brother, Tanga, calling to say that his children can’t go to school because he doesn’t have any money for their school fees. He’s calling Jende to ask him to send money. Jende tells Cindy how “shameful” it is that his brother had five children whom he can’t afford to look after, leaving Jende in the position of having to find a way to send the money. Cindy’s voice becomes “hollow” when she says that children should never have to suffer because of their parents. Jende agrees that it’s never the child’s fault.

Cindy assures Jende that something will “work out one way or another.” Jende assures her that he’ll try his best, but Cindy responds in a way that suggests that she doesn’t believe “that he [has] a best to try.” She hands him a check for five hundred dollars, for which Jende is immensely grateful. He rushes to find a Western Union so that he can send the money that Tanga needs and get back to Cindy on time. However, he decides not to send his brother the full sum, knowing that he needs only three hundred dollars and would only spend the rest on a new girlfriend or a pair of new leather shoes for himself, “while his children went to school with rubber shoes held together with twine.” Jende puts the remaining two hundred in savings, with the expectation that someone from back home will soon need something else.

Cindy reenters the car twenty minutes later and gets on her phone to talk to Cheri. She expresses shock that June’s husband, Mike, is leaving her for another woman after thirty years of marriage. Cindy says that she worries that Clark will one day do the same—announce that he’s in love with “someone younger and prettier.” She relates how Clark ogles at and flirts with other women in front of her and how it humiliates her.