by Helen Thorpe
Beya rolled her eyes dramatically and slumped against Tchiza to indicate just how difficult it was. Julius didn’t have to translate at all—I understood her perfectly. The impassive manner Beya had worn when I first arrived seemed to be a mask, put on before a stranger. It fell away once she felt safe, and underneath she was a highly expressive woman. I liked her theatrical eye rolling.
Tchiza said his sons had struggled tremendously during their first weeks in Room 142. “It was very difficult for them at the beginning, because when the teacher would say something, they could not understand. But at the same time, the other students could not explain to them, even if they knew, because they had no way to communicate. Pretty much, the one sitting next to them, they did not speak the same language. They could not talk to one another. So they could not say, This is what the teacher wants. It was really, really frustrating. When they came home, they were so frustrated, because they could not understand anything. But as time passed, they began to understand more and more.”
We talked about what life was like for Tchiza in the United States. He worked as a dishwasher in a cafeteria at a corporate headquarters. I had washed dishes for several years when I was in college, and we commiserated about the nature of the work. I remembered leaving my dishwashing job feeling greasy, and Tchiza used his hands to indicate how he got dirty water all over his body. My job had been part-time and temporary, however, whereas Tchiza had no idea when or if he might find another kind of work. In the Congo, Tchiza had completed tenth grade, which was an unusually high level of education for a man living in a rural part of that country. He had worked as a farmer, but he had also consulted with other farmers in his region, seeking to help them produce more food. People had come to view him as a leader, and at one point he had even run for public office. Now he washed dishes for a living—a job that was dull and wearying. He commuted by bus, and it took him almost two hours each way. Tchiza spoke four languages fluently—Swahili, French, Kinyarwanda, and a tribal language. During a subsequent visit, I would find him seated in a chair, teaching himself English by reading a creased English-French pocket dictionary, which he had found at Goodwill for $1. He understood a lot of what I said, but his ability to speak English remained poor, which limited his work opportunities. He was grateful to have any job, however, and he never complained about washing dishes being beneath him.
What Tchiza found most difficult about life in the United States was something more intangible: the way people in this country seemed to prejudge him. If they discovered his intelligence, they reacted with surprise. “When you are black, people don’t look at you as if you can even do the thing you are doing,” he offered. “When you are black, pretty much you are nothing. That’s the assumption. But at the same time, I know more than maybe people think. People wonder, You are black—how do you know it?”
I told him I understood that here black people were constantly underestimated by white people. I had visited Africa once, many years ago, when my college roommate was teaching English in a rural school in western Kenya. I had glimpsed how different the matter of identity seemed to be there. I could feel the difference between the two places in this regard, I said.
“It’s a good thing you have been there,” Tchiza told me. “That’s what the human being is supposed to be like. Judge me by my character. Not because of my color, not because of how I look.”
* * *
In the living room, the small children had switched to watching cartoons, and the clamor of their shows threaded through our conversation as we turned to the subject of war. I asked Tchiza if he could help me understand what his family had endured. From conversations with Solomon and Methusella, I knew that the family had lived on the eastern side of the Democratic Republic of Congo, not far from the city of Goma. And from reading about the Congo, I knew that this area had experienced more violence than any other part of the DRC. One day during their lunch hour, the boys had told me that their family had escaped from the DRC in 2008, and had spent seven years living in a refugee settlement in Uganda. The boys had done the first half of their schooling in the Congo and the second half in Uganda. Solomon had stopped going to school because he was needed to help with the chores and watch the younger children, as well as guard the home against intruders. Originally, Solomon had been ahead of Methusella in school, but by this point he had fallen behind. Both boys had seemed to find this reversal funny, Methusella in a way that suggested it made him feel proud, and Solomon in a way that suggested he felt embarrassed.
The boys had told me the names of their closest friends at the refugee settlement—Methusella had been particularly close to a boy named Stivin—and in their voices I could hear how awfully they missed the friends they had left behind. They had not yet made any friends in America, the boys said. But they were happy to be in the United States nonetheless, even if they were lonely, because in ten hundred ways, life in America was easier.
When I asked the boys why their family had left the Congo, Solomon said, “The problem was, soldiers fighting.”
Methusella added, “Maybe at night, maybe when you are sleeping, soldiers fight, and so you run away from the house and you have to hide yourself.”
“Where would you hide?” I asked.
“In the bush,” Methusella replied.
They could not remember an extended period of peace; all the years they spent in the Congo were marked by warfare. Solomon and Methusella seemed to have a sense of mission about educating people in the developed world about what was happening in the DRC. At the same time, I was conscious of the fact that the boys were young and had only just arrived in the United States. They were very close to my own son in age, and we were speaking over lunch, while they were in the middle of their school day. I would not have wanted a journalist grilling my son about things that were bound to be upsetting while he was at school, so I did not press for details about what horrors they might have witnessed. Instead I had asked if it would be possible to meet their parents. Yes, the boys had said. But not during the week, because their father worked long hours. It would be better to visit on the weekend.
* * *
I explained to Tchiza that the boys had told me a little bit about their time in the Congo, but I was hoping to hear from him the full story of the family’s journey. Tchiza agreed that consulting him would be better than interviewing his sons. He waved his hand at Solomon. “Even my children,” he said, “they don’t know. The elders, you know how it is—you know how to go from here to here, when you are walking. You know what the trip is going to be like, you know how difficult it will be. With the kids, they don’t know. They just follow you.”
The only problem was that Tchiza worried I wouldn’t understand what he and his family had lived through. Some things are simply untranslatable.
“People here, most of them don’t know what a war means, actually,” he observed. “They don’t know.”
I acknowledged this was true. The wars my country had fought while I was alive had all taken place on foreign soil.
“You’ve been living here for fifty years,” he continued. “Have you seen war?”
“Never,” I conceded.
“Here there are gangs, and gang shootings, but that is nothing,” Tchiza said dismissively, brushing the air away with one hand.
Julius spoke up at this point to tell us his story. He was from southern Sudan (he left that area before it became the separate country of South Sudan). Once upon a time, he had been a child soldier, or askari watoto. Speaking first in Swahili and then in English, Julius explained that he had come to the United States at age sixteen, without any family members. He would have been the same age as Methusella, I thought to myself. Earlier, Methusella had come over to say hello but then he retired to another part of the house; Solomon remained at the kitchen table and was listening intently to our conversation. Julius pulled open his warm-up jacket to show us that he was wearing his King Soopers work uniform, because he needed to go from here directly to the groc
ery store where he was employed. He pointed out his name tag, which said JULIUS. ONE OF THE LOST BOYS.
“So you understand,” Tchiza said to Julius in Swahili. “You know what war is.”
The two men looked at each other, and then they turned to me. There was a lull in the conversation. In their eyes I saw a question: What are we supposed to do about the terrible innocence of Americans? My life had always been safe and secure, even as conflict raged across other parts of the globe. How could I tell the story of a family from the Democratic Republic of Congo? Even if Tchiza had wanted to explain, where would he begin?
Tchiza mused, “If I see a dent in a wall here, that triggers memories of home. Because back home, everywhere you go, the walls are filled with holes. And you know, when you look at them, what made each one of those holes.”
The walls of my country were not riddled with bullet holes. I told Tchiza that I could understand what his family had lived through only with his help—but perhaps the rest of the story should wait for another day, as Julius needed to get to his job at the grocery store. If we talked any longer, we were going to make him late. Besides, we had already taken up most of Tchiza’s morning, and he probably wanted to enjoy some time with his family. Tchiza agreed that it would be better to resume the conversation at another time.
“The problem with life in America is, you cannot see your kids,” Tchiza said regretfully. “They leave for school at six o’clock in the morning. And then it’s time for me to go to work. When I come back in the evening, the kids are in bed already, the small ones. And the older boys, they are busy doing their homework. It’s just so difficult. Sitting like this—it’s not possible, most days of the week. There is no time to sit around the table together. Only on the weekend is there time to be with your family.”
Like so many things about America, this sort of schedule was entirely new to him.
Before we left, Solomon asked a question about the parent-teacher conferences that Mr. Williams had mentioned recently. His father would be at work. Could one of his brothers come in his place? I told him I believed that would be fine. We could double-check with Mr. Williams by email.
“Oh!” said Solomon. “You can talk to him by email?”
“Yes, we can talk to him by email,” I assured him.
Using my phone, I sent an email to both Mr. Williams and Solomon’s older brother Gideon, who spoke English, so that they could communicate about the parent-teacher conference. Then Julius asked Solomon if he knew much about ROTC. On a day when Julius had visited the boys’ classroom to help me speak with them in Swahili, a student from Kenya had dropped by, wearing a blue Air Force uniform. As we sat at the kitchen table, Julius urged Solomon to speak with the Kenyan student about the advantages of the military recruitment program. “ROTC, it’s a very good program,” the interpreter advised. “Very good. You should ask her about it.”
“Did you do ROTC?” I asked Julius.
“Yes, I did, but I was also running. So I got a scholarship for running. But it’s a very good program.”
“You end up in the military afterward,” I pointed out.
“You only have to serve for four years,” countered Julius. “Then you can opt out. It’s a good program, I’ve been here twenty years, I know. I’ve got friends who are generals now in the army because of that. They don’t even see bullets fired. They sit at a table like this, doing the planning.”
“So I agree with you, it’s a very good program in terms of the economic benefits,” I said. “But I’m wondering—Solomon and Methusella, after they’ve seen war, would they really want to become soldiers?”
Solomon burst out laughing when I said this. It seemed to me that he was laughing in relief because somebody had mentioned out loud that it might be possible to have such a hesitation.
“I don’t think that would be a problem,” Julius insisted.
“I think I can do that program when I am good with English,” Solomon said diplomatically.
“It will not take you that long to learn,” Julius reassured him. “By the time you are ready for college, you will be fine. You don’t have to wait. Look, you can start now.”
Then Julius really did have to go. I left with him, feeling some consternation that after I had brought him to this house, he had tried to sell Solomon on ROTC. I wasn’t sure that I agreed with Julius that the program would be good for the boys.
As we walked to the door, the small children shouted enthusiastically, “Bye-bye!” Then they started giggling, as if this were the funniest thing in the world.
I thanked the boys’ mother once more. Both parents walked out of the house and accompanied us to the gate in the chain-link fence.
“This is how we did things in Africa,” Tchiza explained. It was customary to walk someone outside, as a sign of respect. We said asante several times. I waved goodbye, and Tchiza waved back with both hands.
Later, I found myself turning over in my mind the depth of intention Tchiza put into everything. I could see that he did nothing casually, not even waving. Visiting the family’s home, I had stepped into an alternate universe, culturally. We had different ideas about how to say hello, how to say goodbye, what kinds of hats to wear, how to eat porridge. On the subject of war, apparently, my own perspective was rather blinkered. How much more did I not know about life in the Democratic Republic of Congo?
6
* * *
Bonita
Guys, what month are we in now?” Mr. Williams asked one Tuesday morning as Thanksgiving approached.
“November,” Stephanie said promptly.
“Is tomorrow Thursday?” he asked.
“No,” said Stephanie, Nadia, Grace, and Uyen in unison.
“Is tomorrow Friday?”
“No!” cried the girls.
“Is tomorrow Wednesday?”
“Yes!”
It was Tuesday. There had been no school the day before, and Mr. Williams asked the students how they had spent their free time. Saúl reported that he had been bored. As always, Saúl was dressed in track pants and a T-shirt, with his hair messy from sleep. Lately he had begun calling me tía and crooning the lyrics of Spanish-language love songs to all the female Spanish speakers in the room. I believed it had become something of a game for Saúl to see what he could get away with singing without my realizing what he was saying. My Spanish slang was nonexistent, and I was fairly certain he was getting away with quite a lot. Adorable, as they say in Spanish (another perfect cognate).
“Methusella, how about you?” asked Mr. Williams. “Were you happy? Bored? Sad?”
“So-so,” he said.
This was becoming one of Methusella’s favorite expressions. He seemed to like the way the word sounded, and perhaps he also liked the fact that it allowed him to answer personal questions without revealing much. He and Solomon moved through the classroom tentatively, alert—poised on the verge of flight. I thought I had never seen human beings so fully present yet so ready to bolt.
It snowed on eight separate days that November. Mr. Williams worried when he saw some of the newcomers arrive at school wearing thin jackets instead of proper coats. For many, it was their first experience of winter. He sent an email about this to the school’s community liaison, who reached out to a network of parents and outside organizations. She provided donated winter clothing, which Mr. Williams distributed privately.
No matter how bad the weather got, most of the newcomers materialized faithfully—but not the sisters from Iraq. One day, Jakleen and Mariam woke up to a furious blizzard but gamely trudged three-quarters of a mile to the bus stop in their tennis shoes and then took the bus all the way to the school, only to discover that the doors were locked. They waited outside the school for half an hour, banging on various doors, standing on one leg and then the other, trying to wiggle their wet, frozen toes, before someone conveyed to them successfully that it was a snow day, which was a new concept for them. By then the snow had soaked the bottom half of their jeans, and the
y could no longer feel their legs below the knees. Jakleen was crying from the cold, which stung her cheeks. She wound her hijab over her face, but the thin scarf was ineffective. They rode the bus back home, slogged from the bus stop all the way back to the apartment, and clambered back into their beds to get warm. The experience of being stuck outside in that storm seemed to frighten Jakleen and Mariam, and afterward the two girls skipped school anytime the weather was bad.
Mr. Williams worried about whether the sisters would progress in their learning, because of the number of absences they were accumulating. If they missed too much school, they might even have to repeat newcomer class. He dreaded the idea of that conversation. Mr. Williams decided to arrange a buddy system, if he could track down peer mentors who spoke the right home language for every student in Room 142. South had many students who spoke Arabic, and finding the right mentors for Jakleen and Mariam would be easy, but it would be challenging to find a mentor for Dilli, who spoke Kunama, or for Hsar Htoo, who spoke Karen.
A guidance counselor knew exactly whom to assign to Jakleen and Mariam: Sama and Sana. They were high-achieving twins from Iraq who spoke fluent English and were outperforming many native-born students in the high school’s Advanced Placement classes. Nobody on the staff could keep their names straight until Sama started going by “Sam.” Their older sister, Oula, a senior at South, had just spent the summer months enrolled in a program at Harvard; the summer before that, she had gone to a camp at Stanford. Like her, Sam and Sana were also getting straight A’s. If anybody could help Jakleen and Mariam perform better at school, the counselor thought, it would be the well-adjusted Iraqi twins. Mr. Williams hoped the other two sisters could have a positive influence on Jakleen and Mariam’s attendance.
* * *
At the same time that Mr. Williams was worrying about clothing his students properly for inclement weather, keeping them inside his classroom, evaluating their progress accurately, and assimilating all of the additional newcomers who kept arriving every month, he also spent a fair amount of time trying to think up novel ways to impart meaning to the intimidated teenagers that the war-torn parts of the world kept sending his way. One lesson, on a blustery day in the middle of November, had to do with the meaning of basic verbs. To make the lesson more fun, Mr. Williams decided to play a glorified version of Simon Says. He asked the entire class to stand and act out the meaning of various verbs, which he wrote on the Smart Board: listen, show, point, read, talk, walk, run, see, poke, scare, think, throw, write, learn, fly, jump, make, and cook.
