He’d never been asked to wear a suit to a job interview. Never been told to bring along a copy of
his résumé. He hadn’t even owned a résumé until the previous week when he’d gone to the
library on Thirty-fourth and Madison and a volunteer career counselor had written one for him,
detailed his work history to suggest he was a man of grand accomplishments: farmer
responsible for tilling land and growing healthy crops; street cleaner responsible for making sure
the town of Limbe looked beautiful and pristine; dishwasher in Manhattan restaurant, in charge
of ensuring patrons ate from clean and germ-free plates; livery cab driver in the Bronx,
responsible for taking passengers safely from place to place.
He’d never had to worry about whether his experience would be appropriate, whether his
English would be perfect, whether he would succeed in coming across as intelligent enough.
But today, dressed in the green double-breasted pinstripe suit he’d worn the day he entered
America, his ability to impress a man he’d never met was all he could think about. Try as he
might, he could do nothing but think about the questions he might be asked, the answers he
would need to give, the way he would have to walk and talk and sit, the times he would need to
speak or listen and nod, the things he would have to say or not say, the response he would
need to give if asked about his legal status in the country. His throat went dry. His palms
moistened. Unable to reach for his handkerchief in the packed downtown subway, he wiped
both palms on his pants.
“Good morning, please,” he said to the security guard in the lobby when he arrived at Lehman
Brothers. “My name is Jende Jonga. I am here for Mr. Edwards. Mr. Clark Edwards.”
The guard, goateed and freckled, asked for his ID, which he quickly pulled out of his brown
bifold wallet. The man took it, examined it front and back, looked up at his face, looked down at
his suit, smiled, and asked if he was trying to become a stockbroker or something.
Jende shook his head. “No,” he replied without smiling back. “A chauffeur.”
“Right on,” the guard said as he handed him a visitor pass. “Good luck with that.”
This time Jende smiled. “Thank you, my brother,” he said. “I really need all that good luck today.”
Alone in the elevator to the twenty-eighth floor, he inspected his fingernails (no dirt, thankfully).
He adjusted his clip-on tie using the security mirror above his head; reexamined his teeth and
found no visible remnants of the fried ripe plantains and beans he’d eaten for breakfast. He
cleared his throat and wiped off whatever saliva had crusted on the sides of his lips. When the
, doors opened he straightened his shoulders and introduced himself to the receptionist, who,
after responding with a nod and a display of extraordinarily white teeth, made a phone call and
asked him to follow her. They walked through an open space where young men in blue shirts
sat in cubicles with multiple screens, down a corridor, past another open space of cluttered
cubicles and into a sunny office with a four-paneled glass window running from wall to wall and
floor to ceiling, the thousand autumn-drenched trees and proud towers of Manhattan standing
outside. For a second his mouth fell open, at the view outside—the likes of which he’d never
seen—and the exquisiteness inside. There was a lounging section (black leather sofa, two black
leather chairs, glass coffee table) to his right, an executive desk (oval, cherry, black leather
reclining chair for the executive, two green leather armchairs for visitors) in the center, and a
wall unit (cherry, glass doors, white folders in neat rows) to his left, in front of which Clark
Edwards, in a dark suit, was standing and feeding sheets of paper into a pullout shredder.
“Please, sir, good morning,” Jende said, turning toward him and half-bowing.
“Have a seat,” Clark said without lifting his eyes from the shredder.
Jende hurried to the armchair on the left. He pulled a résumé from his folder and placed it in
front of Clark’s seat, careful not to disturb the layers of white papers and Wall Street Journals
strewn across the desk in a jumble. One of the Journal pages, peeking from beneath sheets of
numbers and graphs, had the headline: whites’ great hope? Barack Obama and the dream of a
color-blind America. Jende leaned forward to read the story, fascinated as he was by the young
ambitious senator, but immediately sat upright when he remembered where he was, why he
was there, what was about to happen.
“Do you have any outstanding tickets you need to resolve?” Clark asked as he sat down.
“No, sir,” Jende replied.
“And you haven’t been in any serious accidents, right?”
“No, Mr. Edwards.”
Clark picked up the résumé from his desk, wrinkled and moist like the man whose history it held.
His eyes remained on it for several seconds while Jende darted back and forth, from the Central
Park treetops far beyond the window to the office walls lined with abstract paintings and portraits
of white men wearing bow ties. He could feel beads of sweat rising out of his forehead.
“Well, Jende,” Clark said, putting the résumé down and leaning back in his chair. “Tell me about
yourself.”
Jende perked up. This was the question he and his wife, Neni, had discussed the previous
night; the one they’d read about when they Googled “the one question they ask at every job
interview.” They had spent an hour hunched over the cranky desktop, searching for the best
his résumé. He hadn’t even owned a résumé until the previous week when he’d gone to the
library on Thirty-fourth and Madison and a volunteer career counselor had written one for him,
detailed his work history to suggest he was a man of grand accomplishments: farmer
responsible for tilling land and growing healthy crops; street cleaner responsible for making sure
the town of Limbe looked beautiful and pristine; dishwasher in Manhattan restaurant, in charge
of ensuring patrons ate from clean and germ-free plates; livery cab driver in the Bronx,
responsible for taking passengers safely from place to place.
He’d never had to worry about whether his experience would be appropriate, whether his
English would be perfect, whether he would succeed in coming across as intelligent enough.
But today, dressed in the green double-breasted pinstripe suit he’d worn the day he entered
America, his ability to impress a man he’d never met was all he could think about. Try as he
might, he could do nothing but think about the questions he might be asked, the answers he
would need to give, the way he would have to walk and talk and sit, the times he would need to
speak or listen and nod, the things he would have to say or not say, the response he would
need to give if asked about his legal status in the country. His throat went dry. His palms
moistened. Unable to reach for his handkerchief in the packed downtown subway, he wiped
both palms on his pants.
“Good morning, please,” he said to the security guard in the lobby when he arrived at Lehman
Brothers. “My name is Jende Jonga. I am here for Mr. Edwards. Mr. Clark Edwards.”
The guard, goateed and freckled, asked for his ID, which he quickly pulled out of his brown
bifold wallet. The man took it, examined it front and back, looked up at his face, looked down at
his suit, smiled, and asked if he was trying to become a stockbroker or something.
Jende shook his head. “No,” he replied without smiling back. “A chauffeur.”
“Right on,” the guard said as he handed him a visitor pass. “Good luck with that.”
This time Jende smiled. “Thank you, my brother,” he said. “I really need all that good luck today.”
Alone in the elevator to the twenty-eighth floor, he inspected his fingernails (no dirt, thankfully).
He adjusted his clip-on tie using the security mirror above his head; reexamined his teeth and
found no visible remnants of the fried ripe plantains and beans he’d eaten for breakfast. He
cleared his throat and wiped off whatever saliva had crusted on the sides of his lips. When the
, doors opened he straightened his shoulders and introduced himself to the receptionist, who,
after responding with a nod and a display of extraordinarily white teeth, made a phone call and
asked him to follow her. They walked through an open space where young men in blue shirts
sat in cubicles with multiple screens, down a corridor, past another open space of cluttered
cubicles and into a sunny office with a four-paneled glass window running from wall to wall and
floor to ceiling, the thousand autumn-drenched trees and proud towers of Manhattan standing
outside. For a second his mouth fell open, at the view outside—the likes of which he’d never
seen—and the exquisiteness inside. There was a lounging section (black leather sofa, two black
leather chairs, glass coffee table) to his right, an executive desk (oval, cherry, black leather
reclining chair for the executive, two green leather armchairs for visitors) in the center, and a
wall unit (cherry, glass doors, white folders in neat rows) to his left, in front of which Clark
Edwards, in a dark suit, was standing and feeding sheets of paper into a pullout shredder.
“Please, sir, good morning,” Jende said, turning toward him and half-bowing.
“Have a seat,” Clark said without lifting his eyes from the shredder.
Jende hurried to the armchair on the left. He pulled a résumé from his folder and placed it in
front of Clark’s seat, careful not to disturb the layers of white papers and Wall Street Journals
strewn across the desk in a jumble. One of the Journal pages, peeking from beneath sheets of
numbers and graphs, had the headline: whites’ great hope? Barack Obama and the dream of a
color-blind America. Jende leaned forward to read the story, fascinated as he was by the young
ambitious senator, but immediately sat upright when he remembered where he was, why he
was there, what was about to happen.
“Do you have any outstanding tickets you need to resolve?” Clark asked as he sat down.
“No, sir,” Jende replied.
“And you haven’t been in any serious accidents, right?”
“No, Mr. Edwards.”
Clark picked up the résumé from his desk, wrinkled and moist like the man whose history it held.
His eyes remained on it for several seconds while Jende darted back and forth, from the Central
Park treetops far beyond the window to the office walls lined with abstract paintings and portraits
of white men wearing bow ties. He could feel beads of sweat rising out of his forehead.
“Well, Jende,” Clark said, putting the résumé down and leaning back in his chair. “Tell me about
yourself.”
Jende perked up. This was the question he and his wife, Neni, had discussed the previous
night; the one they’d read about when they Googled “the one question they ask at every job
interview.” They had spent an hour hunched over the cranky desktop, searching for the best
