© 2014 Sharon Cebula All Rights Reserved

BASIC LIFE SKILLS: ESSAYS AND PROFILES ON IMMIGRATION IN AKRON, OHIO

A Thesis Presented to The Graduate Faculty of The University of Akron

In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Fine Arts

Sharon Cebula May, 2014

BASIC LIFE SKILLS: ESSAYS AND PROFILES ON IMMIGRATION IN AKRON, OHIO

Sharon Cebula

Thesis

Approved: Accepted:

______Advisor Dean of the College Professor David Giffels Dr. Chand Midha

______Faculty Reader Dean of the Graduate School Professor Robert Pope Dr. George R. Newkome

______Faculty Reader Date Professor Varley O’Connor

______Department Chair Dr. William Thelin

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Special gratitude goes to the immigrants and refugees who opened their lives and hearts

to me over the last three years. It was a distinct privilege to take a peek into their lives

and tell their stories.

A debt of thanks also goes to David Giffels, whose guidance and patience helped shape

not only this collection, but my sensibilities as a writer.

The names of all refugees in Chapter XII have been changed to protect their privacy.

Names and some identifying information have been changed in other chapters to afford

the same protection. All other events and descriptions are as accurate as possible.

Chapter IV, “A Place to Call Home,” originally appeared in Akron Life magazine,

December, 2011, and is reprinted here by permission

iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS Page CHAPTER I. HOW I LEARNED TO WRITE…………………………………...... 1

II. LAND WITHOUT EVIL………………………………………………………...... 12

III. ACCORD………………………………………………………………………….....27

IV. A PLACE TO CALL HOME…………………………………………………...... 46

V. HELP ALONG THE WAY………………………………………………………….53

VI. OLÁ, MARIA………………………………………………………………………..55

VII. MAY CHEN’S CRISIS MANAGEMENT…………………………………………61

VIII. LEGALLY SPEAKING…………………………………………………………...74

IX. ELINA, THE EASY IMMIGRANT…………………………………………...... 86

X. ANATOMY OF A LIE……………………………………………………………….91

XI. EVERYTHING NATION…………………………………………………………...98

XII. BASIC LIFE SKILLS………………………………………………………...... 104

XIII. LUCKY…………………………………………………………………………...150

XIV. BODY OF SIN…………………………………………………………………...158

XV. ALLEGIANCE……………………………………………………………………163

CHAPTER I HOW I LEARNED TO WRITE

Cursive writing was still taught in elementary school when I was young. I remember being thoroughly flummoxed by all those curls and loops, carefully copying the second grade teacher's elegant, slanted hand onto paper that was specially lined for the task.

Connecting all the loops was difficult at first, but got easier with practice. This was so different from reading. Reading was as natural to me as breathing.

By the time I reached second grade, I had surpassed the normal reading level and moved on to Newbery Award winners intended for fourth or fifth graders. My Side of the

Mountain taught me about being resourceful; The Bridge to Terabithia taught me about death; Old Yeller just broke my heart. I was never without a book. Indoor recess was always a favorite for me because I could spend it in the library, browsing books.

Around fifth grade, I found a slim blue book among the Newbery winners that I combed through regularly. The title was in gold script:

I, Juan de Pareja.1

Even at that young age, I had a taste for exoticism. Don't Ask Miranda had recently introduced me to Judaism, an exotic religion in Stow, Ohio, in the seventies, where all our neighbors were white and Christian. I didn't speak any Spanish, but that name sounded foreign. I said it out loud: "Juan de Pareja." It felt good in my mouth. I opened

1 Trevino, Elizabeth Borton. New York: Farrar, 1965. 1 the plain blue cover and read the first few words. Slavery? A beautiful black woman and her Spanish lover? I was hooked. It couldn't get much more exotic than that for a ten- year-old white girl in a white-bread suburb in Northeast Ohio. And we had recently studied the Civil War, so I was outraged by the concept of slavery. I was even more outraged that both my parents already seemed to know about slavery, yet failed to share my outrage.

I read the book quickly, as usual. Then I read it again, tried to savor it as much as an impatient child could. Juan de Pareja was a teenager, a painter, an orphan who missed his mother. I wanted desperately to be a teenager and a painter; I couldn't bear the idea of someone not having a mother. I had a deep desire to be different, maybe not in the same ways that Juan de Pareja was different, but different nonetheless. This story of a slave who could not deny the artist within him, and who made of his life as much as he possibly could, lived in my subconscious for years. Even after I moved on to higher-level reading, indulging my lurid teenage fantasies in titillating, scandalous books like I, Trisha and the V. C. Andrews Flowers In the Attic series, thoughts of Juan and his singular, exotic life often returned.

I lived in the same house in the same quiet suburb from age two until I turned eighteen. Most of our neighbors stayed the same that entire time, except for the elderly couple two doors down who gave my brother and me salted cantaloupe slices one summer day. They both died when I was in middle school, and I paid no attention to the new people who bought their house. I had a couple of good friends who lived within a block or two of my house. The most exotic of these was Debbie Lee, who lived with her mom, dad, and younger sister at the bottom of the hill of our street. Her mother would

2 make us wonderfully creamy steamed rice with butter and salt for a snack after school. I was fascinated by the watercolor prints in their living room and the way her father always took off his shoes upon entering the house and replaced them with open-back slippers.

Debbie spoke just like me, but both her parents had sharp nasal accents and often left prepositions out of their sentences or didn't know the right words for things.

I was never the new kid at school, but I loved befriending the new kids. Some of them ended up sticking around until high school graduation, though we didn't always stay friends. Others lived in our town for only six months or a year. I would magnanimously invite the new kid to sit with me and my friends in the cafeteria, include the new kid in a game of tag at recess, offer to share my textbook with the new kid during social studies. I thought it was really cool to be the new kid. The new kid was unknown and exotic; I was just sure she had seen and done things I hadn't. I was certain she knew things, important things that I hadn't learned yet. Besides, I felt important and knowledgeable showing her where the bathroom was, where the milk cart was, who was whom in the school hierarchy.

We had a substitute teacher one day in sixth grade who had us read a short story about a boy in Florida. This young man, maybe fifteen years old, spent his spare time fishing in the Gulf of Mexico. He used a net, rather than a rod and reel, which he would toss out onto the water and drag back to his boat full of fish. The fish swam in schools and fed on smaller creatures right near the surface, so the tips of their fins and tails would peak out of the water from time to time, showing the boy where to cast his net. The problem was stingrays. In this part of the Gulf, stingrays were common; the tips of a stingray's wings poking out of the water often looked exactly the same as the fins of the

3 little fish. One time, the boy cast his net onto a stingray by accident. The ray swam to the bottom of the Gulf, dragging the boy along behind him. The boy panicked and let go of his net, but not before it had cut into the flesh of his hands. He had to swim back to his boat with bloody hands, then go home and explain to his father why he needed money to buy a new net.

The substitute teacher gave us an assignment for the next day: we were to re- imagine the ending of the story and write it differently. She said it didn't matter how we wanted the story to end; we just needed to try and match the author's tone as much as possible. The next day, when the teacher asked us to share our rewrites, most of my fellow students had written about the boy earning the money to buy a new net without telling his father what had happened, or about the boy's father being so angry he kicked the boy out, or about the boy out-muscling the ray and hoisting it onto the boat as a prize catch. I wrote about the boy holding onto the net and being pulled to the ocean floor. I described the moonlight filtered through the dark water, the last bubbles of air from the boy's lungs floating up and up to the shiny surface now so far away. I described the boy's thoughts as he died, how he was not ashamed to have been bested by such an elegant creature, and how the stingray calmly nestled into the sand of the ocean floor, the net still tangled in its horns, completely unaware that it had won this mortal contest. I described the boy's feeling of euphoria as the oxygen left his body, his feeling of becoming one with the ocean at last, a sublime and peaceful death. I ended the story with an image of the boy's boat, now empty, bobbing on the waves above him.

The substitute teacher was horrified by my rewrite. She sent me to the principal's office, had him call my mother, and made me redo the assignment. I was pretty upset

4 about this reaction because I thought my rewrite was really good. I had seen the entire thing in my head like a movie. I had heard and felt every detail of the black braided net and thick salty water, the stingray's leathery skin and the boy's webbed sandals. I had been transported to other places by reading before; this was the first time I was transported somewhere by writing. For the first time, I felt the power of my own imagination to create, rather than to receive the creations of others. Something was awakening inside me.

A few years later, in ninth grade English class, Miss Benson introduced us to

Edgar Allen Poe. His stories were like no others I had read. His characters were unabashedly grotesque. Where the bulk of my adolescent reading had centered on essentially normal young people dealing with "otherness" in mundane, suburban ways-- the lone Jew among Gentiles, the only girl in a family of boys, the loner beleaguered by society--Poe's stories spoke of monsters masquerading as humans. The Pit and the

Pendulum, The Mask of the Red Death, and The Fall of the House of Usher: these stories awakened a dark sensibility I had ignored and hidden out of fear that I was the only one on earth who had ever felt it. Poe taught me that tapping into that darkness could connect with a reader on a truly visceral level.

Miss Benson gave us an assignment similar to that of the substitute in sixth grade.

She wanted us to make up a story of our own, but to write it in the style of Poe. I was elated. I wrote a fully derivative tale about a man directing a community theater play whose star is a beautiful girl with a terrible lisp. As rehearsals progress, the girl's lisp becomes more and more torturous for the sensitive director, until one night, after all the others have gone home and the girl is alone in the dressing room, the director kills her,

5 cuts out her tongue, and hides it under the floor boards of the stage. Of course, on opening night, the play begins wonderfully, with the girl's understudy delivering lisp-free lines that make the director beam with delight. Act Two is not as delightful, however, because several of the actors begin to develop speech impediments that no one but the director seems to notice. By the beginning of Act Three, everyone on stage is lisping loudly or stuttering uncontrollably. Naturally, the director becomes completely unhinged.

He jumps from his seat, runs onto the stage, and claws up the floor boards to reveal the girl's tongue, and his crime, to everyone. My story ended with the director rolling on the stage and babbling incoherently as police and an ambulance are called, ostensibly to cart him off to the loony bin.

I had such fun writing in that style! It felt free and wicked to unleash the dark thoughts I had hidden for so long. It felt safe to put them on the page where they were no longer inside me, eating away at me with shame and guilt, getting larger and darker the more I tried to bury them. Writing these thoughts into a fictional story felt like releasing demons into the ether. It was way better than going to confession at church and telling the priest I had fought with my brother or disobeyed my parents. This was true unburdening.

I went to school the next day in the best mood. I couldn't wait for English class!

Unfortunately, Miss Benson had to rescind her assignment. Several parents had called the principal when they learned about it; they did not like the idea of their sweet, suburban children writing about murder. So we were given a different assignment, one so bland I have no memory of it. After class, I asked Miss Benson if she would read my story anyway, since I had worked so hard on it and really thought it was good. She was reluctant, but she did. She told me it was good and that I should keep writing. She also

6 asked me not to show it to anyone else and not to tell my parents about it. This little nugget of secret encouragement lived in a corner of my heart for thirty years.

I met Miss Benson again about ten years ago when I worked as a receptionist for an eye doctor in West Akron. She was Mrs. Somebody-or-other by this time with two girls in grade school, but she looked just the same: very petite with perfectly coiffed hair and very stylish high-heeled boots. I thanked her for introducing me to the work of Poe and Shakespeare, for encouraging me to read and write and think for myself, for daring to give an assignment that challenged our parochial young minds. She remembered the controversy around that assignment but not my take on it. That's okay, I told her; I remembered it, and that's what really counts.

Several years ago, I was at a second-hand store and found the painting from that old book, I, Juan de Pareja. It was a print, of course, glued to a piece of rough wood, with a wire nailed to the back for hanging, above the artist's name scrawled in black marker. The painting figured prominently in the slave's story. His master, Velazquez, had long been toiling over this painting of the king's niece on her wedding day. Entitled Las

Meninas (The Bridesmaids), it depicts several ladies-in-waiting dressing a young bride for her nuptials in a dark, high-ceilinged room, with a dog lying in the foreground and a man in the far background standing on stairs, either entering or leaving through an open door. The perspective is such that the back of a canvas on an easel obscures the left side of the painting, giving the impression that the viewer is in the room with the bridal party.

To the left of the bride's ladies, leaning into the scene and holding a paintbrush, is the figure of the artist himself, a red cross emblazoned on his waistcoat.

As I remembered the book, Juan holds the dying Velasquez in his arms and guides his hand in applying that red cross to his self-portrait, thereby completing the painting.

But this is wrong. Re-reading the text as an adult, I discover that this scene actually took place after Velasquez was dead and buried, leaving a letter to the king granting Juan his freedom. It is the King of Spain who paints the red Cross of Santiago on Velasquez's chest, thereby posthumously be-knighting him. The part I remembered correctly and vividly was the former slave's dark hand guiding the pale hand of a white man in a final act of generosity: "Then, guiding him, my brown hand holding that white hand of royalty, we traced the Cross of Santiago on the Master's breast" (173). This image of a brown hand and a white hand working together is what survived my childhood and informed my adulthood.

When I moved from my parent's home in Stow to the relatively big city of nearby

Akron, I found a much more diverse population than I had experienced growing up. I was suddenly the new kid, surrounded by different skin colors, different accents, different clothes, customs, cooking smells. And yet, as different as people seemed, they all had jobs and kids and cars, celebrations and fights, bills and laundry. Some were generous with me, as I had been with new kids in school; others were indifferent to me. I soon found the differences to be less interesting than the samenesses we shared. When my car was stuck in the icy slush at the rutted end of the driveway to my apartment building one winter, I didn't care about the nationality or ethnicity of the brown man who helped me; I was just so glad he was there.

I came back to college at age thirty-six after working at dead-end jobs for a long time and not finding my calling. I knew there was something I was meant to do; I just

8 couldn't figure out what it was. My husband encouraged me to try college again--I had dropped out of my first semester at Kent State right after high school--but I resisted for a long time. A rough period of teenaged rebellion had led me to believe that college wasn't right for me, that I just wasn't smart enough. When I finally gave in and enrolled at The

University of Akron, I was surprised to find that I loved being back in the classroom. I meandered without a major for a while, still uncertain about where to focus my energy. I did pretty well in everything from sociology to archery, but that was almost the same as doing poorly because I couldn't clearly distinguish a standout from the array of interesting subjects.

One day while I was working at a coffee shop between classes, a regular customer mentioned that he was teaching a writing workshop at the university, and why didn't I think about taking it? This customer was one of my favorites, a white-haired man who always ordered a small skim cappuccino and always had something interesting to talk about, a book he had read or a movie he had seen. I would often sit and chat with him about stories after finishing my shift; our conversations made me feel intelligent in a way

I never had before. I left those chats with renewed excitement and curiosity about the world, and with a renewed sense of my own worth as a person in the world.

He convinced me that I would not feel out of my depth in his writing class. In fact, I'm pretty sure he used those words: "You will not be out of your depth in the class."

I was flattered but doubtful. My husband encouraged me to try it, so I signed up and immediately started worrying.

The class was Writing Short, Short Fiction. There were about a dozen students, both graduate and undergraduate. We wrote thousand-word stories on prompts the

9 professor gave us, skeletal prompts, like "someone goes somewhere, leaving something behind, and either goes back for it or doesn't," and "write about a journey, literal or figurative, and include an element of weather and at least one animal." The first time the professor asked me to read my piece out loud in class, I freaked out and refused, blushed deeply, and almost cried with embarrassment. He was gracious and allowed my refusal-- once. Soon, though, I settled into the supportive embrace of the other students, all of whom were respectful and caring, offering praise and advice for my rudimentary efforts. I felt that familiar something awaken inside me again.

It was like being re-introduced to a childhood sweetheart and finding that the spark was still there, that the relationship could just pick right back up again, without even noticing the passage of twenty or thirty years. Or maybe the spark was there because of that passage of time. It had needed to bank and simmer in the coals until it found the right fuel to feed it into flame again. I took another workshop, in Creative

Nonfiction this time, and discovered another excellent professor who encouraged and nurtured my skills with patience and challenging prompts. The difference between the two genres for me was like the difference between dating the impossibly handsome guy with whom you never feel at ease, and marrying the average-looking guy that makes you laugh and with whom you feel fully yourself for the first time.

I just recently learned that I, Juan de Pareja was historical fiction based on the life of a real slave and his real owner, the very real master painter Diego Rodriquez de

Silva y Velazquez, court painter to King Philip IV. I had always thought it was a completely made-up story. But it turns out that the author, Elizabeth Borton de Trevino, merely found it "necessary to hang many invented incidents, characters, and events upon

10 the thin thread of truth which has come down to us" (afterward, 177). The author goes on to say that Velasquez himself was a realist painter in the mid-seventeenth century, almost two hundred years before the realist movement began. She gives us the one and only quotation that can be authenticated as having come from his lips: "I would rather be first in painting something ugly than second in painting beauty" (178). I keep the battered, ugly print of his painting to remind me that truth contains both beauty and the grotesque; the job of a nonfiction writer is to reveal the intersection of the two in real life.

I have now lived in Akron longer than I lived in Stow and consider it my hometown. I am no longer the new kid in Akron, but I still go out of my way to meet newcomers here. Each new story I learn about someone who came to live in Akron from far away makes my own story so much more interesting, and helps me understand the world, or at least this corner of it, a little better. I like to take the thin thread of truth that is one immigrant's story and find its connection to a larger truth that resonates universally. It's a lot like learning to write in cursive, connecting all the loops into a larger, more graceful string of meaning. There's no one for me to copy this time; I just hope I get better at it with practice.

CHAPTER II LAND WITHOUT EVIL

North Hill neighborhood, Akron, Ohio July 26, 2008

The hard-packed dirt yard at 591 Schiller Avenue was littered with rocks, lengths of pipe, splintered two-by-fours. Weapons.

Trouble had been growing for more than a year. Noise nuisances, fights, vandalism, all involving groups of black teenagers and Asian immigrants, plagued the entire neighborhood. But most of it seemed to converge on this dirty front yard.

Things were coming to a head as Officers James Buchanan and Edward Hornacek responded to yet another call from 591 Schiller on this balmy summer night. This one was from a cell phone instead of the land-line of the home. The incident is listed as a

"nuisance call for 10B--fight no injuries." Between 9:47 and 10:25 pm., the officers made notes:

Female yelling in the phone will not cooperate . . . fight with Asians . . . she is going to kill them. . . . always several juveniles at 591 Schiller until the police pull up and then they scatter. . . . bricks being thrown from the east side of the street, as officers exited several juveniles ran north and in east direction, all black male juveniles.

Other reports from that summer speak of public intoxication on the street, fights, skirmishes, altercations, always involving blacks and Asians or Mexicans.

It seems some young KaRens, recent immigrants from Burma, had learned the word nigger and were using it at North High School. Naturally, young African

Americans were offended by this usage, so they retaliated against the Asian youths.

Violence led to more violence. A group of African Americans nearly destroyed a KaRen man's truck. A group of KaRen teens jumped a little black girl. Cars and houses were vandalized. Each perceived threat or offense was retaliated with greater force. The escalation seemed irreversible.

Then Oscar came to town.

Rangoon, Burma, Southeast Asia

When Oscar was just a child in Burma, he would lie in the courtyard of the upscale apartment building where his family lived and look at the clouds overhead, detailing their imagery to his mother as she nursed his baby sister. Beyond the bitter almond and mango trees that surrounded the courtyard, he could just make out the onion-shaped minaret of a

Muslim mosque. He might have heard bits of conversation from the English family that occupied the apartment above theirs, or from the Indian family that lived below them, or muffled traffic sounds from the bustling streets of Rangoon just outside on Sparks Street.

These were the waning days of the British colonial occupation of Burma, just before the brief period of democratic self-rule that was severed by a violent military coup and decades of civil war. Before hundreds of thousands of ethnic KaRen, Kachin, and

Chin people were killed or terrorized and forced to flee to refugee camps in border regions to the south and west, or across the border into neighboring Thailand. Before

Oscar's family's country home was burned to the ground, along with an entire village.

Before his uncle died in a “re-education” camp set up by the military regime that took control in the 1960s.

Oscar was a precocious child whose parents, both ethnically KaRen, were college-educated and strongly valued education. One of his earliest and fondest memories is of reading about Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Jackson, and Booker T. Washington in the

Landmark Books series. The orange-red binding and what he thought was a lighthouse on the seal are still vivid in his mind's eye, and emblemize the place of his childhood. Those books were the beginning of his education and his first window on the wider world. They may also be part of the reason why, once Oscar came to the United States, he never left.

The word KaRen, pronounced differently from the girl's first name, with an emphasis on the second syllable, is a pejorative term given to these docile people by their oppressors. It is a corruption of a Thai word that means "animal in the jungle." The

KaRens are viewed as beasts without reason, barbarians who do not enter into the civilized life of the city. In fact the name 'Burma' itself is a misnomer for the country, as it is merely the name of the majority ethnic group. Even the new name, Myan Mawr, diligently changed on maps and atlases in the West in attempts at political correctness, is just the Burmese word for 'Burma.' The KaRen people have no land of their own, no voice in the government, not even a name of their own.

Not long after receiving his degree in structural engineering, Oscar was working for an American-owned company in Rangoon. They offered him a job at the company's

14 headquarters in Houston, Texas. Oscar was in his mid-twenties, a young man eager to go, travel and see the world. But he had difficulty getting a passport. The Cold War was in full swing by this time, and the military junta running Burma had strongly identified with

Soviet-era communism. They were reluctant to issue passports at all, let alone to allow travel to a Capitalist country. In the end, they gave him a simple i.d. card, not a passport, and told him that if he left, he could never return to Burma.

A lifetime seems long when the end is not in sight, when never is just a theoretical. For Oscar in 1968, never had a much different meaning. The majority of

KaRen and other Burmese are Christian, and Oscar's family was no exception. His family were firm believers in The Watchtower; they were Jehovah's Witnesses. They believed the church when it predicted that Judgment Day was imminent: 1975 would bring the

Second Coming of Jesus Christ, the end of the world as they knew it, and the beginning of life in Paradise, reunited with their creator and all the loved ones who had been saved.

With this in mind, 'never' didn't seem like much of a threat. What is seven years, Oscar's mother reasoned. Go and see the world; we'll be together again soon enough, on the Right side of the New Order, Christ's promised Paradise.

So he left, never to return.

1975 came and went without a Second Coming or an end to the world as we know it. Oscar spent the next thirty-some years in the United States as an "alien resident," a man without a country.

North Hill neighborhood, Akron, Ohio August 2008

Gary and Patricia Wyatt didn't even stop at their Cuyahoga Falls home to drop off their luggage; they went directly from the airport to North Hill, where Captain Trundle had told them trouble was brewing. The call had come while they were still in the Bahamas, enjoying a rare and much-deserved vacation for two weeks. Tensions were high in North

Hill and something was about to happen, Captain Trundle had said. You have to come as soon as possible, she said. If you don't come tonight, someone will get killed.

So, jet-lagged and exhausted from the long flight, Gary and Patricia drove straight to the huge old house on the corner of North Howard and York Streets late on that

Sunday afternoon in August. Like every other August in Ohio, it was hot and humid, and people were outside trying to escape the oppressive heat of their homes. As Gary unlocked the back door to the North Hill Community House they had started as a branch of their ministry a few years before, Patricia noticed something. The sun was low in the sky, not quite setting, and an unusual number of people were beginning to gather on front stoops and lawns up and down the block.

Setting her bag on the long, gleaming wood conference table that dominates the main meeting room of the house, Patricia glanced out the big picture window overlooking

York Street. Several black guys were walking quickly up York toward North Howard

Street, talking to each other in earnest, as if they were going somewhere in particular.

When they reached the corner, one of them looked to the right down Howard, waved his hand and jerked his head, as if motioning for others to join them. Patricia turned her gaze away as another group of people, more Hispanic than black, came walking past the house toward Howard Street as well. This group crossed to the corner opposite the black guys,

16 also motioning to someone out of Patricia's line of sight to join them. She felt a chill run down her spine and a hard pit form in her stomach.

More and more people came in twos or threes or fives, all walking up York or

Howard, all crossing Howard and heading east, toward Schiller Avenue. It was eerie, all these people popping up from different houses in the area, some so unfamiliar to Patricia that she knew they were not residents of this neighborhood. She and her husband had been ministering to the North Hill community for years; she knew just about everyone who lived within ten blocks by their faces, if not their names. When she and Gary stepped outside to join the stream of foot traffic heading east, the air seemed heavy. And it wasn't just the humidity. There was an electricity in the air, a tension. It felt like a war was about to begin.

As soon as the Wyatts reached the sidewalk, only ten feet from their door, a police car pulled into their driveway. Captain Trundle got out of the driver's seat and placed her blue cap over her short blond hair, waving hello to Gary and Patricia. Gary went directly up to the older Asian man who emerged from the passenger side and shook his hand, breathing a sigh of relief. Gary had met Oscar at various community meetings on racial tension, neighborhood outreach, crime prevention over the past few months.

Oscar brought a deliberate sense of calm and reason to every situation. Plus he is from

Burma and can speak the language of the newer residents here in North Hill. The ones who had been having so many problems lately.

Oscar is compact: short and lean, mostly bald with just a smattering of gray hairs on his pate and chin. His heavy-lidded eyes and easy smile are outlined with wrinkles, but his wide, flat cheekbones and round head are covered with smooth skin the color of

17 caramel. His light brown eyes sparkle with intelligence and his gnarled, short-fingered hands bear the leathery calluses and dirty nails of a man who works hard outdoors. He appears equally comfortable in jeans and work boots as he does in the traditional KaRen garb of a calf-length wrap skirt and loose-fitting V-necked top of thick, woven cotton, which he wore this night.

The foursome walked across Howard Street, Gary and Oscar speaking in low, serious tones, Patricia and Captain Trundle more animated, their strong voices registering a range of emotions. Sylvia Trundle's voice is fairly high-pitched and well-trained from running patrol meetings of mostly male officers for twenty years. Patricia's voice is deeper and resonant, almost musical from years of singing praise in church. Sylvia's right hand rested in its usual place, on the hilt of the pistol in the leather holster of her belt.

Patricia's hands flew about in the animated fluttering she can't help whenever she speaks.

Even as they approached Schiller, just one block in from Howard, more residents and onlookers passed them, joining the crowd that had quickly gathered.

The four of them stopped talking as they reached the corner of York and Schiller.

The pit in Patricia's belly went cold. There were at least a hundred people milling about in racially divided groups of five to ten. The block of Schiller between York Street and

Tallmadge Avenue is claustrophobic, with an empty lot at one end and three four-story apartment buildings blocking out the setting sun at the other. Several wood frame houses, once brightly painted but now faded and peeling, line the rest of the block, their sparse lawns trampled by anxious black, Hispanic, and Asian teens, children, adults. Windows of apartments yawned open, spilling forth limbs of more spectators, mostly elderly, who chose the relative safety of the upper floors to watch the scene below.

Conversations buzzed quietly; eyes darted nervously. Everyone seemed to be waiting for something to happen. The gathering dusk crept up and obscured ragged bushes and dirty streets. The air was thick with humidity, cigarette smoke, apprehension.

The four of them, a white cop, a black married couple, and a short Asian man, went up and down Schiller Avenue, knocking on every door, talking with every homeowner. Their unity and diversity served as the example to each household that this was not a black thing, or an Asian thing; this was a neighborhood thing. We can get along; so can you.

Near the north end of the street, the group approached a black woman standing outside the wood frame house closest to the lone brick apartment building. 591 Schiller

Avenue had been the center of much of the escalating violence over the last months. This woman, Patriece Page, was the property owner at 591 Schiller. Her cooperation was crucial if there was to be a peaceful resolution to this stand-off. And she was pissed.

Gary and Oscar spoke with her for a few minutes, offering gentle words of conciliation, trying to convince her that they saw her side of things. Her house had been vandalized; fights had played out in her yard. A peaceful resolution was in her best interest. Page was defensive and resistant, though not out-rightly hostile toward Gary and

Oscar. She made it clear, however, that she was not the problem. They were the problem.

Her words and gestures registered in visible tensing among the Asians standing nearby.

Captain Trundle suggested they try speaking with some of the KaRen residents in the apartment building across the street.

* * *

The International Institute routinely houses new immigrants in this North Hill neighborhood, and with good reason. The Institute itself is just a few blocks east on

Tallmadge Avenue, making it accessible by foot in just a few minutes. Along the way, there are a grocery store and pharmacy, as well as several regular bus stops, a gas station and convenience store. Findley Elementary School is just up the block, at the intersection of Tallmadge Avenue and West Cuyahoga Falls Avenue. Zion Apostolic Church anchors

Tallmadge Avenue and North Howard Street; Saint Martha's Catholic Church is closer to the Institute on Tallmadge. A branch of the public library is not far away on Cuyahoga

Falls Avenue. In theory, all these attributes make the North Hill neighborhood ideal for newcomers who might not speak English, have a car, or know anyone else in town.

Positioned on a steep rise north of downtown, on the other side of the valley formed by the Little Cuyahoga River, North Hill connected to Akron proper by a trolley line in the 1890s, which was replaced by a viaduct bridge thirty years later. Immigrants favored this area even before those trolley days, so it has always been diverse. In the

1940s and 50s, Italians dominated, establishing landmark businesses that remain to this day, like Diviti's grocery, Emidio's pizza shop, and Piscazzi's auto repair. All of Akron declined in prosperity in the 1970s, when the once-booming rubber industry was running out of gas, but North Hill suffered disproportionately because the viaduct bridge closed, taking thousands of cars--and customers--around the neighborhood rather than through it.

A new bridge, the All-American, replaced the viaduct in 1981, but that seems to have been too late. Poverty had firmly taken hold, as evidenced by vacant store fronts up and down North Main Street. North Howard Street gained a city-wide reputation as a hotspot for prostitution and drugs.

As the economic complexion of Akron changed, so did its ethnic make-up. The nationalities and ethnicities of immigrants followed the pattern of war around the world: from Eastern Europe in the 1940s and 50s, from Cuba in the 60s, from Southeast Asia in the 70s. In every era, The International Institute did its best to accommodate the needs of immigrants and refugees from all these regions. Unfortunately, the combination of all this diversity and poverty well above the state average into one of the most densely populated neighborhoods in the city makes for what Captain Trundle calls "a challenge."

* * *

Climbing the brick steps to the first-floor apartment, Gary let Oscar take the lead. These were his countrymen, fellow KaRen ethnics who had fled Burma and the violent military regime that had persecuted them for several decades. Gary had survived a different kind of violence, battling drug addiction and gangs in his youth not far from this neighborhood, but he felt out of his depth with the KaRen. He hoped that Oscar, with his quiet way and relentless reason, would be able to build a bridge to these most foreign of neighbors. Otherwise, all of North Hill would erupt in violence, more young people would be lost forever to bloodshed, gangs, death. He was tired of writing eulogies for neighbors the ages of his own sons.

Oscar and Captain Trundle sat on the hardwood floor with about fifteen KaRen who occupied other apartments in the building. Captain Trundle couldn't understand the words, but she knew what Oscar was saying. He was telling his fellow countrymen that the police here were different from those in Burma, that the law was different here.

Getting arrested in the United States did not necessarily mean you would never see your family or the light of day again. Defending yourself with sticks or slingshots was not the

21 way it was done here; calling the police when you're in trouble was actually a good thing here. And using the n-word was just asking for trouble.

Heads nodded; expressions softened. Captain Trundle could actually feel the tensions easing even as the temperature rose from so many bodies in the tiny living room.

Yes, she thought; we are getting somewhere.

Back outside, the crowd was still milling about. Gary and two other local church authorities made short speeches about diversity, togetherness, community. Two more police cars had arrived, but the officers stayed at the far end of the street, closer to

Tallmadge Avenue, watching and waiting. Everyone seemed to be waiting.

* * *

Working in Seattle in 2004, Oscar ran into Mahn Robert, an old friend and fellow countryman that he had known in Burma in grade school. Mahn told Oscar of his efforts to help KaRen refugees start over in the U.S. and Canada. Inspired by Mahn's work,

Oscar set aside his plans for a comfortable retirement and joined the cause. In 2007,

Oscar went to a refugee camp in Thailand and witnessed the daily horrors of this little- known war first hand. He slept in a hammock in the jungle, talked with young soldiers fighting for the freedom of their people. If only there was some way an old retired man could help.

When colleagues of Mahn described the escalating situation in Akron, how

KaRens were being bullied and starting to carry weapons to defend themselves against aggressive African Americans, Oscar volunteered to go there and try to mediate. He had no formal mediation training, just an innate sense of equanimity, a level-headedness that

22 enabled him to weigh people and situations on a scale of understanding and communication, rather than winning and losing. His only criteria for a win was mutual respect.

* * *

Gary asked the crowd to pray.

"Let's all join hands with our brothers and sisters and pray for peace here tonight."

A few people took the hands of those close to them; others seemed to shrink into themselves, resisting this token of humanity. Patriece Page vocally refused. She was not going to touch any of those people. Some close to her nodded and mumbled in agreement. Gary would have none of that.

"If we don't join hands and end this right now, we're gonna be burying someone in one of your families here real soon. So don't come crawling to me later, asking me to read no eulogy."

Patricia Wyatt added these remarks: "You don't gotta be their best friend; we all here in peace. We are representing peace, for all of us. We have to do this for the sake of our kids, for the whole neighborhood. Let's just settle this thing right here, right now."

Oscar walked over to Page and smiled. He explained, in his mellow, slightly

British accent, how he and his people had to live here, too, how all of them really wanted the same thing, to live their lives and not be in fear. Gary stood with the two of them, put a hand on a shoulder of each. He asked again, just of Page, to pray with him for peace.

She reluctantly took Gary's hand, but wouldn't take Oscar's. Oscar was not offended. He joined the widening prayer circle, taking the hands of others who stood near him.

The ring of people covered the street and four lawns, two on either side of it.

People on porches too far from the circle joined hands with each other, lending their prayers as well.

After a few words of blessing from Gary and other community leaders, the circle dispersed. Some people hugged each other; others just went home. An older KaRen woman who helped with some interpreting from time to time later told Patricia Wyatt that that night was the first time she had felt at peace in this neighborhood since coming here from Burma.

* * *

Just a few blocks away from Schiller and York streets is another crossroads. Not much marks the intersection of Wall and Salome Streets. Large wood frame houses with tiny, tidy yards display mums and pumpkins on porches. A cold November wind whips through leftover Halloween decorations, bringing a chorus of unseen children's playful yells and laughter. The buzz of an electric drill punctuated by a pounding hammer rings out from the freshly-painted blue house across from 980 Wall Street, whose double city lot is fenced with chain-link. Tall tomato plants gone to seed hang the remnants of their late-season fruit over the edge of a large banner lashed to the fence: "North Hill

Community House," it reads; "Impacting the community one Life at a time." Another section of the fence bears plastic white and blue letters that spell out happy birthday between images of Mickey and Minnie Mouse. A green garden hose in messy coils near

24 the sidewalk snakes up the fence where it is secured along the top with twist-ties for about ten feet until it disappears into drying cornstalks. The rest of the fence is crisscrossed with brittle, sagging brown vines, the only remaining evidence of the shoelace beans that reached a full meter at their greatest length a few months ago. Blue plastic barrels, some cut in half, sit full of rain water at intervals among neat rows of what used to be prolific plants, now cut-down to feed the soil over the winter.

This is Kaw Thoo Lay Gardens, the community project Oscar and his KaRen neighbors planted and nurtured during the summer of 2012. They picked bushelfuls of those beans and other vegetables from their homeland, like the feathery, bitter-tasting herb roselle, as well as some more familiar to Ohioans, like basil and zucchini. A friend of Oscar's who works in the engineering and planning department of the city, and who is an enthusiastic supporter of community gardens, got them access to the water hydrant across the street.

"Since water was never an issue for us, our corn got to grow as tall as ten feet."

Oscar smiles broadly. "And Master Gardeners of Summit County included us in their tour of community gardens!"

He shakes his head as if surprised by their success, though the KaRen descend from generations of farmers. Their cucumbers didn't do so well, succumbing to a fungus, but Oscar has researched it on the Internet and knows how to avoid it next year. Trinity

Catholic Church on East Tallmadge Avenue has pledged an acre and a half plot of its land for a KaRen Market Garden, where they will sell the harvest to neighbors and help support their families with the income. Thick, gray clouds blanket the sky above the

25 brown remains of the garden, threatening another cold downpour. But Oscar is already seeing the layout for next year's plants in his mind's eye.

Kaw Thoo Lay, in one of the KaRen languages, means "land without evil." This is the land Oscar tends.

CHAPTER III

ACCORD

To bring into agreement; to reconcile; To grant or give, especially as appropriate, due or earned; To be consistent or in harmony; to agree Origin: Anglo-French acorder: to give, grant, or agree to

Sanja (pronounced like Sanya) Drobnjak and I have been friends for a little over five years. We don't talk every day, but we email and message each other frequently about major events in our lives, like job changes, overseas travel, and Sanja's recent engagement to marry her long-time beau. Since our lives became entwined and I learned how Sanja came to live in Akron, I have wanted to tell Sanja's story. I could never make it work, though. I tried different approaches, but the style and voice never seemed quite right. Then I realized that it wasn't my story to tell. So Sanja and I decided to collaborate, to tell our stories side by side, each in her own voice. By according each other space and respect, we learned to understand each other, ourselves, and the world around us much more deeply.

This is the result of our collaboration.

1. Sanja's Story, 1995

I was six years old when my father came home one day in August and announced that our town was evacuating. Neighbors and relatives were abandoning their homes, and the sentiment among the townsfolk was that the window of opportunity to leave was closing.

My mother is not an alarmist, so she did not react much to my father's announcement. 27

She was probably more irritated about my father's insistence on taking his daily afternoon nap than she was worried about an evacuation. His naps exemplified his laziness and worked on her nerves. Still, she and I left to fetch the weekly groceries at the market down the street. The market served as a gathering place for the townspeople, so perhaps my mother thought she could learn there if the rumors my father had heard were true, and if her worry was warranted.

The atmosphere at the market was not how it usually was; there was none of the usual convivial banter. Instead, people rushed about in hurried exchanges and frantic buzz about the recent evacuation developments. The urgency and palpable fear on peoples’ faces quickly undid my mother’s calmness. She later told me she panicked as we hurried back home. Approaching our driveway path, she urged me to quickly run inside and wake up my father.

“We have to go,” she stated, with resigned finality in her voice.

Uncertain and nervous of what lay ahead, I grabbed only my ‘medo,’ the stuffed panda bear I slept with and could not imagine being without. My mother probably packed a change of clothes for me, but when I tried to bring my water colors from the living room table, I was instructed to leave them. There was room and time for only essential belongings.

Our family car at the time was a Serbian-made Fica, which is something like the original Volkswagen Beetle. It was in disrepair and would not have taken us very far, so a family friend and neighbor lent us his Stojadin. My father was lucky enough to catch him just in the nick of time as he, too, was on the brink of departure. We drove off with only the few items my parents had hastily gathered.

The line of traffic for the mass exodus was long and slow-moving. Along the way, we passed UNICEF and Red Cross trucks stocked with food and supplies every ten to fifteen miles or so. These were to aid the travelers of our convoy, and we stopped at several of them along the way. Our flee was not unexpected. Serbian-populated areas of

Croatia were at grave risk of invasion by the Croatian armies, and civilians would not be spared. The progression advanced at an excruciatingly slow pace, such that a pedestrian walking at normal speed could have kept up.

Our journey lasted 12 days. On an ordinary day, the drive from our town of

Cemernica, Croatia, to our final destination of Prigrevica, Serbia, would have been approximately four hours. Traversing the distance of a mere 200 miles was no easy task that August in 1995; we had to detour south, through Bosnia where there was no fighting.

We had stopped in Dvor, at the border between Croatia and Bosnia, with the plan to spend the night, but rumors of approaching bombs demanded no rest for the weary. Novi

Grad, on the other side of the border in Bosnia and Herzogovina, was heavily targeted by

Croatians attempting to prevent our advancement. We made the crossing into Novi Grad just as the connecting bridge was bombed.

I remember turning to look out the back window of the car, still clutching my medo, and seeing the bridge we had just driven across crumble into the water below.

There was no going back.

2. Sharon's Story, 1995

On September 9th, I descended the staircase of my West Akron home to find my older sister blow-drying my father's linen trouser leg in the kitchen while the rest of our relatives milled about our small suburban back yard. I wore an ankle-length ivory velvet

29 dress and daisies in my up-swept hair, along with my mother's pearl necklace and earrings. It seems my husband-to-be was not able to eradicate the bees from their underground nests earlier in the day, and one of them had taken its revenge on my father's leg, leaving a stain of blood that my sister quickly removed with club soda. She was now drying the evidence of this near-disaster as quickly as possible. Dad, who had just turned

60 on August 6th, was being rather a good sport about the whole thing. He had joined

Alcoholics Anonymous two years earlier, shortly after I met Dave, in the wake of a particularly angry and embarrassing July Fourth picnic. His sobriety had finally allowed the two of us to make amends with each other for my tense, combative adolescence. My relationship with my parents in 1995 was warmer than it had ever been.

I was completely oblivious to the real disaster occurring some five thousand miles away in the former Yugoslavia on my wedding day. I was twenty-six years old, deliriously in love, surrounded by people who loved me, sheltered in suburban splendor, and about to begin my adult life in earnest as a bona fide, respectable married woman.

I wouldn't even have been able to locate the Balkans on a map.

Besides, America was in boom times, with unprecedented economic growth, low unemployment, and Bill Clinton playing the sax in the White House. There was nothing but blue skies and clear sailing as far as we could see. Our whole lives lay ahead of us, and our futures looked so bright we needed our sunglasses even at night.

An Episcopalian minister friend performed the ceremony in full regalia, which pleased my very religious father, but refrained from mentioning God, which pleased the

Atheist bride and groom. She quoted sexy passages from the Book of Solomon, as well as

30 thoughtful ones from Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet. We exchanged rings and vows we had crafted together that hinted at our travels to come:

"I offer you all that I am, all that I may encounter, and all that I may become. I will befriend you always, walking by your side forever as your soul mate. May our great journey together begin now."

Our guests dined on carrot cake and cheap white wine and keg beer. In the morning, we threw out enough stale or spoiled food to feed several families in need.

There was no leftover alcohol.

The day after the intimate ceremony and celebration, Dave and I set off on a two- week honeymoon in the Pacific Northwest, a whirlwind tour by plane, train and automobile that took us through the Canadian Rockies, an Indian reservation, and a weird hotel in SeaTac that smelled like a car air freshener and had carpeting on the walls.

We’ve never looked back since.

3. Sanja, 1999

My little brother was born while we lived in a refugee dormitory in Kosovo in 1998. We had moved south in 1995 after only three months in northern Serbia because my maternal aunt had also been in Kosovo as a refugee, and my mom wanted to reunite with some of her immediate family. In the government dorms, each family was assigned one room, about twelve feet by twelve feet, with two beds, a dining room table, a desk and a chair.

Though it sounds stark, the beds--army issue cots, really--were quite comfortable.

I had to stay with a neighbor when my mother went to the hospital because my father wasn't home. He had been hospitalized for alcohol poisoning. I was only nine then, but I already knew about my father's drinking. I was so worried and scared for my mom;

31 she almost died in the delivery. By the time my mother was admitted to the hospital in

Pristina, she had already lost an alarming amount of blood. The doctor on duty was also a refugee in Kosovo, originally from Gospic, Croatia. When the doctor realized from my mother’s paperwork and identification information their shared Croatian origin and refugee status, he ordered an immediate operation. The medical staff said that if she had arrived at the hospital a mere two hours later, it would have been too late. Remembering a floor covered in blood under the operating table as she went into surgery, my mother later described her gratefulness to this man for saving her life.

My brother was born a whole month premature, and my father wasn't there for it.

This was the turning point in the way I perceived my father. I could never forget his absence at such a significant and life-threatening moment for the matriarch of our family.

Later, when I started keeping a diary, I never wrote about these issues or my parents’ quarrels. I knew I wanted to keep the diaries and would consciously omit these

‘ugly truths’ that often characterized my life’s events. I didn't want to look back on the bad parts of my life, so I would sugar-coat the entries during the times things were bad with my father.

During the spring of that same year, we moved north from Kosovo to Ćuprija, in the mid region of Serbia, where my mom's brother lived. There was a lot of fighting in

Kosovo in 1998; it was essentially becoming a war-zone. Milosevic had deployed Serbian troops to the region because the area was threatened by turmoil between the Serbians and the Albanians, and it became very dangerous to stay there.

In Ćuprija, we moved into a two-story apartment building owned by a French professor and his wife, whose elderly mother needed looking after. There was another

Serb family with two kids living on the ground floor. In exchange for looking after the professor's mother-in-law, we got a break on our rent upstairs. Though we inhabited a three-bedroom apartment, my family and I all shared only one room together. The old lady landlord had her own room, and the third, spare bedroom was kept vacant as her personal storage area. We all four shared the same room here, just like we had in the dorms in Kosovo. Everyone was happy with this arrangement except maybe the elderly mother, who didn't like having a "babysitter."

I was in third grade and pretty happy here. There were kids who made fun of me for being a refugee because refugees were commonly perceived as inferior and looked down upon similarly to the gypsies in Serbia: vagabonds, beggars with homes constructed of cardboard boxes. On the other hand, I had friends, too, and enjoyed a fairly satisfying childhood. My best friends, twin sisters Marija and Jelena, and I would wander around brick alleyways and build tree houses in the corner park across from my family's apartment. Sometimes we played hide-and-seek or Monopoly together, but our favorite pastime was designing and sewing clothes for our Barbie dolls. We couldn't just go down to a neighborhood Pat Catan's and buy fabric--those kinds of Western stores wouldn't appear in Serbia for years. Instead, each of us would contribute to the sewing basket with scraps from old shirts or dresses. I brought one of these Barbie dresses to

America with me that I had made from an old sheet, sprinkled with blue and white flowers. It looks terribly ugly to me now; I can't believe this is the one I kept!

By the spring of 1999, approximately one year after our move to Ćuprija, I was quite content with my newfound home. However, my memory of this period is overshadowed by the NATO military operation in response to the war in Kosovo, which

33 dominated much of that spring. This initiative consisted of bombings of Serbian towns, with military bases as prime targets. There was a military storage area right behind our middle school, Osnovna Skola Đura Jakšić, just beyond a small field. It wasn't a military base; just a storage garage.

Sirens would sound several times a day in Ćuprija, whenever radar picked up airplane activity over the town. There weren't any civilian casualties in Ćuprija during the

NATO bombings; still, all the mothers were in a constant state of worry. My friends and I immediately stopped playing when we heard the sharp screech of the warning siren and sprinted home. I was ten years old. My little brother and I would go into the basement of the apartment building with our parents, the old lady who was our landlord, and the family that lived on the ground floor. We had cots and a radio down there; mom and the other women had tried to make it as comfortable as possible. The apartment was about two miles from the military storage area. One night I heard the bombs making contact.

Walls shook; lights flickered. But I felt safe; I knew we weren't being targeted, because we were civilians, after all.

On the evening news during this time, the government often played patriotic

Serbian songs to calm and unite the nation. I wrote some of the lyrics of a very popular one in my journal. It's called Deca Beograda, or Children of Belgrade, and is sung by children in the recording:

My name is Sunčica, Sunshine is my name I haven’t seen it for days from basement’s darkness I am Rastko and I’m very strong but when I hear the sound, my cheek gets wet We are praying for our hearts Because war is knocking on the door

We are praying for peace to reign in our country now too (Pesme).

By the end of the bombings in June 1999, my parents decided to leave Serbia for good.

It was time to go again.

My parents contacted a group called I.O.M., the International Organization for

Migration, who helped get our emigration process started. We fell under the special criteria of being “dual” refugees, first driven out of Croatia, then out of Kosovo, due to military conflicts. As such, we were eligible to begin our application process right away, with the hope that we would be granted relocation to a different country.

We traveled to Belgrade and began the long process of emigration. I was never called in to an interview; only my parents were. I think the interviewers were connected with the embassy; they were probably looking for information about spying, plotting against the government, evidence of atrocities. Initially, my family interviewed with

Swedish representatives because we had been listed for emigration to Sweden. Refugees rarely get to choose where they want to relocate, unless they already have family in another country. We had no such connections. Following an unsuccessful interview, my family’s potential relocation to Sweden was denied. Next, we received the option to continue our application process with a screening for relocation to North America. My parents were happy for a second chance. Several trips to Belgrade and a thorough physical examination for the whole family later, we were notified that our relocation application had been approved for the United States.

From Belgrade, we traveled to Bucharest, the capital of Romania, for the last stop before heading to America. Due to sanctions in place at the time that had resulted from the United States’ declaration of war on the former Yugoslavia, air travel between Serbia

35 and the United States was prohibited. In Romania, one final interview was conducted with all applicants. Following that, we were informed of our very final destination:

Akron, Ohio.

Many families from various regions of Serbia were there in Bucharest, as well as some from Bosnia and Croatia, but we were the only family from Ćuprija. The whole group was lodged in two different three-star hotel, where we ate lavish meals together in the ballroom and wandered thickly-carpeted hallways exchanging stories of our backgrounds and the bright futures we imagined. Our stay here was approximately 3-4 weeks, and in the meantime I was able to make some friends and form a crush on a boy.

It was hard to imagine what this new place we were going to would be like. They gave us booklets that explained life in the U.S., but they were over-simplified and out-of-date. I didn't pay much attention to them. I had taken a year of English in school, but my fluency was pretty basic. I found out much later that the cost of our room, board, and airfare was covered by I.O.M., but that we had to pay it back after we settled in the states.

Our journey from Eastern Europe to the US was long and harrowing. On one of our layovers, I can’t remember exactly which one, my brother and I were starving and my parents did not even have ten dollars to buy us a snack. I cried, jealous of our traveling companions who were able to provide their kids with candy and snacks. My mother, while sharing my tears, comforted me and told me it would be okay. She said that this— coming from nothing—was the reason why we were going to America.

4. Sharon, 1999

Dave and I ordered our passports in March to make sure we'd have them in time for our trip in September. I'd never had a passport before, never gone to a foreign country before.

Okay, I'd been to Canada, but that really didn't count. At least, not then it didn't, before planes started flying into buildings and everything changed. The situation in the Balkans never even entered our minds as we made our plans.

We chose Holland for our first international vacation because it was a place we'd never been, a part of Europe most people didn't go to, an exotic, northern land of windmills and wooden shoes and tulips and dikes. Well, that's what we told our families and co-workers. Among our friends, the real reason was understood.

We bought a Rough Guide: Amsterdam and started learning a few key phrases like sprekt u engels? and rot op! We bought backpacks and a travel clothesline, learned how to pack light so we wouldn't have to check any baggage. I cut my long blond tresses very short to make my toilette as simple as possible on the go. Dave studied city maps and train schedules; I sought advice from well-traveled friends about versatile, easy-to-wash clothes and sturdy footwear.

Still, nothing could prepare us for the sensory onslaught that is Centraal Station,

Amsterdam, at seven am, or any other time for that matter. I'm not entirely sure how we got from Schiphol Airport to Centraal Station--by train, certainly, since that is the only possibility; I just don't remember it. We were both quite sleep-deprived from the eight- hour overnight flight, so some of the details of that early morning are a little sketchy. But the smells and sounds of Centraal Station tattooed themselves into the very fabric of my memory. My olfactory system swooned under complex layers of gasoline, urine, fried food, human body odor, wet dog, and some other unnamable scent that can only be attributed to the collective stench of hundreds of years of humanity and stagnant canal water. At the same time, my ears were assaulted by an overhead public-address system

37 doling out arrival and departure information in three successive languages: Attentie, alstublieft! Attention, s'il vous plaît! Your attention, please! Almost all of what came between these three attention-getting starters was completely unintelligible above the constant rumble of trains entering and leaving the station, punctuated occasionally by a sharp whistle toot that echoed off the elegantly arched high ceiling above the platforms, along with the general cacophony of people around us shuffling up and down stairs from the platforms and out onto the streets of Amsterdam itself.

Outside the station, a sea of bicycles had washed up against the brick facade of the building. Hundreds, thousands, perhaps a million bicycles lay one upon another in what must have started out as an orderly row but has become a ridiculous tangle of wheels and handlebars and spokes. I almost didn't recognize them as bikes at first. I couldn't wrap my head around it. How would you get your bike out of that mess, if you needed to? I hadn't realized, yet, how intrinsic bicycles are to the Dutch way of life, how ubiquitous bikes are in Amsterdam, nor how rampant bicycle theft is in the city. Hundreds of bikes are dredged from the canals every year, tossed there by thieves. The pile at

Centraal Station was just an introduction into this new world for me.

We somehow made our way from the station to our small hotel, in a quiet neighborhood outside the touristy Centrum. But it was still only eight in the morning, and our room was not ready yet. We took a chance and left our back packs--including most of our cash, our passports (!!), and copies of our credit cards--with the young bilingual woman at the desk while we went out to explore for a few hours. She assured us our things would be safe until we came back to our prepared room.

We plunged into the neighborhood and made a beeline for the first coffeeshop we could find open at eight am on a Sunday morning.

In Amsterdam, there's a big difference between coffeeshops and coffeehauses. In a coffeehaus, one orders coffee and maybe a pastry or a sandwich. In a coffeeshop, one orders cannabis. That's right: pot, maryjane, marijuana, demon-weed. All of this is perfectly legal in Holland, where drugs are treated as a health issue, rather than a criminal problem, and regulated by the government the way alcohol is. It's the Dutch way of confronting drug use without amping up the violence of the situation, rather than creating a false "war" on drugs as American enforcement agencies have done. As a result,

Amsterdam is Mecca for the European cannabis crowd, as well as for adventurous

American potheads.

So we went to a coffeeshop and smoked some killer weed with a bartender named

Tony who rolled us a couple of traditional, conical-shaped Dutch spleefs with a little tobacco sprinkled in. Then we wandered around aimlessly for a while. The sun seemed brighter than it had at home; the birds sang more sweetly. Every building was a work of art. Look at those beautiful lampposts! Europeans really know how to live, we said.

Everything here is just so much nicer! We gazed at bizarre dildos and toys in the windows of sex shops and saw prostitutes getting ready for their clients in store fronts.

We had only a one-page, rudimentary map of just this neighborhood that the woman at the desk of our hotel had given us, and we paid no attention to it at all, until several hours had passed and it was time to find the hotel again.

Suddenly, every street name seemed identical. Van Ostadestraat. Van Woustraat.

Van der Helstraat. Van Halenstraat. That can't be right. At one point, on a square that

39 bordered a small park, all four streets around the square of the park really did have the same name: Sarphatipark, the name of the park. It was maddening. Our very first day-- our first hour!--in another country, and we were completely lost. And we had left all our worldly possessions with total strangers. Great. They were probably selling our highly- coveted American passports right now and using our credit card numbers to buy all kinds of illegal things. We would never get out of here, never see our home or our loved ones again; we'd have to work as prostitutes just to eat. What had we been thinking? We hadn't been thinking, really; we had been silly, spoiled American children off in Wonderland having a romp. And now it was time to pay the price for all our foolishness. This was the end, I just knew it. Every person on the street seemed to be watching us menacingly, just waiting to pounce on us and take what little cash or dignity we had left. I was just certain that shuffling old man near the park bench wasn't really an old man but a pimp or a heroin dealer ready to capitalize on our desperation for profit. Even the language on the street signs seemed deliberately obtuse, meant to confuse unsuspecting tourists and create an unintelligible maze that leads inexorably to only one exit: empty your pockets and your soul into the black coffers of the Dutch underbelly and maybe we'll let you leave with your skin intact.

Then, just as quickly as I had abandoned all hope, Dave figured out the map and we found the hotel. Immediately, those menacing faces became benign once more. I scolded myself for jumping to such ridiculous conclusions when it had been our own foolishness and poor planning that had created our tense moment in the first place. I blamed the drugs.

Over the next ten days, we became more and more comfortable with the geography and culture of Holland. We ventured outside of Amsterdam, to a nearby suburb called Muiden to tour a castle, then to Medemblik in the far north on the coast of the North Sea. We were often the only English speakers for miles around, getting by with pantomime and best guesses. I tried out the few phrases I had learned in my guidebook with friendly shopkeepers and the people in our hotels who spoke English, and before long, I could pronounce goede morgen like a native. So much so, in fact, that when I said it confidently to the woman at the ticket counter in the Vrolik Medical Museum, she immediately began speaking to me in Dutch. I had to sheepishly revert to my second, and final, Dutch phrase: sprekt u Engels? But I was flattered, nonetheless.

We flew back across the Atlantic feeling we had expanded our world exponentially. Akron felt comfortable and homey, but no longer disconnected from a larger community of human experience. I had finally been someplace where I was really an outsider, where I had had to work to figure out how to get around and get along. Sure, it had only been a taste, but my appetite was whetted.

5. Sanja, 2008

In 2007, I graduated from North High School as valedictorian of my class and continued my studies at the University of Akron. Early on, I decided to study accounting, a field appealing for its job security that fit with my goal of helping support my mom and my brother. I often feel like the other parent to my younger brother because he listens to me, and my mom and I always come to decisions together about him. He asks for my approval and opinion concerning his path at school, his daily plans, fashion advice, and other things. Once I started college, I set my sights on helping my family financially.

In addition to my chosen field of study, I opted for a dual degree in French. I had a French foundation from classes in high school and always had a knack for languages.

Sometime during my sophomore year, I decided I was too great a Francophile at heart to forgo the opportunity to expand on my knowledge of this beautiful language. I tested into the second Intermediate level and started with Madame Adamowicz in the spring semester of 2008.

2008 was a very significant and vivid year for me because during that summer I went back to visit Serbia and Croatia for the first time. I found that the city of Ćuprija had changed quite a bit since my family had left almost a decade before. There was much in the way of new architecture, and a lot of cafes and outdoor patios had been added, restoring a peaceful European atmosphere of long lunches and pedestrian traffic. But the cobblestone streets and alleys I had run and played on with my friends were just the same.

I think, in the realm of my immigration experience, I had really come into my own at last. I felt I was blossoming and had really embraced being an American. The dark days of being bullied at Reidinger Middle School for my accent seemed very far in the past. At the beginning, I had spent so many days crying and begging my parents to go back, to take me back home and away from this strange place. But those days of nostalgia were long gone. It just took time to adjust, grow up, and get used to the American way of life.

6. Sharon, 2008

When I finally decided to go back to college in 2005, I wasn't sure what, exactly, I wanted to study. But I always had it in the back of my mind that I might want to learn

42 more French. I had taken three years of it in high school--some twenty years earlier--and genuinely loved it. I still had a yellowed copy of a story I wrote in 1985 called "Ma Vie

Comme Une Asperge," with a color-pencil drawing of an anthropomorphic asparagus on the front. Once I committed to a full-time class load and an English major, the foreign language requirement was a lock for French. Madame Adamowicz's Intermediate II class in the spring of 2008 was pivotal in my eventual decision to pursue a dual major in

French.

I was beginning to find my footing as a non-traditional student, but I was still pretty self-conscious about being the same age as the parents of most of my classmates.

And I still felt a little guilty about having quit my well-paying job as a licensed optician to go back to school and study nothing in particular, leaving my husband to pay all the bills, including tuition. Dave is an incredibly supportive life partner, and we live a very modest lifestyle, so we accrued no debt from my undergraduate studies. My success in studying French, in particular, would lead to several scholarships and monetary awards that contributed to that feat. But that was all unknown to me yet as I sat in the tiny pressed-wood desk-chair combo waiting for Madame's Intermediate II class to begin with weak winter sunlight streaming through metal blinds in a cramped classroom.

I had taken Intermediate French I the previous fall with a different professor.

Madame Adamowicz had a reputation among undergrads as a particularly tough teacher, mostly because she wasn’t from the US. The few students I knew who had taken her class couldn't tell if she was French or something else, but they all said she had an accent when she spoke English, and she graded really hard. I was riding high from the A I had earned in French I and excited for the challenge. My high school French had miraculously stayed

43 with me, and I couldn't wait to keep improving. A trip to France might just be in our future, Dave had intimated over winter break.

I tried to engage the students around me in a little French conversation before

Madame arrived. I don't specifically remember meeting Sanja that first day, but we quickly gravitated toward each other, as did three or four other students who were not shy about speaking voluntarily in class. It soon became clear that Sanja and I were pretty much the only two students taking this class because we loved speaking French, and not merely because it was the easiest way for us to fulfill the language requirement. Sanja never seemed awkward or reluctant to speak French with me in the hallways or before class started, which became our usual routine.

I was not at all surprised to see Sanja again in the fall of 2008 in the first upper- level, non-required French course we both took, French Conversation. Madame

Adamowicz got me a job as a French tutor on campus that semester, and my college trajectory started to take shape. Well into the semester, I had hardly heard Sanja speak two words in English, though we often discussed clothes, tattoos, or movies in French before Madame came in and started class. One day I mentioned the fact.

"Your French is really good," I said in Engish. "It's so hard to get really fluent in a second language, don't you think?"

"French is my third language, actually," Sanja said. "I'm from Serbia."

I had not had the slightest inkling that Sanja might be from anywhere further away than maybe Minnesota or California. Her brown hair with blond highlights, large brown eyes, and skin that changed from almost as pale as mine in winter to golden tan in summer gave no hint of that far-off country. I had vaguely heard about it in the nineties

44 and still had difficulty locating it on a map. And our shared focus on developing French skills masked any accent she might have retained. A language and culture native to neither of us was the conduit of our friendship.

As I learned some of Sanja's story, her homeland became less of an abstraction for me. I began to feel a connection to Serbia through Sanja's voice and perspective. A shadow dampened her eyes occasionally as she talked about her early years, but she quickly returned to bright optimism about her future and gratitude for her life in America.

We bonded over our shared experience with alcoholic fathers, though mine was fifteen years sober in 2008.

Leaving class that day, I walked slowly through campus and looked more closely at the faces passing me. Each face became a story linked to the stories of countless other people, forming a chain of connection around the globe and far into the past. I felt myself a link in that chain now, affecting and affected by all those stories.

CHAPTER IV

A PLACE TO CALL HOME

Amber Subba was 11 years old when the military officers came to take away one of his uncles from his home in Bhutan. Not long after, Subba and his entire family were forced to leave the only country he’d ever known and go live in a refugee camp in Nepal. All because they were an ethnic minority.

Subba is telling me his story as I sit in his office at the International Institute of

Akron on Tallmadge Ave.

I’m here intently listening because one day, we Americans were all the offspring of immigrants. Even the “original” Americans were immigrants from England, escaping the oppression of their Puritan religion. And America is still the destination of hundreds of thousands of refugees every year like Subba. No matter where you stand on U.S. immigration policies, nearly all of us are supportive of refugees like Subba legally coming to America to escape persecution. Just looking around the campus of The

University of Akron or the main floor of the Public Library downtown, you can see a myriad of ethnicities, a kaleidoscope of humanity in shades of skin tones and speech patterns. Certainly each of these people has a story to tell, of being uprooted with or without a family, of crossing oceans and continents in pursuit of life, liberty and happiness?

One day it got me thinking: What are some of those stories? What does it mean to leave everything behind and start over? And I'm not talking about hopping in the car or

46 on a plane and taking off for New York or Los Angeles to follow a dream. I'm talking about fleeing a ransacked village with no more than the clothes on your back, languishing in a refugee camp, sometimes for years, and then starting from absolute scratch in a foreign land, where no one speaks your language and no one knows your history. What is that experience like?

Which brought me here, to the International Institute.

The International Institute is a non-governmental, non-profit organization that, among other things, assists the foreign born to integrate into our society. The Institute offers classes free of charge to recent immigrants in English as a Second Language, as well as assistance in applying for American citizenship, finding a job and a place to live, and completing forms for things like taxes and health insurance. They also offer free translation services in 50 different languages, so those not yet adept at speaking and understanding English can still get proper medical attention or be represented fairly in court or have a meaningful conversation with English speakers.

When I arrive at the Institute, now housed in a two-story cement-block former church, and head inside, a young, thin Asian woman makes eye-contact as she finishes her phone conversation. She directs me up to the second floor for Amber Subba's office.

Subba is a Case Manager in the Refugee Resettlement and Education portion of the

Institute, helping to manage things while they search for someone to take Dylanna

Jackson's place, who left recently for another job. I mount the narrow stairs and meet two little Asian boys at the top, maybe four and six years old, both bundled in thick sweaters and unabashedly staring at me with wide, round eyes. "Hi," I say and smile at the younger of the two. He smiles briefly, lowers his head, then runs off at the beckon of

47 another tiny Asian woman who calls out to the boys in a rhythmic language I do not recognize. She smiles at me, too, as I struggle out of my heavy winter coat at the top of the stairs. The landing opens to another spacious waiting area, lined with armed chairs upholstered in oxblood leather, bulletin boards filled with colorful fliers, and windowed offices on all sides. An even tinier Asian woman stands at a desk at the far end, talking with the presumed mother of the two boys. I approach, smile, and wait my turn. After finishing her brief conversation in that same incomprehensible tongue, she turns to me and speaks with almost no accent at all.

"Can I help you?"

"Yes, I have an appointment with Mr. Subba."

"Shay-ron?" I nod; this stumble with my name is the first indication that perhaps she is not a native English speaker. "He should be right back; he told me he was expecting you. Please have a seat."

I sit in one of the oxblood chairs and watch the boys periodically chase each other and then retreat to their mother, who continues to talk with the secretary.

Presently, a young man of maybe 30, dressed in khakis, a button-down shirt, a gray V-neck sweater and khaki suit jacket, carrying a Styrofoam food container, approaches me and introduces himself as Amber. He is of average height, though very thin, with neatly clipped, short dark hair, a few dark freckles on his tawny skin, and fashionable wire-rimmed glasses. His Southeast Asian accent is evident, though not prohibitive to communication. We go into his tiny office and close the windowed door to avoid the noise of those sweet little boys still running about.

The office is barely able to accommodate the desk, large filing cabinets, and two armed chairs that have been squeezed into it. Amber's desk is not terribly cluttered, though it appears he has his fair share of paperwork on a daily basis. A flat-screen computer monitor, keyboard, and mouse are close at his elbow as Amber leans back in his chair and focuses on me. As we chat, I am periodically befuddled by his rather thick

South Asian accent, though his English is quite good. The soft, sticky quality of his D’s and the rolling, musical rhythm of his speech lead me to try and listen more carefully. I'm sure he has an equal and opposite reaction to my speech patterns, and I find myself trying to speak as slowly and as clearly as I possibly can. After some preliminary introductions of who I am and why I wanted to speak with him, Amber tells me some of his story.

He is from Bhutan, a tiny country located at the foot of the Himalayan Mountains, just north of India and south of China, next to Nepal, not far from Bangladesh. Since

Business Week magazine rated Bhutan as "the happiest country in Asia" in 2006, as well as the 8th happiest country in the world, I wondered why someone would want to emigrate from it. The tangled history of the region belies the flippant title bestowed by that publication. Hundreds of years of warring fiefdoms and military factions led to its inclusion in the United Kingdom's many Asian conquests of the early 20th century. When the British Empire waned, and India gained its independence in 1947, Bhutan fell under

Indian influence as one of very few countries to recognize that independence. Bhutan was admitted to the United Nations in 1971, though they still struggled to define their own government, vacillating between monarchical and more democratic rule. Around the same time, neighboring Nepal was also grappling with conflicting ideas about who should hold power in their own country. Monarchy and Congress locked horns several

49 times, until about 1991 when a "People's Movement" party unseated the king and reformed the Nepalese constitution to allow multiparty involvement. This led to a violent social overthrow by the Maoist Communist party and a bloody civil war.

Against this backdrop of politics and power struggle, Amber managed to have a fairly peaceful childhood. He remembers playing soccer in the street with his friends and having to wear very uncomfortable formal garments for festivals and public events. He says he really had no idea about any of the governmental machinations of those days, until he was about 11. He can remember seeing several military officers coming to take away one of his uncles, amid the protests of the rest of his family. Then the government closed down the schools in all the Nepalese populated areas, depriving Amber and hundreds of other children of education for two full years. Shortly after that, Amber's entire family had to leave Bhutan and go to live in a refugee camp in Nepal. You see,

Amber’s ancestors had been originally from Nepal. They were part of an ethnic minority there that moved into the region of Bhutan seeking work, probably hundreds of years ago, before there were the somewhat arbitrary national borders of the modern world. In the early 1990s, when Bhutan was struggling to define itself politically, these 'foreigners' were expelled from the only home they had ever known, sent away because of the tenuous ties to their past that labeled them as different from the rest of their countrymen.

Amber and his brothers, sisters, parents, and grandparents then spent seventeen years living in this refugee camp in Nepal. Seventeen years without electricity, privacy or technology of any kind. I immediately picture the squalid tent cities of Haiti or Darfur, images from the television news that serve as my only idea of a refugee camp. Amber disabuses me of this notion, clarifying that they had running water and access to

50 healthcare and food, even education up to the equivalent of our tenth grade, with scholarships available for schooling beyond that. Amber miraculously managed to complete a Bachelor's degree in Physics while there. But those years were long and difficult, full of uncertainty about the future. As years wore on, the food rations supplied to the refugees waned to insufficient amounts, and when they would venture out into the city to find more, they were often taunted and humiliated by other Nepalese citizens.

Nepal is, itself, not a particularly wealthy country, with problems managing its resources for its own citizens. These refugees were seen as an additional burden by many and were easily targeted as the cause of hardship for everyone.

At first, only about half the people in the camp wanted to seek citizenship elsewhere. As time wore on, and it became clear that ethnic Nepalese would never be allowed back into Bhutan, nor into Nepal itself, that number grew and governmental agencies started the long process of relocation. The process began with producing proof of identity--impossible for those who had left their homes abruptly with no possessions.

Luckily, Amber's family had both documentation and the testimony of other members of their former community to prove who they were. The process of choosing a country to move refugees to is complicated; for instance, victims of torture are taken only to certain countries. The next qualifier is if the refugee has any family members currently residing in a different country. A distant uncle of Amber's was already living and studying in Kent, so it was decided to relocate his family here. The bureaucratic process was long and tedious, covering much of the last seven years at the camp. Amber, then 28 years old, went initially with his parents, and was joined later by his brother and sister-in-law here in Akron. Now his grandfather lives with him also and his sister has landed in The

Netherlands with her own family. The International Institute was among the first organizations to help with their orientation to life here, finding them a place to live and prospects for jobs. Since Amber already spoke English fairly well along with Nepali,

Hindi and his own private language (which he calls 'Limbu' Language), he was offered a position as an interpreter at the Institute. From that job, it wasn't long until his abilities and experiences merited a promotion, and then another, allowing him more involvement in resettling other refugees. So now that Amber is on the other side of the experience, helping families who are going through a similar process that he has already weathered, I asked him how he feels about his work:

"I enjoy this one; it is what I was expecting to do when we came, because we know the sorrow, we know the pain of these people. I always used to think of helping people, and when I came here it was a great opportunity to get this job in this agency. I love it, actually."

I think he's not just talking about his job, but about this country, also.

CHAPTER V

HELP ALONG THE WAY

The International Institute was founded in 1916, a time when Europe was ravaged by war and Akron was literally booming, with business tycoons like F.A Seiberling and Harvey

Firestone building factories and houses as quickly as possible. Akron's population more than doubled between 1910 and 1920, as people sought jobs in The Rubber Capital of the

World. Almost a third of those seeking to relocate to Akron came from outside the United

States, fleeing war or persecution, bringing their families to the Heartland for safety and a fresh start. The YWCA had already been teaching English to many of the foreign-born women who worked in local factories; but the population explosion indicated that more resources were needed. Through their affiliation with the YWCA's International Institute in New York, the Association was able to appropriate funding, and The International

Center opened on S. Main St. in February of 1917.

Throughout the 20th century, the Center changed locations and titles several times, while continuing to respond to waves of immigrants from Europe and Asia, whose ranks swelled during wartime and waned in times of relative peace. In 1956, the Institute served on the Governor's Committee on Hungarian Refugee Relief, a reaction to the revolution in that country. Besides bringing yet another group of immigrants to our community, this shift toward governmental activity led the Center to re-organize and re- charter as The International Institute in 1958. This shift also led to the Institute being recognized by the U.S. Department of Justice as being allowed to appear before the

Board of Immigration Appeals and any I.N.S. office in immigration and nationality law proceedings. Now, rather than just being able to teach English or give material support to immigrants, the Institute could help them gain citizenship.

The 1960s and 70s brought more changes in immigration law, as well as more waves of refuge seekers, in the midst of the social upheavals right here in the U.S. The overthrow of the Batista government in Cuba in the late 1950s, then the political unrest and violence in Viet Nam in the mid-1970s brought several hundred thousand asylum seekers to Akron. With help from local church groups, the International Institute did its best to keep up with the changing needs of these new ethnic groups, while also changing locations and struggling with meager funding from the government, the United Way, and local private donors. In 1979, the Institute officially established its Refugee Resettlement

Program, which used government funds to provide such necessities as apartment furnishings, food, English lessons, and job counseling for this new group of immigrants seeking to establish a new life and self-sufficiency in America.

In 1990, The United States revamped its legal immigration system and set a record by granting legal permanent residence to 1.5 million people. This translates into thousands of newcomers needing the Institute's services here in Akron every day.

CHAPTER VI

OLÁ, MARIA

Right there by the tomatoes in the produce section of the grocery store, without ceremony or warning of any kind, Maria pulled out her bottom denture and showed it to me.

Of course, maybe she had warned me and I just didn't catch it. Her English was really broken, and her Portuguese accent was as thick as the beefsteaks on sale for $1.49 a pound this week. We'd been standing in front of the tomatoes chatting for almost thirty minutes when she whipped out her partial, though chatting is a generous term for what we'd been doing. Once Maria figured out who I was, she took hold of my hand and began a monologue of epic proportions. I could understand less than a third of it, but that was okay. I nodded and smiled, furrowed my brow, frowned or tutted when it seemed appropriate, did my best to piece together the bits of information I could make out. I got the distinct impression Maria did not often have someone to talk to, and I wasn't in any great hurry, so why not listen for a while?

But that denture really threw me for a second.

I had met Maria a few months earlier, quite by chance. I was in my car, waiting to make the left turn from my street onto the busier main street that would lead to the grocery store about three quarters of a mile away. I spied a short, gray-haired elderly woman walking on the sidewalk to my left. She was carrying what appeared to be an empty shopping bag, and she stopped every two steps or so, as if she were tired. She seemed

55 unsteady on her feet, wobbled a bit with each step. I guessed her age to be around seventy and her destination to be the same neighborhood grocery store I was heading to.

I made a bold spur-of-the-moment decision: I put my car in park, got out, and walked over to her. Why? I didn't think about it too much, but my reasoning went something like, I am young and in a car; she is old and having trouble walking; I should offer her a ride! So I did.

"Excuse me," I said, smiling and trying not to startle her too much. "Hi! Do you need a ride? Are you going to the grocery store?"

It took me a few minutes to realize that she didn't speak much English, a few more for her to realize that I wanted to help her get to the store. Then she just got in my car, and we were off! Turns out, she lives just one street over from me and has lived there for ten years. I offered to wait until she was done shopping and give her a ride home, too, but she said she calls the Metro bus that caters to seniors to take her home. We then spent a few awkward moments encountering each other at every turn in the produce, where she repeatedly thanked me and kept telling me, "you good person."

Today, by the tomatoes, several months after that first ride to the store, I recognized

Maria right away. She is just under five feet tall, with more salt than pepper in her hair, a faint mustache, and round, silver-rimmed glasses over liquid brown eyes. She looks like a sweet grandmother type, like she would bake you old-world cookies with a name you can't pronounce, or cook stews or sauces all day long on the stove from memorized recipes that were never written down, and which she'd never share with you unless you spent the entire day in the kitchen with her learning them first-hand. She wore today the

56 same black all-weather coat she wore the last time I saw her, a practical, synthetic thing

I'd bet one of her kids bought for her, zipped all the up to her chin, with black pants and black, rubber-soled shoes, though the weather was quite fair.

She couldn't remember who I was at first, just saying, "I am Maria Lopes

(pronounced lōpshe). I am from Portugal. I don't remember. I am sorry," over and over, with a timid little smile on her face.

"I gave you a ride here," I said slowly, smiling. "Remember? It was many months ago. I drove you here in my car." Here I mimic driving with my hands, like they are steering the wheel of a car.

"Remember? It was many months ago. I drove you here. Remember? We're neighbors."

Why did I keep repeating remember? I must have sounded like an idiot.

Shoppers diverted around us, looking at us. My face got a little warm.

Then Maria remembered. She grabbed my hand in both of hers for a moment, before one of her hands escaped to flutter around in gestures while she talked. The other kept my right hand firmly in its warm embrace.

"Yes," she said, her eyes widening a little, "I remember you! I live at 1665

Marlowe!"

This is a piece of information Maria would repeat for me over and over in the course of our interaction. Maybe it's one of the few sentences she knows well in English; maybe it's something she repeats so she won't forget it; maybe she wanted to make sure I wouldn't forget it. I heard it no less than thirty times today.

I also learned several other things about Maria, though I'm not entirely sure how accurate any of them were. Most of her pronouns were a little slippery, as were her verb tenses, elements of time, and a few other crucial elements of storytelling. But she was hell-bent on telling me quite a bit of the story of her life, right there by the tomatoes. And since she had my hand nestled against her soft, warm stomach in a not-at-all-unpleasant way and, as I mentioned earlier, I had no pressing engagements, I listened. Here is what she told me.

Maria is seventy-six years old and has been a widow for ten years. She was the oldest of five children, and did piece work in Portugal, making parts for suitcases to help her father. One by one, Maria's siblings and father emigrated to Canada, with Maria going last.

"My brother, sister going to school," she said. "But I no go. I only work. I work hard, make money for everyone eat and going to school. Making my eyes bad. And I short, so working good. Always working, all the time, like this."

Here, Maria bent over at the waist a little and mimed sewing with her one free hand. She punctuated most of her sentences by pushing her glasses up into the bridge of her pug nose, though they never really slipped down.

In Canada, she met her husband at a dance hall (I think). He was very handsome and asked her to dance. She danced with him, but wouldn't go home with him. Then, her family members were moving to America, so she wanted to do that, too, but the man she had danced with wasn't going to move here. She moved to California with her father, and the handsome man she had danced with wrote letters to her from Canada for ten years.

This is where things got really murky for me. It sounded like she moved to Ohio to be closer to her daughter, and this man from Canada finally moved here and married her, then got sick and died after being married to her for only one year.

"He was good man," she said. "Really good man, not just for me, but for everyone. He love everyone."

I'm sure he was a very good man. But if I was following her story correctly, this man must have been her second husband. Who was her first husband, though, and what happened to him? And where was her mother in all of this? And what happened to all of her siblings? It really is impossible for me to tell. There weren't many breaks in the monologue where I could interject a question, and Maria's grasp of English was such that

I wasn't sure she would understand me anyway--or be able to answer intelligibly.

It was at about this point that Maria starting saying that she doesn't sleep well at night. She gets up at night and walks around her house. Then she asked me what time it was. It was 12:33.

"Good. It's not too late," she said. "I go and eat, I say the rosary, and I take a nap.

I'm like a baby, you know?"

She laughed unexpectedly, then started pointing at her teeth. It was such an abrupt break from the story of her family that I really couldn't see what was coming. My mind was buzzing from the rhythm of her speech. I felt mesmerized by her accent.

Then she just took them out. I had no idea what to do. She was still clutching my hand to her midriff with her other hand.

"I don't like these," she said. "I take the drug for them, but it don't help. I don't know. You know?"

I was really uncomfortable now. Other shoppers maneuvered their carts around us; produce employees avoided the tomato displays. I darted my eyes over to my cart, just to make sure it was still there. What could I do? What should I have done? I didn't want to be rude to this sweet little old lady. I figured she's lonely. Someday, I'm going to be old and lonely, and I sure hope some nice person will stand in the grocery store and listen to me prattle on about my teeth and my long ago memories and people who meant so much to me.

"We're neighbors,” I said. “Maybe I could come to your house and see pictures of your husband sometime?"

Her whole face changed; I thought she might cry. She slipped her denture back in.

"You would come in my house? And looking at pictures of my husband?"

I nodded and smiled.

"He was such a good man. For me and for everybody," she said this with great solemnity, the way a priest might declare that a saint had been a good man. "Yes, you come in my house."

And with that, she released my hand.

I wrote my name, address, and home phone number on an old receipt and gave it to her.

"Sometime when you don't want to walk,” I said, “if it's raining or something, you call me, and we'll go shopping together, okay?"

"We're neighbors" she said quietly, taking the paper and putting it in her pocket.

"Thank you!"

CHAPTER VII

MAY CHEN'S CRISIS MANAGEMENT

May Chen did not know whether to laugh or cry.

It was a warm Sunday afternoon in early fall 2002. The banquet room at Li Wah

Chinese Restaurant, owned by Chen's friend Donna, already rang with the melodic tones of Asian dialects, spicy and savory aromas of chicken, pork, vegetables tantalizing the crowd. And the crowd kept growing.

As more and more people crowded the banquet room and fragrant dishes crowded the side tables, Chen was quickly losing control of the situation. Tables reserved for registered contestants filled with unregistered guests; overflow attendees had to be seated in the main dining room where paying customers eyed them curiously; volunteers were thoroughly confused about which dish belonged to whom. Near total chaos ensued.

What's more, a woman from the company that was underwriting the event showed up.

Chen saw her standing near the door from the main dining room and went to speak with her. When the woman commented that things looked a little disorganized, Chen quickly reassured her, laughed off the frenzied activity in the room as "an unexpectedly good turn-out." Chen did not turn anyone away; she didn't want to jeopardize her fledgling agency. She simply told herself this program has potential, great potential.

Li Wah, in Asia Plaza at the corner of Payne Avenue and East 30th in Cleveland, had been a natural choice for the Healthy Cooking Contest, as most of the targeted seniors had already visited it for the healthy lunch program Chen put into practice with

61 the Area Agency on Aging a year or so earlier. The Plaza also contains an Asian supermarket, a Metro Health Center for Seniors, an Indian grocery, and is easily accessible from I-90. Donna had donated the room, also volunteering some of her staff to help out with serving and clearing tables; Chen and her volunteers had printed out score sheets that listed all the dishes entered in the contest; the staff set up tables and chairs for the 100 or so people expected and a pair of side tables to showcase the competing dishes all together. The Cooking Contest would surely further Chen's aim of developing Asian

Services In Action (or ASIA, Inc.), a more user-friendly agency for immigrants and refugees from Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands.

The Asian community in the Akron/Cleveland area comprises 65 nationalities and over 100 languages, so just explaining the contest, the guidelines, location, and logistics, had been a daunting task. Chen knew that Asians are very private people, that they tend to avoid situations where they think they will be singled out or made to feel embarrassed. So the invitations had to be handled delicately. Another characteristic of many Asian cultures is an aversion to appearing too eager. Most of the responses to the invitation to participate were along the lines of I will have to see how I feel on the day of the event. Only a dozen people, all of them elderly, gave firm commitments, so Chen and her colleagues made preparations for that number of people. These contestants were told--through interpreters who sometimes had to really improvise to communicate--they could each bring two family members as well. As the start time for the luncheon event neared, Chen took a moment to gather her thoughts in the ladies room.

Would anyone show up? Would this event help further Chen's greater mission of developing an agency specifically targeted at meeting the unique needs of Asians in

Northeast Ohio? Or would this afternoon simply fade into memory as one more failed attempt at building this agency?

She shouldn't have worried.

* * *

In 1995, just a few years before the Healthy Cooking Contest, May Chen and three of her colleagues, who are all immigrants from Southeast Asia, saw neighbors and clients in their Northeast Ohio community struggling to assimilate to American culture. Underage marriages, spousal abuse, excessive drinking and drug use: these problems seemed to concentrate in the insular communities of people from China, Thailand, Laos, Burma.

And though some help was available from existing bureaucracies, cultural and linguistic barriers kept many Asians from getting it.

Chen, a family and marriage counselor from China, was one of these women. And though the other three have since moved on to jobs and challenges in other states, Chen continues to oversee much of ASIA, Inc.'s operation as Executive Director. Petite with wild, frizzy dark hair cut asymmetrically around her ears, Chen has the faintest wisps of gray at her temples and smooth, caramelly skin which belies her sixty-something age.

Angular, maroon-rimmed glasses rest on a pug nose across her round, plump face. Deep, thick folds surround dark eyes that sparkle with intelligence as she talks. Spare, penciled eyebrows arch high on her unwrinkled forehead, adding emphasis to her animated speech. Her slim hands rise and fall, miming actions she describes: writing, balancing, protecting. When she smiles, which is often, two crooked, overlapped front teeth gleam white as snow.

Chen knew it would be daunting to learn how to write grants, how to work with governmental agencies for funding and support, how to compete with existing organizations that would see her bid for limited funds as adversarial. But she also knew that there were hundreds, maybe thousands of immigrants from Asia and the Pacific

Islands in Ohio who were not getting the linguistic and material support they needed to thrive. Her experience in China as a little girl spurred her on, however, never allowing daily challenges to obscure her goal: a thriving Asian community that feels included in their adopted country, without losing the rich heritage of their original cultures.

Chen grew up in Hong Kong, where her parents, both professors, took her with them to build schools in refugee camps there. This was during the time of Mao Zedong's

Cultural Revolution, when hundreds of thousands of Chinese citizens were terrorized, persecuted, and uprooted from cities into countryside "communes," when famine and the unfettered brutality of the Red Guard decimated the population. Refugees flooded Hong

Kong's boarders in search of asylum. At the tender age of seven or eight, Chen got to see first-hand how difficult it is to start a new life after fleeing a war-torn country. Those images have stayed with her these fifty-some years.

Not long after seeing those camps in Hong Kong, Chen got to experience for herself some of the same challenges those refugees were going through when her family moved to the U.S. in 1957. Her father's first job in America was teaching at Fisk

University, an all-black college in Texas. Many white colleges would not hire foreigners as professors at the time, regardless of their qualifications, so he was just happy to have an income to support his family. Chen encountered many unexpected barriers to her assimilation beyond the language and geography of a new country.

"At the time, the boundaries between white and black were well defined. As an

Asian, it was difficult to identify where my boundaries were in the white and black world," Chen recalls. "For instance, the blacks at that time had to sit in the back of the bus and whites in the front. So where do I sit? Front or back or in the middle?"

When she is listening to others, Chen is still, hands crossed on her lap or the table, but her sharp eyes miss nothing. When she speaks, she becomes instantly animated: her spine straightens, she leans forward, and her hands move constantly. Her voice waxes from an almost inaudible whisper to a moderately flat nasal intonation that is assertive, but not unpleasant. The sound is sometimes soothing, like lulling a baby to sleep; at other times it is vivacious, like a second grade teacher on recess duty. Often, her voice is mellow and compassionate, full of acceptance and understanding, especially when she describes the seniors that frequent ASIA, Inc. Her laugh is light and airy, like brass coins jingling together.

After moving to Akron with her husband, who teaches at The University of

Akron, Chen pursued her Marriage and Family Counseling degree, then went to work for

The International Institute. She had been working for the Institute for seven years when she and her friends decided to start their own agency. Originally part of the YWCA that offered chaperones for young women from Europe coming to the U.S. for jobs around the turn of the twentieth century, the International Institute evolved into a government-funded organization that serves immigrants and refugees from all over the world. Its strongest point might be its Refugee Resettlement program, which helps refugees from war-torn countries start over in America. Though the Institute offers English language classes, interpreters in over sixty languages, and classes aimed at citizenship, it seems to focus on

65 the immediate needs of refugees: a first apartment, a first job, a first step toward a new life. It also focuses largely on assimilation to American culture, rather than preserving cultural heritage.

Some years ago, Chen visited the International Institute in St. Louis, Missouri, and found it to be vastly different from its sister agency in Akron. In St. Louis, the

Institute included offices that refugee groups could use for meetings or parties, as well as an office of the City Health Department and of the Police Department. It was a veritable one-stop shop of accessibility for new immigrants. Unfortunately, the head of the Institute in Akron was not open to this vision of changes. Chen was inspired.

* * *

The initial one-day cooking contest was aimed at helping about 60 residents in the

Akron/Cleveland area. Cooking seemed a natural way to bring Asians in, since it is such an integral part of Asian culture. Besides, one of the first things Chen remembers learning in America was how to make sandwiches and bake cakes and cookies. These were not at all regular food items in her home in Hong Kong. They were at once exotic for her and a means for empowerment, a way to feel more American.

Along with the expected dozen contestants, fifteen unregistered cooks showed up.

These guests did not announce themselves; they quietly placed their dishes on the table with the others to be judged. These late-comers also brought family with them, much more than the two guests per entrant that had been suggested to them. One thing Asians and Pacific islanders tend to have in common is a strong sense of self-reliance and pride.

People from Asian cultures are often very concerned about "saving face" in public, which translates into an extreme aversion to asking for help when they have problems. Chen's

66 reaction to this cultural hurdle was to take the initiative, to go to them for help, rather than waiting for them to step forward. This particular cultural difference prevents many

Asians and Pacific Islanders from reaching out to agencies and institutions for help.

"It has to do with our value of saving face," she explains; "Needs and problems within a family or a community are to be faced stoically. To disclose our need for outside help is a sign of weakness and brings shame."

So she and her colleagues devised the healthy cooking contest as a way to bring them all together and get the ball rolling. This way, there would be an obligation to respond to an invitation, as well as a sense of purpose and control for the participants.She had no idea how successful it would be. And true to her self-reliant nature, Chen did everything she could to keep the event from spiraling out of control.

She raced around the room, adding the names of late-comers' dishes to the score sheets: meatless primrose chicken, fat choy Chinese mushrooms, Emperor's 89 cake, five color pork, little rice pastry. The portions doled out became smaller and smaller, as the volunteer servers tried to make sure everyone got to sample every dish. The temperature in the room rose and amplified the savory aromas wafting from the banquet table and the kitchen. Donna and Chen exchanged exasperated smiles as Donna carried plates to the guests in the main dining room. Conversation buzzed and hummed, sprinkled with occasional laughter; the party seemed to be reaching its crescendo.

As servers cleared plates and silverware, Chen circulated once more to collect the score sheets. All the guests seemed content, mollified from any irritation at the overcrowded conditions by bellies full of delicious home cooking. Excitement was now palpable in the banquet room as everyone turned their attention to the raffle prizes and

67 contest winners. Chen sat down at a corner table near the kitchen and took a breath before tallying the results. She thought about the Chinese word for crisis, which actually combines the symbols for danger and opportunity. She felt the biggest danger had passed--the danger of alienating and insulting the very people she wanted to help. An opportunity still remained, however, and she needed to stay focused to achieve it.

Counting up the votes and jotting down the winners in her quick, spidery hand, Chen signaled Donna to bring out the raffle prizes. She went to the front of the room and tried to get everyone's attention.

"Thank you, everyone, for coming!" Conversation dwindled as the crowd turned their eyes toward Chen. "What a wonderful turn out! We are happy to see so many friends and neighbors here today! Now that we have all eaten, we have prizes and winners to announce."

Donna and two male servers pulled a small table piled with colorful boxes to

Chen's side. The first-place winner of the contest would take home a three-tier electric steamer, which was featured atop a small platform and adorned with a blue ribbon.

A hush fell over the room, leaving just the clanks and scrapes of the kitchen to ring out as the swinging door opened and closed. Chen cleared her throat and smiled at the rapt crowd. The woman from the underwriting company still stood by the door, but now she was munching on a dumpling and looked just as excited for the results as everyone else.

* * *

The Akron branch of ASIA, Inc., is located in a small one-story brick building on Carroll

Street, about a ten minute walk from The University of Akron campus. It is flanked by an

68 empty lot and a huge abandoned-looking warehouse, and faces the black-topped parking lot of the Akron Community Drug Board Foundation. Other highlights of the neighborhood include a junk yard, several two-story apartment buildings, more empty lots, and a Subway restaurant about two-tenths of a mile down the road, where it intersects with largely commercial East Market Street. Due to this rather bleak environment, the door inside the foyer of the organization is always locked; visitors are instructed to please ring the bell at right and take a moment to wipe your feet by a sign printed on computer paper and taped to the inside of the glass. The reception area just inside this foyer is richly decorated with tapestries of gold and green, trailing red tassels, folded paper swans and pandas, lacquered tea sets, small altars, bells, Chinese paper lanterns. The sounds of an ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) class, intermingled with typing and muffled phone rings, fills the carpeted hallway that bisects the long, narrow building.

Weak winter light pours in through the windows that line one wall of the conference room, under which two more plastic tables are loaded with an array of house plants and brochures with information on ESOL classes, tax preparation, Project Learn.

The other walls are adorned with maps of the world and the U.S., a large paper fan painted with a pastoral scene, and a wooden sign carved with the word Asia and a row of

Chinese characters. The smell of freshly-brewed coffee adds warmth to the bright, cheerful room.

Chen participates in the exercise for a few minutes, then waxes philosophic about the agency she helped form seventeen years ago.

"A renowned Asian family therapist once said to me that Asian families are like all other families, like some other families, and like no other families. This is so true!

Asian families have special needs, just like all, some and no other families."

While the national welfare rate was around 5% in the early nineties, that of refugee groups was closer to 30%. Teenagers in refugee families are much more likely to abuse drugs and alcohol than those in American-born families. Spousal abuse, underage marriage, homicide and suicide rates are all disproportionately higher among refugee populations than national averages. Chen was appalled by these disparities and knew there had to be a better way to meet the needs of her community. But when she approached mainstream resettlement agencies, like International Institute, about her concerns, she was told "we cannot be all things to all people." She was dismayed but not discouraged.

Chen often thinks about something Ken Burns said when he was the keynote speaker at her son's graduation a few years ago: "To know where you are going, you must know where you come from." These words aptly describe the holistic approach to assimilation at ASIA, Inc. ESOL and citizenship classes are balanced by ethnic food fairs and an International Festival planned for fall 2012, which will showcase the music, dance, clothing, and food from the many diverse countries of Southeast Asia and the

Pacific Islands. These kinds of cultural activities, linking the past to the present, are often what convince older immigrants to allow their children or grandchildren to participate in other, more Western programs, like anti-smoking and anti-drug campaigns.

"We want to help more mainstream agencies understand how to reach out to Asian communities, how to better help and serve them."

Where the International Institute might be more of a short-term, immediate-need agency, focusing on getting refugees out of harm's way and through the first stages of resettlement, ASIA, Inc., works for assimilation on a continual, long-term basis. Chen's real goal is empowering immigrants to be viable citizens. ASIA is a choice for them.

"At least in the hell [refugees] came from, they knew the language and the culture, they could maneuver geographically. Here they can do neither and it is up to agencies like ours to help them achieve at least that."

* * *

Several years ago, Chen received a phone call from Children's Services: a young Asian boy had been treated at Akron Children's Hospital for lead poisoning, but after his release, the family refused to continue his treatment or have the other children in the home tested for the same illness. Chen knew this had to be simple misunderstanding and miscommunication, so she reached out with the best tool she had: the home visit.

"I went to the home and visited with the woman, got to see how the family dynamic worked, how she interacted with her children--I think there were four of them-- and found them all to be happy and getting along quite well. I knew I couldn't bring up the testing right away and risk insulting her."

After a few weeks of visiting, of building rapport and trust with the mother, Chen decided it was time to broach the subject.

"I know you want all your kids to be healthy," Chen said to the mother; "don't you think it's time to take them to get tested for lead?"

"No!" was the mother's terse reply.

It seems she and her husband felt lied to about the on-going nature of the treatment, felt the hospital visit had been a failure because it hadn't solved the whole problem. Improper translation was most likely the culprit, but that kind of thing is difficult to determine without getting to know the family better. After a few more weeks of visiting and building trust, Chen tried a different approach.

"When you have a big problem," she asked the mother, "who do you go to for advice?"

"Cousin in Medina!" was the immediate response.

So Chen contacted this cousin in Medina and explained the situation to him. The next time Chen saw the mother, she had gotten all of the children tested and was in full compliance with all of the follow-up treatment.

"People ultimately have the solutions to their own problems," she says in her soft, gentle voice. "It's not always good to say, 'you need this or that.' It's a matter of respect.

We can find our own solutions."

* * *

Kuan Kuo Hua--mother of Margaret Wong, a well-known local immigration attorney-- won the Healthy Cooking Contest with her pork braised in brown sauce. The 80-year-old beamed, surrounded by her large family at the table, as a young nephew claimed the steamer for her. The crowd applauded, and Chen finally breathed a sigh of relief.

It doesn't really matter anymore who won the contest. What matters is that now, some ten years after the contest, seventeen years after creating ASIA, Inc., Chen can see the trajectory her efforts have taken. From her first activity with the Chinese Women's

Association in 1995, to the Healthy Cooking Contest in Cleveland in 2002, to the Global

Festival being planned for fall of 2012, she sees great expansion and progress happening, though there is still much room for improvement. Both branches of the agency, Akron and Cleveland, are bustling with activities for seniors, children, teenagers. And with new groups of immigrants and refugees arriving almost every day, the population that needs her help is constantly growing.

Chen looks more to the future than the past. When her kids, who are now in their twenties, were in fifth or sixth grade, she took them with her on home visits. Just as she had learned an obligation of service and volunteerism from her own parents in Hong

Kong, her children had their eyes opened to the cultural diversity and need that is all around them.

"Some families send their kids overseas for cultural experience. But there is a viable population right here to learn from, work with, help. Talk about 'think global, act local!' Now they see how blessed, how privileged they are. And they have a long-term relationship with volunteerism, service work, and community development."

Whatever the next challenge that confronts her and ASIA, Inc., May Chen keeps in mind those two Chinese symbols that form the word crisis: opportunity and danger.

Every crisis or challenge presents an opportunity to learn. It also brings a danger: of being overwhelmed and tempted to give up. So long as Chen views her clients as her greatest teachers, helping her figure out what they need and how to get it to them, she will continue to accept the opportunities they bring her, always learning, adapting, improving.

CHAPTER VIII

LEGALLY SPEAKING

Farhad Sethna is slight of build and very short, but his handshake feels like a vice grip.

He is the first person I encountered upon entering his fifth-floor offices at Court Yard

Square, a gentrified factory building adjacent to both The University of Akron and downtown. I had expected to greet his secretary, Elina, and then wait on the comfy red sofa by the elevator while he finished some work in his office until he was available for our appointment. Instead, I found him in the lobby area, looking relaxed in khakis and a blue chambray button-down.

"Hello! You are the writer?" I could not remove my hand from his, but I smiled into his warm brown eyes and identified myself. At every subsequent meeting, he introduced me to colleagues and students as a journalism student. It is one of few mistakes I ever heard him make.

"I was just about to make my staff a cup of tea," he continued, releasing me at last. "Would you like one? Or maybe some coffee?" He gestured to the glass-topped

étagère that held a small plate of cookies and a Keurig coffee station. I told him tea would be just fine.

"With cream or sugar?" Now he sounded more like a pleasant waiter than the highly regarded lawyer and professor of law I knew him to be. I had spoken to a few professors at the university's law school before meeting Farhad, to see what they thought of him. They said things like, "he always has a smile on his face," and "he is always

74 willing to help out." One of Farhad's students told me he chose The University of Akron specifically because Farhad teaches there; the young man had heard Farhad speak to a group of first-year students when he was visiting campuses.

"A little honey, if you have it, would be great," I replied. He assured me they had some, made sure to get it right, that I take "just a teaspoon of honey," and excused himself down the hallway that certainly led to other offices.

I waved hello to Elina, who giddily informed me that she was going to go to

Miami the following week to visit her fifth grandchild, just born in December. Her easy manner and friendly attitude, both this day and two weeks earlier when I had dropped off my letter of introduction and writing sample, indicated to me that this was a pleasant office to work in. I had temped in a law firm in Twinsburg some twenty years ago, and it was decidedly unpleasant: three chain-smoking, order-barking, over-worked and over- weight white men alternately harangued and ignored the staff of ten young women as we endlessly searched through stack after stack of case files piled on desks, tables, chairs, the floor, trying to find the manila folders that corresponded to numbers on food-stained, barely legible lists. My opinion of lawyers in general was formed at that job; nothing in my experience since then had changed it much.

This office couldn't be more different. Exposed brick and duct-work were complemented by rich brown and red paint on doors and walls; three Salvador Dali prints hung above the red sofa beside plaques of recognition or gratitude from The University of

Akron and various local corporations. A matted and framed photo of Gandhi, paired with an original hand-written letter from Gandhi to a friend, was placed over the beverage array. The air smelled clean, something like new clothes and fresh-cut flowers, over the

75 richness of freshly-brewed coffee. Elina’s back was to me as she worked at her L-shaped desk about twelve feet of blue carpeting away. The elevator opened directly into this airy space; Sethna's offices occupy the entire floor. From the hall where Farhad had gone, I could hear a metal spoon tap against a ceramic cup, then this exchange between himself and a woman I could neither see nor fully hear:

"He can take his time to pay my legal fee. I just need the filing fee; it's timed."

Pause. "Yes--and then the balance. That's fine." All this was delivered in a calm measured tone, reflecting respect and cordiality. A moment later, with a smile clearly in his voice:

"Ms. Alvez, is the tea okay? Yes? Excellent! You are very welcome."

Farhad's accent is clipped and crisp, that almost British form of Indian lilt that comes out if you try to fold your tongue length-wise while you talk in sing-song. The ts are tight and sharp, but the ds and ns are soft and round; the phrasing has a pleasant musical cadence, a rise and fall in pitch that becomes less pronounced when he gets more professorial than conversational. This happened as our conversation progressed beyond the preliminaries of his life and into the heart of the matter: immigration and documentation.

"'Do not cut corners' I tell my clients," he said, sounding almost fatherly. His advice is the same that my father always gave me: keep your receipts, your tax papers, your rental agreements; be diligent! His paternal attitude surprised me, juxtaposed by his apparent youth. Farhad is forty-seven, but his tawny, unlined skin and jet-black hair could pass for thirty. He outlined these counsels in a genuine, caring tone that sounded more like a friend than a paid consultant.

Farhad was born in Bombay some twenty years after India won its independence from Britain. This means he had relatively easy access to his own birth certificate and documentation about his education before seeking a visa to study law in America. For many in more rural parts of India, as well as in other developing countries, lack of documentation can be the biggest obstacle for emigration. Even though his own immigration experience was relatively easy, Farhad has a deep empathy for how frustrating and difficult the experience can be.

"It is very hard for American courts and American judges to appreciate that things aren't as nice and clean-cut in third-world countries as they are in this country," he said.

"You also do not have a pervasive system in this country that obfuscates records, that deliberately tries to hide facts, because it is damaging to the ruling junta, the person in power or what have you. When you come from a third-world country, you understand that these things happen every day; you understand that kind of predicament. And that helps put people more at ease, that I am someone who is at least willing to listen, that I'm not just going to be critical and say, 'oh, well, you don't have this paper or that paper; I can't help you.'"

After finishing his studies at The University of Akron's School of Law in 1990 with a combined MBA/JD, Farhad worked for a firm downtown. Once he passed the bar in 1991, some of his fellow students, also here from overseas, would come to him for legal help from time to time, for advice on a rental issue with a landlord or a small-claim suit. Eventually, some of these foreign-born students came to him with issues of immigration and citizenship. Because he was also a foreigner--at least until he became a citizen in 1994--these students and their friends felt more comfortable approaching him.

Other lawyers in the firm passed on these cases. He enjoyed helping his friends and colleagues, and found that he enjoyed immigration law even more. So he studied immigration law on his own--there were no classes offered on this subject at The

University of Akron, nor at any of the major law schools anywhere in the country. He read books, went to seminars, and taught himself what he needed to know to navigate the labyrinthine immigration system. Now he teaches an immigration law class at the

University of Akron himself, for which he wrote the textbook. In the foreword to his text,

Farhad acknowledges "the intensely personal and poignant nature of immigration law," how "behind every case, there is a human being or a family." He concedes that immigration law will not "garner litigants vast riches," but that it will give practitioners

"the joy of knowing you have done your best and made a change in someone's life. Try doing that in corporate law."

Farhad often invites a real-life client to his classroom to give his students experience with an asylum interview. Asylum-seekers have already entered the United

States and are seeking refuge from their native countries because of persecution there based on race, religion, national origin, political opinion, or membership in a social group. These interviews can be emotional and uncomfortable; the lawyers-to-be have to press the interviewee for details about violence or torture they may have suffered, and suss out whether or not the situation qualifies under the standard of the law. They also have to remember that the interviewee is a real person who is reliving some horrible events in order to help them get their law degrees.

I observed two of Farhad's classes conduct such interviews. He introduced his clients to me warmly, as if they were old friends of his. He offered to fetch beverages or

78 snacks, to rearrange chairs or window blinds, whatever was necessary to make the situation more comfortable for his clients2. He instructed his students to make eye contact with the client, to use the client's name, and not to piggy-back or repeat the same questions over and over. Then, he relinquished control and let his students take over.

Sitting around a large conference-type table, the students took turns asking about the client's general history, then about the specific period of time before he left his country of origin. Most of them typed answers into laptops, directly into blank government forms. A few made notes on paper or typed notes into an outline on a blank document in their laptops. They were all a little nervous, but some of them--especially the older students--had a more natural way of phrasing their questions conversationally.

Those typing directly into government forms tended to sound rigid and stilted, forcing an unnatural phrase into a question that didn't quite come off as colloquial.

Farhad sat at the back of the room by the windows, a few feet to my right. As the questions droned on into the second half hour, I noticed that Farhad was absorbed in his iPhone. I glanced at him often over ten minutes or so, as he scrolled through apps on his phone. Then, out of the blue, he piped up to correct a student without taking his eyes from the device.

"You must rephrase or redirect that question for the purposes of today's meeting," he said, tagging his gentle rebuke with the female student's name. I had lost the thread of the questions, but he had been listening closely the entire time.

His tone was always respectful with his students, even as he corrected them. And he knew all of their first names.

2 I cannot print the names or any identifying information about Farhad's clients because they are real asylum seekers whose legal cases are still in progress. 79

At one point, a young student asked the client to give a general timeline for events that occurred in his home country before he left and what that meant for his status there.

The room fell silent as the client spoke gravely about atrocities and governmental machinations that have shaped his life. A train whistle blew mournfully in the distance.

Farhad's full attention was on his client during this three-minute monologue, his right ankle on his left knee, hands folded in his lap, eyes level and intense. A moment of silence followed the client's words, as everyone in the room absorbed the impact of his powerful statements. Then the next student picked up the rhythm again, expressing her gratitude for the client's candor and moving on to another question.

Shortly after that startling moment, Farhad moved to the front of the room and stepped into the conversation, once again assuming his role as professor.

"We must finish up by 11:45 to cover travel time and the end of class, so ask your final questions, please."

When the students had run out of questions, Farhad solicited a round of applause for his client, then went out into the hall with him to make sure he could get home on his own. He asked multiple times if the client needed a ride, shook his hand, then spoke to him quietly in an intimate manner with his left hand on the client's shoulder. The two men laughed softly over some shared confidence before the client took his leave down the hallway.

One of the students asked if this was a real case when Farhad returned to the classroom.

"This was an Oscar-winning actor," he said, and got a laugh from the entire group.

Farhad made it clear, however, that this gentleman was an actual client in whose case he had a genuine interest.

"But I am not looking for right or wrong answers in your papers," he said. "I am looking for process and analysis. Just take a stance and justify it. Do read the instructions.

Are there any questions? I want to make sure everyone is on the same page."

Farhad's choice to specialize in immigration law was a natural one, not only because he was dealing with the system in his own process of pursuing citizenship, but because he noticed a fine opportunity for growth in the specialization in the mid-1990s.

"I remember very vividly the first time I went to an American Immigration

Lawyers Association conference in Atlanta, Georgia," he said. "It was in, I think, '94 or

'95, and it was really an eye-opening experience. At that time, there were only about

8,000 attorneys who were members of AILA in the whole country, okay? Now it's well over twelve or fifteen thousand members."

To put that number in perspective, the ABA reports that there are currently over

1,200,000 lawyers practicing overall in the US, a number that has risen steadily in the past few decades. That means roughly one person in every 300 people is an attorney; just over one percent of those lawyers practice immigration law.

"The reason I liked it at that time," Farhad continued, "is it gave me a chance to do fulfilling things, like keeping families together, bringing relatives from overseas, getting a skilled worker for an American company, getting a green card for that skilled worker. It was very refreshing to me to be able to help people."

But what about the money, the prestige he could have had in another field of practice? I found it hard to believe that Farhad had no regrets, even passing ones, about his choice. I pressed him; I wanted to see his teeth.

"The only regret I have right now is," he said, "I wish Congress would get its act together and do something for immigration as a whole. I'm not saying give blanket amnesty to the people, but do something for immigration as a whole, because it is the driving force for growth in America. And if Congress doesn't do its job, that's what infuriates me." Though his measured tone never changed, his eyebrows furrowed down and his dark brown eyes got a little steelier than they had been a few minutes earlier. I felt a small chill shiver down my spine. "We are all taxpayers; we are all struggling. And yet

Congress won't get its head out of its partisan ass, okay? And do what is right for this nation. That's my frustration."

His hard emphasis on the word nation, along with the only swear word I have ever heard him utter, let me know he really does feel furious passion about this. And in some ways, his calm was scarier than if he had yelled or gotten red-faced, like my dad used to when he was angry. For the first time since I met him, I was certain this tiny man would be a formidable opponent in the courtroom.

Farhad is married and has four children, aged seven to twenty-one. His second oldest is studying Physical Education at Ohio State University and works at Farhad's office during her summer breaks. His eldest, a son, is going into the Peace Corps. Farhad gives them a shout-out in the forward to his textbook, thanking them for putting up with "long hours of work as an attorney in private practice coupled with my sometimes cranky personality."

He has no partners or associates in his practice and often works upwards of sixty or seventy hours a week on a daunting and unpredictable case load.

"I'm also a private pilot," he said, "but I haven't flown in two years. It's very hard when you are solo to kind of balance work and family life because there is no predictability in terms of revenue. When a case comes in, you go to work!"

His pilot's license afforded him a convenient simile on his office website, though:

Flying is like immigration - we have to check our legal theory, file the

right applications and deal with unforeseen problems! My goal is to get

you - my immigration passenger - to your destination safely and quickly! I

hope that together we have a great flight. Buckle up and let’s go!

I know it's corny, but I think it's sincere. In fact, the single most startling thing about

Farhad is his artless sincerity. With every one of our encounters, he succeeded at breaking another preconceived idea I had about lawyers. He seemed neither arrogant nor avaricious, neither pushy nor crafty, neither solipsistic nor snobbish.

In fact, it's hard to find any shortcomings at all in this man. Elina, his secretary, has worked for him for seven years and described him in a list of adjectives that threatened to trigger cavities: funny, patient, kind, caring, generous, fair.

"My husband says, 'you don't work a day in your life,'" she said. "I would never leave this job. He works right along with us. When we are busy and overwhelmed, he makes copies for us. When I hurt my hand last year, he did all the hole-punching for me.

He calls to check on me if I'm home sick. He drives me home if my husband has to take the car or if the weather is really bad. When he goes out to lunch, he brings us all dessert."

He even does the dishes in the office kitchen. Elina considers Farhad's wife her friend, and she is quite fond of his children. He doesn't even leave the toilet seat up.

"Maybe at home he does, but not here," she said.

When I pressed her--because no one is perfect, and there must be something he does that irritates her or is slightly less than the angelic image I have gleaned so far--she came up with one thing that kept Farhad real.

"He leaves the cabinet doors open in the kitchen."

Well, at least that's something.

"But lately he's been working on that and doing much better."

I went with Farhad to a thirtieth anniversary celebration for the Hispanic Outreach

Program at St. Bernard's Catholic Church in downtown Akron in October of 2012. He was there to encourage young people to seek benefits under the Deferred Action for

Childhood Arrivals (DACA) process. This process, announced by Homeland Security in the summer of 2012, does not grant legal status to illegal immigrants, but allows certain immigrants who came to the U.S. illegally as children to stay in the country and work, study, or seek legal status without fear of being deported for a limited time.

Farhad introduced me to Father Schindler, who started the Hispanic organization at St. Bernard's in the early 1980s and now spends much of his time in El Salvador, and who spoke glowingly of Farhad's generosity with his parishioners.

"I am trying to keep people in El Salvador," Father Schindler said, "to send them to university there so they can improve their own communities instead of coming to the

U.S. Farhad helps those that are here, reunites families that the system tears apart. Our community has grown while I've been away, and Farhad has helped that immensely."

As several young boys chased each other around the low-ceilinged multipurpose room below the sanctuary of the church, and about fifty adults settled at long tables covered with white paper, two older Hispanic women set up silver trays of food on the perpendicular row of tables that would serve as today's buffet. The spicy aroma of tacos and guiso con arroz filled the air, and a forty-something parish priest made a few announcements in Spanish from a hand-held microphone behind the buffet.

Then Farhad introduced himself to the group in Spanish. He quickly turned the mic over to a short, red-headed woman of about sixty so she could translate the rest of his presentation. The adults waiting for the buffet all laughed kindly at his quick deference to a native speaker. Farhad laughed at his own shortcoming as well.

CHAPTER IX

ELINA, THE EASY IMMIGRANT

By the time Elina was eleven years old, she was already a political dissident. She claims she was the reason her family emigrated from Cuba to the U.S.

"It was because I couldn't keep my mouth shut,” she says. “I don't know where these ideas come from!"

There was an event the family had to attend one time, she doesn't remember exactly what for, but her mother wanted Elena to wear the uniform of the Pioneers. She refused. The Pioneers was a children's group, kind of like the Girl Scouts, but officially controlled by the Communist government. Participation was technically voluntary, though not joining had unofficial sanctions, like the loss of holidays off, and possibly the loss of promotions or respect for a child's parents. Possibly.

"I simply refused and told her, 'I'm not a Communist!''' Elina says. She was nine.

Neither of her parents was very political, though they lived under the Castro regime at the height of the Cold War.

"I can remember watching the palm trees blow up,” she says. “They shot straight up from the ground! They told us it was from underground springs. But I knew it was from their bombs."

At an airstrip in Havana, young Elina sat on a hard wooden bench in a little room without her parents. A man from the Cuban government was telling her that if she and her family

86 stayed in Cuba, she could go to Russia to study, and they could live in a very big house and have very nice things, and wouldn't that be very nice?

No, replied eleven-year-old Elina.

Come now, the man persisted, wouldn't she rather go to Russia to study and have that big house for her parents than go to the United States?

No.

The government man knew Elina was very smart, and Russian schools could offer a lot for very smart little girls, and didn't she want her family to have all the best things they could possibly have, and didn't she want her parents to be favored by the government?

Again, Elina said no. "I want to go to America!"

Then a tall, blond man from the Swiss embassy came through the door and said,

"That's enough! She obviously doesn't want to stay!"

The Cuban official roughly jabbed a vaccination needle into Elina's upper arm and left the room in a snoot. Soon after, Elina and her parents boarded a plane for New York

City with official orange refugee cards in their pockets.

Elina doesn't remember learning to read, it came so naturally to her. She devoured as many classics as she could get her hands on, like Ivanhoe and Shakespeare, as early as age ten. In fact, she enjoyed reading so much, her mother had to push her out the door to play with other children.

"I think that's why I had such an easy time learning English," she says. "I never had to struggle like other immigrants. I have a hard time identifying with them."

Elina and her family came to the U.S. in the summer of 1969, just a few years after the Cuban Missile Crisis, during that storied Summer of Love, when the entire culture in America was shifting from the post-World War Two era of one-size-fits-all status quo, to the post-Vietnam era of cynicism and multiculturalism. They did not leave

Cuba on a raft, as many of us might imagine such an exodus from that vilified

Communist island. No, they boarded a plane for New York City, where they met up with some distant cousins who had already left Castro's experiment. Elina was given an orange card that signified her status as refugee, and she remembers thinking how strange that was.

"I didn't feel like a refugee," she says. "I didn't understand why they called us that.

We were just moving."

It was late spring with only a month left in the school year, and Elina's mother had her tested for placement in the school system. She had the opportunity to just wait until the fall, but that would mean holding her back an entire year. Elina loved school, loved learning, and didn't want to fall behind. The teachers strongly encouraged her to start in an English as a Second Language (ESL) class, so she did. Elina excelled and was able to keep pace with her peers in seventh grade without missing any time at all.

Over the summer months, there were no Spanish-speaking people around Elina's new neighborhood, so Elina had no choice but to practice her new language. She had known no English at all upon entering the US. But she spent that summer watching television, conversing with neighbors, shopkeepers, and strangers, and reading anything and everything she could get her hands on including the Reader's Digest, so she was pretty fluent by the time school started in the fall. Many of the other kids who had come

88 from Cuba about the same time as her family stayed in ESL classes through twelfth grade, but not Elina. She entered regular classes right away. And by the time she was in high school, she was in Advanced Placement and Honors classes, keeping up with native speakers.

Elina had her first child, a daughter, at age nineteen, while she was still living in New

York with her mother and her family. Shortly after Elina gave birth, Elina's mother decided she wanted to move to Miami. Why?

"Because that's what Cubans do!” she says with a laugh. “They move to Florida to be with other Cubans! It's their temple, their Mecca!"

After living in Florida for many years and raising her daughter to adulthood, Elina met a man from Ohio on the Internet. Her family was very concerned about him, about her meeting him, about her possibly moving away from them.

"They were having heart attacks," she says. "Cubans do not move away from their families. They live together. Always."

But as their relationship became more serious, the Ohioan came to meet her family a few times, and they warmed to him. They married, and Elina eventually gave birth to another daughter. Soon, she tired of Florida, and her northerner husband longed to return to his roots, so they moved back to Ohio in 2006. She was amazed at how affordable land and houses were here, especially after the crazy-expensive real estate of

Miami.

"We started looking, and because it was just the two of us, he wanted just a small house," she says. "But I said no! We can get so much for under two hundred thousand!

Look how much room we can get!"

Elina's daughters now have children and husbands of their own and are both living happily in Florida. Her own husband has a mild disability that keeps him from working and from taking care of a large property, so they have a good-sized home on a small plot in Cuyahoga Falls.

"I want things," she says with a grin. "Not just things, but things, Amish furniture and stuff, so I knew I was going to have to work. But I love it. I love my job here at Mr.

Sethna's office, too. I have my garden, my grand-babies to visit. Life is good."

Though she took a few college classes right after high school and has always been a voracious reader, higher education was never a priority for Elina.

"Truthfully, I never really wanted the responsibility of a really big job, like a lawyer or a teacher or something. I like what I do now; it's enough."

CHAPTER X

ANATOMY OF A LIE

This is the story about the story that isn't here. It's the story of how I wanted a story so badly, I nearly put other people's jobs and lives at risk. It's the story of how I lied to gain access to the lives and stories of vulnerable people―people I really do care about and want to help―and how I learned a difficult truth about myself.

I didn't feel bad when I told the first lie. That was in the interview with Mary Kase, the

Volunteer Coordinator at the Biruta Street offices of Catholic Charities Services. Saying I was volunteering in order to give back to my community is true. But I didn't reveal the greater truth: I wanted access to the Hispanic community so I could write about them. A lie of omission, a fib maybe. I sweated for a minute, then forgot about it. I have always been good at making myself believe convenient untruths.

It was even easier the second time, with Zully, the Hispanic Outreach Social Worker. It was easier, for one thing, because most difficult things get easier the more often you do them. It was also easier because I liked Zully immediately and wanted her to like me. I wanted her to like me not just because she's sweet and caring and vibrant and friendly. I wanted her to like me so she would get me what I wanted: a way into the Hispanic community. The connection between us felt real, but rationalizing that we were becoming friends made that part of the lie much easier.

By the third time, it was becoming natural. I hardly knew I was lying anymore. The third recipient was Diane, Zully's supervisor and an administrator who'd only been with

Catholic Charities for two months. This one felt like the kind of lie we tell in job interviews to make ourselves seem better candidates: not a lie so much as a massaging of the truth to navigate a bureaucracy, a creative way of making the system work for the little guy. You don't go back into Acme to pay for the bag of cat litter on the bottom of your cart that the cashier forgot to ring up, do you? No, because Acme is Goliath and you are David. In my mind, I cast Catholic Charities as Goliath. Besides, I knew I was a good person, doing this for a good reason: I wanted to tell the stories of Hispanics struggling to make their way in Akron, to make my neighbors aware of the inequalities around us, to help people. Certainly a measure of misrepresentation in the service of such altruistic motives was acceptable, even necessary. I was beginning to believe my own lies.

The full consequence of my situation began to dawn on me when I found myself in one of the most awkward situations I have ever encountered. I went with Zully to a client's doctor visit, thinking I would meet the woman, then sit in the waiting room until her exam was over, maybe talk with her some about her journey from Mexico to Ohio.

Instead, I ended up in the exam room observing the client's pelvic exam, along with a translator, the doctor, an intern, and Zully. I didn't understand what my role was there, why I was in the room. Zully and the translator had specific jobs: to make sure the client wasn't harmed or exploited during the exam, and to help her understand the medical jargon and answer complex questions. The doctor and intern certainly had well-defined

92 jobs to perform. Me? I was the interloper. As I tried to blend in with the wallpaper and focus on the doctor's shoes, I questioned my motives and methods in getting there. I was shocked at my audacity, or what I was calling bravery, in daring to be there. But I was even more shocked at how this undocumented worker could so cavalierly allow strangers to see her in a moment of total vulnerability so she could get medical care without endangering her precarious life in America. She was inured to sacrificing her privacy for safety. I thought about how embarrassed she must be, how humiliated I would be if I had to allow strangers into an exam room with me.

I thought about a procedure I had undergone about ten years prior, a colposcopy, which involves removing a small bit of flesh from the cervix for a biopsy. Because the procedure was done at a teaching hospital, a virtual parade of interns and students came through my exam room, each one taking a turn to peer into the microscope contraption inserted between my legs. Hot tears of humiliation streamed down my flaming cheeks; when one of the students asked me, in that detached way medical personnel have, why I was crying, I shrieked at him that I was embarrassed. I had always taken for granted certain kinds of privacy. This woman didn't have the luxury of that privacy. I wondered how she was feeling now, knowing a stranger was hearing about her menstrual cycle, her cramps, her cervix. But mostly I thought about how awkward I felt to be there, how I had completely misrepresented myself to be in that room. And how I was ready to exploit her vulnerability for a story.

But I was doing this for a very good reason, I told myself. I clung to the nugget of truth in my deception: I was doing this to help, to tell the story that would enlighten people about the plight of immigrants, to do something good. Even as my conscience

93 tugged at the back of my mind, I wrote the scene of that doctor's visit on my blog. It was a dramatic, charged scene. I changed the woman's name and glossed over identifying characteristics some, thinking I was being journalistically careful and ethical. I concentrated on how it's okay to lie sometimes for a greater cause, how journalists have been misrepresenting themselves for decades to reform corrupt institutions, to help people who can't help themselves. I thought about Ted Conover.

Conover applied for a job as a corrections officer in New York in the early 1990s so he could write a book about the prison system from the inside, so he might bring about reform in the way the system treats inmates. An altruistic goal indeed. He had tried to get tours of prisons and interviews with prison workers but was denied, even with credentials from The New Yorker. So he devised a deceptive plan. He told very few people of his true motive in applying for—and getting—the job as a prison guard, but was truthful about being a freelance writer on his application. In Telling True Stories, a guide for nonfiction writers published by Harvard University, Conover discusses his participation journalism and its effects on his psyche:

I didn't tell them I planned to write about it. I felt justified in this because

of our country's incarceration crisis, with its huge expense and racial

character, as well as the little-known circumstances of corrections officers.

Secrecy is destructive. Only a critically important story can justify it. In

the culture of COs, when someone acts dishonorably, he or she 'meets you

in the parking lot.' That's the shorthand for an after-work beating. Almost

every day I feared I would be found out and met in the parking lot. (37-38)

I convinced myself that I was doing the same kind of work as Conover had done in Sing

Sing. Our immigration system is egregiously corrupt; immigrants are vilified and scape- goated during elections and difficult economic times; few natural-born citizens really understand what immigrants experience on a daily basis. My discomfort in an awkward medical situation seemed a small price to pay for educating people and changing the status quo. Besides, my blog didn't really have any followers; what could be the harm? I told myself that I was telling this woman's story so that more people could understand the sacrifices she had made to live in our great country, so we could all examine the system that had put her―and me―in such a compromising position. I could not yet admit to myself the truth: I was letting my ambition for a story that could change the world blind me to the danger I could cause for this one person.

Still, I squirmed and grappled with the implications of my actions. The day after posting the blog, I sought advice from a mentor with experience in journalism. I sat in his office, red-faced and sweating bullets, as he matter-of-factly pointed out that I was putting this woman's life at risk. She had not been informed that an outsider was observing her with intent to write about her; she had not had the opportunity to give consent or denial to being part of my work. How would I feel, he asked me, if someone I had trusted and confided in wrote about my secrets in a public forum? His candor hit me like cold water, but I didn't want to give up on the months I had already invested in the project. So I did what desperate liars do: I equivocated.

I removed the blog post after only a couple of days, hoping no Immigration and

Customs Enforcement agents had seen it and recognized the woman in it. I knew I had to come clean with Zully and Mary and Diane about my real motives, but a deadline was

95 looming. Time was slipping away. Even after I signed a confidentiality agreement that put in black and white the impropriety―and illegality―of what I was doing, I wanted to find a way to salvage my work. I thought I could change tacks slightly, write about Zully and her journey here from Puerto Rico, her efforts to find programs and services for her mostly undocumented clients. But even as I tried to make it work, I knew this was desperation. The only thing I accomplished in trying to hedge the situation was embroiling Zully in my mess and endangering her job. When Diane suspended me from further volunteering with Zully, I knew I couldn't lie to myself anymore. The only nearly noble thing I did here was to make sure Diane understood that Zully had had nothing to do with my misrepresentation. She, too, had been deceived.

So this is the story of how I sort of tried to do something good, but got lost along the way.

I lost three months of work, my credibility, my faith and confidence in myself, and the story. I sent my application for volunteer work to Catholic Charities Services with the express purpose of finding an "in" to the Hispanic community in my town so I could write about it. I inflated the nugget of altruism in my lie into a smokescreen I could use to ignore and deny the fact that I was lying in order to exploit people. That's the cold hard truth of it: I wanted to get a story more than I wanted to help people. And I ended up getting neither.

What I did get was a peek into my own personal heart of darkness. I searched corners of my soul I had never expected to examine. I had not realized how far I was willing to go for a story, nor how easily I could swallow my own lies. But, ultimately, I discovered where my personal line is in the ethical gray area of writing about other

96 people. I also learned how much I take for granted the privilege of citizenship, and how much others are willing to sacrifice for a chance at that privilege. Writing about the real world has real-world complications.

Even Ted Conover, the seasoned participant journalist, owned up to misgivings about his deception while writing New Jack in an interview with The New York Review of

Books: "I tried to have it both ways, I tried to help a little. And so you do neither one well. You are neither a good person nor a good guard" (01/12/2012). I tried to have it both ways, too, but it's a difficult fence to ride for long. I cannot be simultaneously part of the story and separate from it; I cannot deceive others without deceiving myself some, too. Maybe I'm not as good as I thought I was at making myself believe convenient untruths.

CHAPTER XI

EVERYTHING NATION

Not long ago, a friend of mine was dating a man from Puerto Rico. Slight of build and bald of pate, Omar worked as a chemist for a pharmaceutical company and spoke with an unmistakably fluid Spanish accent. Whenever we watched movies together as a group, he liked to have English subtitles on to aid his comprehension, though he'd lived in

Northeast Ohio for a dozen years or so. I found his Latino-ness intriguing, and one day asked him when he had become a US citizen.

"When I emerged from my mama's womb," he replied.

Gulp.

I do not remember ever being taught that Puerto Rico is a Commonwealth and a protectorate of the United States, ceded to us at the end of the Spanish-American war in

1898. Nor do I remember learning that Puerto Rican citizens are US citizens by birth because of this political maneuver. In fact, I don't remember learning much at all about the Spanish-speaking world in school, apart from a light treatment of the Battle of the

Alamo.

I realized there was a lot I didn't know about my own country.

The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that the US will become a "majority-minority" nation for the first time in the year 2043, which is only thirty years, or one generation, from now. Majority-minority means that, while non-Hispanic whites still will make up the largest demographic group, no racial group will be in the majority overall. That

98 means we will not be a white nation, or a black nation, or a brown nation, or an anything nation. We will be an everything nation. We'll have to start re-thinking our use of terms like minority, because they will no longer mean what they once did. It's already been confusing for quite some time to call women minorities, when there are far more women on the planet than men. More importantly, though, we'll have to start re-evaluating how we treat people, what we expect from them, and what our assumptions are about them.

Apart from one summer semester abroad, I have lived my whole life in Ohio, a state with only 3.3% of its population self-reporting as Hispanic. Consequently, I've not met a lot of Hispanics. I've also not met a lot of Africans, Russians, or Australians. This lack of diversity in my acquaintanceship does not excuse my ignorance, however. The

Internet now makes almost any factual ignorance a product of mere laziness. But learning facts and geography does not necessarily give rise to deeper multicultural understanding.

Luckily for me, I met a young lady from Puerto Rico while I was volunteering with a local charity organization last year. Zully--short for Zuleika--worked with Spanish- speaking clients from a variety of countries who needed help getting healthcare, food stamps, or other government assistance.

Zully is very petite with skin the color of caramel, though she tells me she tans darker in the summer. She can hardly wait for summer, so she can get back some of that color she used to have. Her eyes are light green and she adds blond highlights to her light brown hair, sometimes dying it a strawberry blond color. Zully's husband is Caucasian-- born and raised in Northeast Ohio--so their two kids have very mixed features. Their son has his dad's dark brown hair and large, brown eyes; their daughter has Zully's green eyes

99 and curly, light-colored hair. Both kids have medium golden skin tones that look like they will tan easily in summer.

Though Zully's physical features do not advertise her Puerto Rican lineage, her accent does. Her English is excellent, though she occasionally corrects herself for verb agreement or a more precise word, and her soft ds and ts are soothing and languid. I had no difficulty at all understanding her, but other Ohioans did, apparently.

"Many people in Ohio ask me what part of Mexico I am from," Zully said. "And even when I say I am from Puerto Rico, they ask what part of Mexico that is in!"

I was a foreigner living in France for my semester abroad a few years ago, where my accent and mannerisms made me a little curious to the locals. Many of them asked me if Ohio was near New York City, but none of them asked what part of Canada it was in.

Zully also recounted unfortunate incidents in restaurants during her first few years in Ohio. She said servers stared at her blankly when she ordered her meal, then turned to her Ohio-born boyfriend and asked him what she had said.

"He would say exactly the same words!" she said. "But I tried not to get upset. I tried to speak slowly, to find a better word or another way to say what I meant. It was frustrating and embarrassing."

Zully told me the Hispanic world is as diverse as the Caucasian world, maybe even more-so. And this is the main point that Zully wants Ohioans to understand about the Hispanic community: its diversity.

"Even though we speak Spanish, the same language, we are so different," she said. "You will find people from South or Central America where they have dialects and

Spanish is a second language for them. So, just because we look alike or we come from

100

Spanish-speaking places, we're so different in terms of things like food, culture, political ideas, education. I feel like if you get to know individuals, and how life was for them growing up, you can appreciate them more. Everyone else just wants a better opportunity for their family like you do and I do."

Zully considers herself simultaneously a Puerto Rican and an American. She seems to have no trouble thinking of herself as two things at once. And I guess, if I really think about it, we are all multifaceted. To think of oneself as only one thing--an

American--is artificially simplistic, and reduces our inherent complexity as human beings. For this reason, I reject the old "melting pot" metaphor for America. It brings to mind images of crayons being melted together over a chaffing dish until the violet and orange and Kelly green and red and yellow and indigo have blended into a muddy brackish non-color. I don't like the idea of all of us melting together, smearing our colors and languages and cultures together until they thin down into a homogenous, gray wash of non-ethnicity. Why must we all be the same? It's better that we remain vivid and bright, so when we bump into each other, we can create something new: this new combination of cultures and languages and histories that is America.

Another friend of mine recently married a woman with a Puerto Rican lineage, a fact I was completely unaware of until this friend told me so. Elle was born in New York

City, but both her parents were from Puerto Rico. Her father had very dark skin and tightly curled hair, so strangers often assumed he was African-American. He insisted that all of his children speak only English at home, though Elle's mother preferred to speak

Spanish.

101

"No one believed me that my mom was Puerto Rican until she opened her mouth," Elle said. "She had red hair and green eyes, very pale skin. But her accent was pure island."

Elle is petite like Zully, but rounder in every way: her nose, cheeks, and body could be drawn with a series of circles. She keeps her brown hair in a stylish pixie cut and speaks with no discernible accent. Working as a medical assistant in Cleveland, Elle is also asked if she is from Mexico more often than would seem logical.

I found it an odd coincidence that both Elle and Zully--the only two Puerto Rican women I have ever been acquainted with--have the same maiden name, Nieves, though they are not related to each other. I don't know what that means, nor do they.

Elle's sense of duality while growing up was even stronger than Zully's. To ask her dad something, she spoke English; to converse with her mom, she spoke Spanish.

Friends often considered her biracial because of how different her parents looked, though she never thought of herself that way. Her mother made Puerto Rican foods at home, like root vegetables or rice and beans, and mixed her own special seasonings, but she never encouraged the kids to learn to cook. Elle misses that, now that she has a daughter of her own.

"I would have liked to learn to dance some Puerto Rican dances or do Puerto

Rican things as a family," she said. "We never listened to Spanish music or had a quinceañera. I didn't know what I was missing until it was too late."

Elle's brother married a woman from Puerto Rico, and their family has many gatherings and parties with the Puerto Rican community at her brother's church, including

102 a quinceañera for his oldest daughter. Seeing how fun those kinds of festivities are made

Elle want to include more of her ancestral culture with her own daughter, who is ten.

"I'll let her take the lead, though," she said. "Right now she's not very interested."

I only thought of myself as one thing growing up, though my dad encouraged me to be proud of my Hungarian lineage. I fantasized about being more exotic, about being different from all the people around me. These were childish fantasies, of course, and I realize now how lucky I am to be who and where I am. But Zully and Elle and Omar have helped me see the grace in embracing an inner duality, of accepting complexity as an asset, rather than a burden.

As our demographics change and we confront our status as an Everything Nation, this complexity will only intensify. It will take another fifty years for the numbers to reflect what most of us see in our everyday lives, but for some that is too soon. For others, it has already been a long, long journey to inclusion. The original idea of the

"melting pot" was one of sameness. The goal of assimilation was for everyone, regardless of color or origin, to conform to the baseline of white culture: Standard American

English, Occidental clothing, meat-and-potatoes cuisine. What will this new nation sound like, look like, taste like?

There will be--is--no template for this new thing we are becoming. Just like the first settlers who eked out a niche in the New World, America will once again have to forge its own image out of imagination and perseverance. There is no template for what an American looks like or sounds like. We are hybrids. That's who we are.

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CHAPTER XII

BASIC LIFE SKILLS

1. Speaking and Listening

At the beginning of each ESOL3 class, Susan wrote our names on the white board under the heading 'teachers.' She then wrote the words speaking, listening, writing, reading in a vertical list.

"My name is Susan Woodworth4," she said. "First name Susan, last name

Woodworth."

She pointed to the words with her finger. Then she did the same with my name.

"We are teachers," she said, underlining the pluralizing s. "There are two teachers in the classroom today."

The students seemed fascinated by my last name. I'd stand there, off to the side of three rows of folding tables under the low ceiling of the International Institute's basement classroom, attention fixed on the white board, and I'd hear it.

Cebula. Cebula.

se-BOO-lah.

SEH-boo-leh.

I looked around and three or four of the mostly Bhutanese adult students would be

3 English for Speakers of Other Languages 4 Susan's name has not been changed, nor have those of any other International Institute or Project Learn employees, but the names of all students in the Basic Life Skills class have been changed, in order to protect their privacy. 104 looking at the white board, or at Susan, fairly expressionless, repeating the sounds of my last name, quietly, just above a whisper, as if to themselves, as if they were trying to memorize it. They didn't seem to realize they were doing it.

The first time I noticed this, I thought they were trying to figure out how to pronounce my name. I had to repeat their names many times to get them right. Yuliya and

Siobhan and Deepta were not combinations of syllables commonly found in my mental dictionary of names. But they didn't repeat my first name over and over; they simply called me Sharon--actually they called me 'Saron' or 'teetser,' which is how they pronounced my first name and the word teacher. Nepali, the native tongue of the

Bhutanese people, does not seem to accommodate th, ch, or other combined sounds.

But the word Cebula caught their fancy somehow. I wondered why. I wondered if it sounded like a word in Nepali, or if it made a sound that was musical to them, or if it just felt good to say. When I first saw the name, I put the emphasis on the first syllable, making it rhyme with the word nebula, which I thought was really cool. After meeting the man attached to the name, the man who would become my husband, I learned that cebula is the Polish word for onion, so it became even cooler.

And it does have a rhythmic quality to it, kind of like the three-beat of a polka with a beat of rest in between: ce-BU-la (pause) ce-BU-la (pause) ce-Bu-la (pause). It can sound like a chant or a marching anthem. When the Bhutanese students repeated it in hushed tones in the basement classroom, the little hairs on the back of my neck pricked up and butterflies fluttered in my belly. The whispery sound of their repeating made me think of the audience in the old Looney Toons opera cartoon, the one where Bugs took the place of a famous orchestra conductor: when the audience thought the renowned

105 master was approaching the stage, they all whispered among themselves, "Leopold!

Leopold!"

It wasn't an unpleasant sensation, hearing these sweet people savor my married name. It was just odd. I wondered what their thoughts were. I constantly wondered what they thought of me, of the Institute, of Akron, of Ohio, of Americans in general, of the advertisements and cars and people they saw and heard all day every day.

* * *

When I had called about the possibility of volunteering at the International Institute of

Akron, Pam, the receptionist, told me there was an immediate opening for a classroom assistant in an ESOL class on Mondays and Wednesdays, starting in just a few weeks, so

I wanted to get my paperwork in and complete the background check as soon as possible.

I had been looking for a way to spend some free time during my last year as a graduate student, before I had to think about the responsibility of a full-time job. I had taught conversational French to adults as a part-time job during my undergrad. I figured teaching English to non-English speakers would be even easier. I had resisted pursuing a teaching career path, mostly because I have no desire to work in academia, with its politics and insulation from the real world. Besides, volunteer work would look good on a resume and might help me feel a stronger connection to my community. A friend of mine was constantly volunteering--on committees to organize summer festivals, on the board of a community garden project, on panels for sustainable businesses--and constantly raving about how great it made her feel. What the heck, I thought; I've got free time and I speak English; why not?

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I smiled at the handful of Asians who stood in the shade of a tree near the cement steps up to the Institute as I walked from the parking lot past the busy, noisy intersection in front of the square brick building. The foyer was bustling with brown children in colorful t-shirts and sandals, their mothers in bright saris or wrap skirts topped with cheap nylon shirts. Everyone smiled at me in turn as I made eye contact and said hi. A short, dark-skinned gentleman of about fifty opened the glass door to the reception area for me and bowed slightly when I thanked him. At the desk (which is really just a wood counter with a mesh in-box for mail on top and decals pasted on it advertising the immigration process in glossy red, white, and blue print), I met Pam, a short, stocky woman with mousy hair and a melodic voice. She immediately started detailing how the ESOL class works, when it meets, that Susan was the teacher and she'd be up here in a few minutes if

I'd like to wait to meet her. Pam didn't seem interested at all in examining the application

I had so carefully filled out.

"Why don't you have a seat until Susan comes up after her class," Pam said, indicating the sagging brown leather sofa surrounded by racks of fliers in various languages across from the reception area. "Here, you can read a little about us while you’re waiting."

She handed me four or five sheets of paper in bright colors, turquoise, fuchsia, yellow. I sat down to leaf through them, though I already knew quite a bit about the

Institute. The year before I started graduate school, I had contacted Amber Subba, a refugee resettlement counselor at the Institute and himself a refugee from Bhutan, and written a profile of him for Akron Life magazine.

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A continuous stream of people came through the reception area, lingering for a moment at the counter or rushing through to offices beyond. After a while, a tall, thin man in heavy-framed glasses and a light-weight suit came in. I recognized him instantly.

"Mr. Subba, I don't know if you remember me," I said, standing and extending my hand to shake his. "I'm Sharon Cebula, I wrote about you for Akron Life a couple of years ago."

"Oh, yes," he replied without hesitation. "How good to see you again! How are you?"

I told him I was there to volunteer and that I was happy to see both him and the

Institute doing so well. He expressed gratitude again for my interest in him and his work and wished me well, then rushed off to work with the group of Asians that surrounded him. Our meeting made this feel so much like coming home, like absolutely the right place for me to volunteer.

I sat back down and skimmed over the turquoise sheet of the Institute's history, then the yellow sheet of class schedules. Then I came to a glossy, two-page, magazine- style booklet with a gorgeous photo on the front of Amber in a suit standing on the stairs in front of the Institute. "A Place To Call Home," read the title, and under it, in the tiniest, lightest printing, the author's name: Sharon Cebula. An electric zing of excitement shot through my abdomen.

I opened it, read through it, flipped to the back and found my short bio at the end.

This was, indeed, the entire article I had written, reproduced faithfully as a professional eight-and-a-half-by-eleven brochure for the International Institute, complete with the timeline of its history and photos of Amber and his family.

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My cheeks went a little warm and my stomach flipped. I looked around self- consciously for some reason. Does anyone know I wrote this? Do they know this is me?

Does it matter? I smiled to myself and debated about whether I should say something or not. When I saw that Pam wasn't busy, I approached the desk.

"Hey, this brochure is great," I began. "Ya know, I wrote this..."

"Really?" Pam said.

She had been standing behind the counter showing a young Indian man how to do something on the computer, but now came around and looked at the paper in my hand.

"Oh, wow! Yes!" She took the brochure from me. "There's your name right there!

Wow!"

The young man stared at me, eyes wide, a bemused smile on his face. Pam stopped several people who came through the area to show them the brochure and indicate that the author of it was right here, pointing to my name on the page and then to me in the flesh. Each person smiled at me and expressed some sort of admiration or congratulations. I felt a deep rush of pride.

Eventually, I met Susan, the ESOL teacher, a short, sturdy woman of about fifty with a wide swath of gray in her shoulder-length brown hair. She seemed quite relieved to have an assistant for her class, as another student was with her to register today, and the class had grown to twenty-five students, with perhaps more on the way. We exchanged phone numbers and verified class times; she said I didn’t need to prepare, just show up at nine am the first day.

As I left the Institute to go to the background-check place, the young Indian man at the counter was still staring at me, that same grin on his face.

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2. Reading and Writing

I arrived a few minutes early for our nine o'clock class, and about half the students were already seated at three long tables in the cool, carpeted basement room. I smiled, waved, and said good morning brightly as I walked between the front table and the white board to the far side of the room to deposit my bag on a smaller table by the filing cabinets that line the opposite wall. A chorus of good morning, teetser greeted me, as did the not- unpleasant smell of curry with just a hint of mildewy basement. As the two-hour classes wore on, a bit of body odor mixed with this smell: the deep, ripe, musky, scent of humanity. But it really wasn't as bad as I had expected it to be. I've been on Metro trains in Europe where the body odor brought tears to my eyes and bile to my throat.

For the ten or fifteen minutes before Susan arrived, I tried to find some way to engage the class. The first few days, I went around the room and tried to learn names.

"Good morning. My name is Sharon. What is your name?"

This is the exercise Susan usually had them begin with, so I figured they were at least familiar with it, it couldn't hurt, and we could all get in a little practice. After each student told me his or her name, I repeated it back and waited for corrections to my pronunciation.

"Good morning, Poodle Neesto..," I began.

"No, Pou-del Nishita."

"Oh. Poodle Nee-?"

"No. Pou-DEL Nishita."

"Oh. Poudel Nishita?"

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"Yes!" There was always much laughter during this exercise. After successfully pronouncing three or four names in a row, I stopped and tried to go back and repeat the names from memory, usually getting only one or two right. My face turned red and contorted with effort and embarrassment. I did a lot of poking my forehead with my index finger, à la Winnie the Pooh and his "think, think, think" posture, trying to force the names into my feeble memory. I'm not sure if I was merely entertaining for the Bhutanese students, or if they felt a kinship with my struggle to learn these foreign words. Either way, laughing together seemed to ease the tension in the room.

Chitrangada asked me to look at his notebook. All the students had notebooks where they wrote down whatever exercises Susan put on the board, practicing their letters, numbers, and phrases in English. Some, like Bibek who could barely mimic whatever sounds we said to him, had dark, fat marks in them like those of a kindergartener, not sentences so much as disjointed letters and half-formed shapes.

Others, like Siobhan, had lovely script that stayed on the lines and within the margins with even spacing between words and a delicate slant to the letters. Chitrangada's was somewhere between the former and the latter. There in his notebook, in a spidery cursive, was this:

1. Name at least two of the northern states that border on

Canada: New Hamshire Vermont Minnesota Idaho

2. What is the suprem law of the land in the United States?

The U.S. Consitution

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He was obviously beginning to study for the civics portion of the citizenship test. I corrected his spelling.

"Oh, wow!" I said. "You're studying for your citizenship test already?"

I didn't realize at the time that Chitrangada had already been in the US for about four years.

"Little, little," he replied in typical Nepali fashion, holding up two fingers in a gesture we might use to indicate just a pinch of salt.

"Well," I said, "that's great! And I think you're right. Though I'm not sure about the states that border on Canada. Are New Hampshire and Vermont that far north?"

I was embarrassed that my geography was so poor, but I didn't want to give him any wrong information. I don't think he understood my mostly rhetorical question.

"Is right?" he innocently inquired again.

"Ya know, I'm not sure." I was going to try and put him off; then I remembered that there had been some maps on the wall until the room was painted a few weeks earlier. They were now stacked on top of the filing cabinets. "Let's check and be sure!"

I turned to go to the cabinets, then turned back to Chitrangada and motioned for him to follow me. We dug through the pile of laminated sheets on top of the cabinets until we found the brightly-colored map of the United States, and I spread it out on the spare table where I usually kept my bag.

Sure enough, there was Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire snugged right up against Canada, as well as New York, Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana, Idaho, and

Washington. I congratulated Chitrangada on being smarter than me, and helped him jot down the names of the other border states he hadn't included in his list.

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Another day, Chitrangada asked about question #84: What movement tried to end racial discrimination? Answer: The Civil Rights Movement.

"Is right?" he asked me.

"Yes," I said. "That's a big word for you: discrimination. Do you know what that means?"

He went blank for a minute, tried to pronounce it and stumbled.

"Dee-crimi...dee-scree-mee-nation. No? What it means?"

I paused for a minute, wondering exactly how I could simplify this complex term to convey the basics of it without condescending. Chitrangada was a smart guy, maybe the most intelligent student in the class. But I knew he wasn't fluent enough yet for these kinds of discussions in English.

"Well, race is about skin color," I began, knowing full well that Arya and Jordan, on either side of Chitrangada, were listening closely, as were probably many others. "So you're brown and I'm white, but we are the same, really."

Here I put my arm against his to highlight our differing skin tones.

"Discrimination is when someone says that black people or brown people should have different rights than white people," I said.

Both Chitrangada and Arya looked at me with completely blank expressions, and

I knew I had failed to explain sufficiently. I wanted to try again, but just then Susan came in, and Chitrangada turned his attention to the white board.

On Wednesday, Chitrangada called me over again, and again asked me about question #84, as well as question #85: What did Martin Luther King, Jr., do? The answer

113 he had written was fought for civil rights and worked for equality for all

Americans.

Well, this would make the explanation of discrimination a little easier, I thought to myself.

"Is right?" Chitrangada asked me.

"Yes, it's right!" I read the questions and answers out loud so he could hear what the words sounded like. Then I just continued with the explanation I had started on

Monday.

"Equality for all Americans," I repeated. "So, that's what it means to end discrimination, right? Whether you're black or brown or white," here I pointed at

Chitrangada's darker skin and my lighter skin, "or yellow or green or whatever, it doesn't matter. We are all the same. Right?"

Most of the class was looking at me now, mostly because I had been waving my arms around wildly during my explanation, as if miming would help get the point across.

Arya and Chitrangada laughed a little, looking at me with big eyes, and I heard Bhudhav, a few people over to my right, echo a few of my words: "some people are black or brown or yellow or green," then he giggled a little, too. They were reflexive laughs, almost out of surprise or astonishment.

I sallied forth.

"So discrimination is treating people different for how they look, right?" I said.

Arya and Chitrangada nodded, so I had to believe they were understanding me on some level. "But we have the same rights, no matter what color we are, right?" I said.

"We are all the same! Bori-bori! Right?"

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I made the sort of you're safe on base motion with both hands that Parbat had made when he taught me that bori-bori means same in Nepali.

"You understand?"

Chitrangada pinched together his thumb and index finger and said, "Little, little."

Susan had come in and was starting class, but I couldn't help feeling Chitrangada, at least, had understood this concept. There was a light of intelligence behind his eyes; he was inquisitive, always trying to go beyond what the class did, beyond what he was capable of. He never seemed bored in class, even when we were going over the same old lesson that I knew he knew by heart. He usually had the right answers quickly, but he was patient with the slower students and helped them kindly.

I wondered what his life had been like in Bhutan, what kind of job he had done.

He seemed less suited to agrarian life than many of the others in the class, more naturally inclined to Occidental garb and urban rhythms. And I wondered what his wife was like; she never came to the Basic Life Skills class. Perhaps she stayed home with their children.

More than anything, I wondered what Chitrangada and Arya and all the others thought of me, of this yellow-haired lady who smiled a lot and laughed at weird things and thanked them for coming to class, and often scribbled in a notebook and was always eager to learn how to say things in Nepali, and did the exercise breaks with them, and brought them cookies on the last day of summer class, and blushed when she mispronounced their names, and told them about discrimination, and didn't have any children. I'd love to know what they thought of me.

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3. Family Life

Though our ESOL class was only for adults, some of the students brought their children with them. The kids just kind of hung out and played while their parents labored through rudimentary lessons. One woman's fat little boy sat in the corner eating noisily from a bag of noodles for most of the class, then ran out into the hallway and banged plastic toys against the wall for a while until she went out to admonish him in angry-sounding Nepali syllables. Another woman occasionally brought her tiny granddaughter, who sat perfectly silently in pigtails that stuck straight out sideways from her little head, gazing at me with giant brown eyes that barely cleared the table top. Two ten-year-old girls came to class for the first month or so, Dilafruz's daughter and Deepta's granddaughter. Both girls seemed very bright, helping the adult students puzzle out English quagmires in class; I brought them books I had read in elementary school, like Stuart Little and How To Eat

Fried Worms.

Bibek brought his two sons, though it took me a long time to realize they were his sons because there were never any signs of affection between them. Bibek was in this class for the third time, Susan told me, and was only now beginning to parrot back a few phrases. He had some kind of developmental disability that impaired his speech in both

Nepali and English. A bilingual teacher who had worked with him when he first arrived said his cognitive abilities were impaired, as well. The elder of his two sons, Yadu, was eleven and shared this disability. Yadu could not communicate verbally at all; he could only grunt and point or wave his hand. He sat in a chair next to Bibek at the end of the first table by the white board, making rows of circles in his notebook.

Ashtavakra, on the other hand, was nine and advanced for his age. He was clever,

116 always looking for some mischief to get into or a game to play. His English was excellent, so the interns would often ask him to interpret when they needed to assess the adult students for fluency levels. Painfully thin, Ashtavakra had large brown eyes that positively shimmered with intelligence. Susan told me that his mother was developmentally challenged in a way similar to Bibek, though she no longer took the

Basic Life Skills class; she may have moved on to the Employment Skills class out of necessity, or she may have simply stayed home.

One day, Ashtavakra and I made paper airplanes and tossed them around during class. Well, I mostly paid attention and helped the other students while Ashtavakra threw paper airplanes at me, though occasionally I couldn't help but throw one back at him. I was never good at making paper airplanes. Mine usually took an immediate nose-dive into the ground, smacking down with remarkable force and crumpling into an unrecognizable clump. But Ashtavakra would not take no for an answer. He was already laboring over his when I arrived, forcing way too many folds into a damp, limp ball of smashed paper. I suggested we each start with a fresh sheet. As I folded mine length-wise,

Ashtavakra immediately began criticizing my work.

"You're doing it wrong."

I folded one corner into the fold.

"That's not going to work."

I brought the opposite corner into the fold, mirroring the first and creating the nose of the plane.

"That's wrong."

I quickly folded both sides twice, at steep angles from the nose, forming the wings

117 on either side of the center fold. The group of adult students all talked amongst themselves in Nepali at the three rows of tables, taking only passing notice of our little paper games.

I held up my creation for Ashtavakra's inspection.

"It's not going to fly."

"Well, let's just give it a try," I said, releasing it away from the class with a little flick of my wrist.

To my utter astonishment, it took flight across the room in a graceful arc of about fifteen feet, almost as if propelled by an engine, then lowered and slid to rest nimbly and silently on the carpet under a folding table perpendicular to those occupied by students.

I'm not sure who was more surprised, Ashtavakra or me.

Susan showed up after this maiden flight, and I turned the bulk of my attention to the speaking, listening, reading, and writing of our students. Ashtavakra, on the other hand, focused his energy on copying the blueprint of my prototype. He folded and refolded one piece of paper until it was soft as cloth, then started in on another. He brought me every one of his efforts over the next hour or so, often interrupting me as I tried to help Mahasweta or Karma tell me where they were from or when they had arrived from Bhutan. After a while, he started coloring his planes with the crayons he found mixed in with random toys lying around the room. Each new combination of orange and blue or green and pink had to be inspected and approved by me, then tailored and perfected, then inspected once more. Eventually, when colors bored him he started writing messages to me on his aircraft.

"Look inside it," he said, shoving a now-limp plane into my hand. Inside the soft,

118 shiny paper he had scribbled you are so mean just playing you are really so nice, or don't touch the airplane. His English and handwriting are very good, especially for a third grader who may not have had much formal schooling in the Nepali refugee camp where he had been born. When the message he put in one of the planes was tomorrow in the plane you will died, I turned it into a grammar lesson, rather than getting upset about the content of his message.

"So, whenever you use 'will,' that means the future," I said. "If you say

'tomorrow,' then it's 'you will die.'" (Here I covered up the ed with my finger.) "If you say

'you died,'" (and I covered the will) "with that '-ed,' then it already happened, in the past.

See?"

He was unimpressed.

I often wondered what the future might hold for Ashtavakra. He was clearly the only hope of financial success in his family. That's a lot of responsibility to lay on those tiny shoulders. I could envision a path of wonderful opportunity for him, one paved with college scholarships and incentives, perhaps a medical or engineering career. But it would be a narrow path, beset on all sides by danger from any misstep: the wrong group of friends, the wrong party where kids are doing drugs, the wrong word to the wrong professor who takes offense and decides not to give a recommendation. Even a walk down the wrong street at the wrong time could put him in front of the wrong person and end all his carefully constructed dreams of a better life. That very nightmare had happened just recently to an immigrant family in North Hill, when a stupid white kid who wanted to advance in a local street gang shot and killed a thirty-seven-year-old immigrant, leaving his widow and sixteen-year-old son to fend for themselves in the land

119 where they had thought they could escape the violence of war.

I tried to blot those images out when I thought of Ashtavakra and his future. The best way to do that was to look at a picture he drew for me of the three of us, Ashtavakra,

Yadu, and me, standing side by side, under the phrase, "Shron have friend now." Sure, he spelled my name wrong, but I gave him a break.

I was surprised how quickly and easily I had developed favorites in this class.

Chitrangada, Arya, and Bhudhav had gone out of their way to engage me in conversation from the second I stepped into the classroom. Mahasweta was so quick to understand new words and concepts, and she always seemed to look to me for approval whenever she answered a question. But those boys, Yadu and Ashtavakra, had my heart.

4. Parts of the Body

Chitrangada was rather handsome, tall and thin, and often sported a jaunty golf cap over plastic rimmed glasses. Unlike most of the other men in the class, Chitrangada and Arya invariably wore pleated trousers with open-collared dress shirts neatly tucked in. They seemed to prefer this Occidental style of dress over the more traditional Nepali tunics and loose pants, a combo called Daura-Suruwal that is often paired with a suit coat. Daura-

Suruwal is the national costume of Nepal, dating back some two thousand years with deep religious meaning in the fabric and design. Jordan often wore this traditional outfit.

Bhudhav went a different route, usually sporting a gray sweatshirt and matching sweatpants topped by a suit coat whose sleeves have been amputated. At first, I thought this ensemble was rather bizarre, but then I started noticing it on the news, worn by men in Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, and other countries near Nepal. Some of the men in class occasionally wore a sarong skirt with a T-shirt.

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The women in the class also displayed a variety of fashion elements, from the traditional to the eclectic-modern. Drolma and Shiva, Arya's wife, usually wore something very close to an Indian sari, or perhaps a long, brightly-colored embroidered tunic over contrasting, loose-fitting pants. Mahasweta and Deepta often sported sarong skirts in rich jewel tones topped by T-shirts with incongruous phrases on them, like I love to shop! or Viva Las Vegas! Siobhan and Dilafruz, the only two in the group from

Uzbekistan, wore heavy polyester print dresses that reached the floor and had long, belled sleeves, often with intricate embroidery or bead-work, topped by silky headscarves secured under their chins in busy patterns that never really complemented their dresses.

Both of them were heavily pregnant, and their swollen bellies protruded despite the fullness of their gowns, making their silhouettes all the more capacious. Because their hair and bodies were so assiduously covered, I noticed the facial features of these two women much more acutely than the others: Siobhan had several gold-capped teeth in the front of her mouth, but was otherwise round-cheeked and quite pretty, without a trace of make-up; Dilafruz had extremely heavy eyebrows and a very thick mandible, but a surprisingly pleasant smile, which she consistently hid behind the tail of her hair scarf.

I was surprised at how much stronger the body odor smell was now that the weather was getting colder. I would have thought it would be worse in the summer, with all the sweating and high temperatures. But it seemed the frequency of bathing was diminishing in direct proportion to the temperature outside.

Arya, Bhudhav, Chitrangada, and Jordan all painted three vertical lines on their foreheads, two in red and one white, from about their hairline to the bridge of their noses.

A few of the women did, as well, like Deepta and Mahasweta. The lines were there every

121 day, from the first day I met them; when the lines became faded or smudged, they were soon repainted. I asked Arya what these markings meant, but he had a hard time explaining with his limited vocabulary.

"It means God," Arya said, touching his marks then pointing up toward the ceiling.

I wanted a better understanding, so I asked Mahananda, a Bhutanese man who lived in a Nepali refugee camp for eighteen years where he helped teach English, was a school principal for a time, has lived in the U.S. for four years, and has worked at the

International Institute in Akron teaching English since 2011. Mahananda is tall and thin with short dark hair and slender, expressive hands he waved around a lot as he succinctly explained some basic tenets of Hinduism and the path to enlightenment.

"Hinduism is basically a big tree with many branches, many deities," he began in his mellow, melodic accent. "There is Brahma, the creator; Shiva, the force of destruction; and Vishnu, the god who takes care of upbringing. There are many more, but these three are the beginning of everything."

The three marks that some of the Bhutanese people put on their foreheads are called tika, which means "footprint of the lord Vishnu." The marks symbolize love, affection, and upbringing of all living creatures, man, plant, and beast. So, why make a physical representation on their bodies of the god they worship?

"Reincarnation is a chore," Mahananda said; "it is not a cool thing. Our priests tell us, 'do you really want to come back as a bird or a fish? No! Enlightenment is the goal!'

These marks are a physical reminder to be a humble and respectful servant to Vishnu, to have right thoughts and actions, and hopefully avoid reincarnation."

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Be it a Sikh turban, a Jewish tichel, a voodoo talisman, the tika forehead marks, or the fossilized trilobite necklace my husband gave me after our first month together, we all seem to need some kind of physical reminder of our faith to keep us on our right paths.

* * *

One Monday, I almost didn't go to the ESOL class. It had been an emotional weekend, with one friend returning to Italy on an expired work visa and another friend choosing her newer group of friends over me for a social event. On top of that, I'd been dealing with a minor health problem and a new medication that had some irritating side effects, like a complete ban on alcohol consumption. And my sister was in town. I knew I'd have to see her, along with all my other siblings and in-laws, for the requisite meat-heavy family get- together. As a completely sober vegetarian.

I was feeling sorry for myself.

But after my husband left for work and I tidied up the breakfast dishes, I talked myself into going anyway. Turn that naval gaze outward, I told myself.

On the short drive to the Institute, I felt on the verge of tears three times and almost turned around twice. I blamed these feelings of anxiety on the medication, which was expected to evoke feelings of depression and anxiety.

I had been volunteering for a few months now, and I really loved it. On that particular Monday, though, I had to fake some enthusiasm. As I walked down the stairs to the basement, the humid air from outside cooled and dried, and the musty smell of the building slowly changed to the earthy tinge of curry and body odor I had come to associate with our class. I stretched my mouth into what I hoped looked like my usual smile and stepped into the room.

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"Good morning, teetser," said Arya, Bhudhav, Chitrangada, and the others who had already arrived at five til nine.

"Good morning! Good morning!" I responded, crossing in front of the tables to a chair where I could deposit my bag, the forced cheer in my voice already making me feel a little better.

Ashtavakra immediately asked me to make paper airplanes with him. We had engineered some beauties the previous week. His brother, Yadu, grunted and waved at me from next to him, as he always did. Their greeting helped lift my spirits a little, so I turned my attention away from my small problems and onto these gentle, smiling people for a while.

Shortly after our break, Yadu waved and grunted me over from across the room for the third or fourth time that day. I came and stood behind his chair, slightly to his right so he could see me, as I had many times. I kept my attention focused on the white board, on the lesson about paper money Susan was working through with the class.

"So, we have a five dollar bill, a ten dollar bill, and five one dollar bills," she said, drawing each bill as a rectangle with a blue dry-erase marker. "How much money do we have?"

Yadu leaned his head back on his chair and looked up at me, smiling with his mouth open slightly so I could see his gray rotting teeth, his right hand bent, pointing his index finger up at me. I bugged my eyes at him and placed the index finger of my left hand on his forehead, applying just a little pressure right above his eyebrows. My husband used to ask me to press on his forehead like this when he had stress headaches;

124 he said it helped relieve the pressure. Yadu's eyes went about half closed and his smile slackened a little. I released my finger and looked back at the board.

A moment later, Yadu leaned his head back again and pointed his finger up at me, grunting for my attention. I pressed on his forehead again, smiling and shaking my head at him a little, like I might to a baby or a puppy. His eyes went half closed; his mouth softened. We did this four or five times.

After a while, I just put my hand in his when he leaned back and pointed up, shaking his hand and arm then releasing it. He seemed to like that, and after the second time, he would not let my hand go. So I just held his hand and gently shook his arm back and forth for a while. He let his head lay on the cushioned back of the chair, his eyes almost closed and his mouth soft and slack, like he could almost fall asleep.

It reminded me of something I call the arm thing.

When I was a child, my mom would lull me to sleep by gently caressing the inside of my forearm with her fingers, just barely brushing her fingertips against my skin in rhythmic, circular motions. The repetitiveness of this gentle contact would soothe whatever had upset my child's mind, from a toothache to a temper tantrum, and allow me to drift off into peaceful slumber. My husband and I still do this for each other from time to time, often in a teasing way, though I have found it can be an effective aid at the onset of a migraine.

And apparently it doesn't have to involve rubbing or caressing; it seems that any gentle, repetitive motion can have this calming effect. Yadu responded to my gently shaking his arm in a repetitive way exactly as I used to respond to my mother gently caressing my forearm in church: he became calm and happy and sleepy.

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I had the feeling that Yadu didn't get touched very often. I could have been wrong, but he really responded to my touching him, really wanted to hold my hand and not let go, wanted me to stay beside him through the entire class. Every time I left him to work with other students in the class, to go to any other part of the room, he invariably grunted and motioned for me to come back to him. How could that not make a person feel wanted and needed? Sure, his teeth were partly black from very poor dental hygiene and he always smelled like pee, but he was completely guileless and genuine in every way.

When he reached out his little hand to me, I knew all he wanted was human contact, a tiny connection with another person, nothing more.

My husband, a medical technologist who looks at patient samples of bacteria and viruses all day, constantly warned me about touching the immigrants at the institute.

Don't hug them, he said; you'll get scabies. Be sure to wash your hands, he said. Don't bring home lice, he said. None of that occurred to me when Yadu reached out his little hand to me. I could not deny this sweet child my touch. It was the only thing I could offer him, so I gave it freely. I held his hand; I shook his arm; I rubbed his back gently while he lay his head down on the table. He repaid me with huge smiles that looked like they would split his skinny face in two, and with the way his brown eyes lit up every Monday and Wednesday morning when I walked into the basement classroom and said good morning, even though he could not say good morning back.

When Susan had finished the lesson on paper money and Yadu had donned his green backpack and all the students had left for the day, I climbed the stairs and made my way past the lingering group of men and women in the foyer, all speaking in tongues I couldn't understand but nodding to me as I passed, some stopping to say good morning to

126 me. I stepped out into the humid air, walked to my car, and couldn't for the life of me remember what I had been so sad about two hours earlier.

5. Mid-term Placement Testing

"Did you go to that big meeting last week?" Susan asked me one day while the students were copying sentences from the white board. She didn't usually initiate small talk with me.

"No, I didn't know about any big meeting," I answered, expecting her to tell me about a volunteer orientation I had missed. Both the IIA website and the first secretary-- there had been three since I started here four months earlier--who took my application spoke of such an orientation, but I had never attended or been invited to attend one.

"Oh, yeah, there was a big meeting at Holy Trinity last week about the North Hill neighborhood and all the immigrants that keep getting housed here," Susan said with a faint smile. "I guess a lot of residents are worried about all the new faces showing up, all the changes and the refugees that're moving in here."

"Really?" I was surprised because IIA had been housing new arrivals from foreign countries in this neighborhood since at least the 1970s. "Isn't that a little late in the game?"

"Well, there's been a new influx lately, so people are worried about their neighborhood changing. I'm from Cleveland, and you see that a lot there, too, or at least you used to. When there were a lot of students moving into our neighborhood, lots of rentals, people started putting signs up that said no students."

"Isn't that illegal, I mean to discriminate with housing like that?" I asked.

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"Yeah, but there was just a lot of hostility," Susan replied, "because of the noise or the standard of living that comes with students, stuff like that. And people got angry.

There's a similar vibe here with immigrants. There are a lot of cultural things that don't match up, that can be offensive to Westerners. Their attitude toward children, for example. Children are a gift from God for most of these immigrants; that's literally what they call them. So there's not a lot of disciplining of children, at least that's what I've noticed in here."

I had to agree with her there. Over the summer, we had a few children in the classroom, kids with nowhere else to go until school started. The girls were quiet and respectful, but the boys were pretty rambunctious. I had done nothing to discipline them, no matter how loud and distracting they became, mostly because I didn't think it was part of my job. And honestly, I had often joined in with them, throwing paper airplanes or batting a balloon around the room during some of the more tedious, repetitive lessons.

"You know, we had a contract for a while with Pregnancy Care next door," Susan continued, indicating the business in the small plaza next to the Institute, "to use one of their classrooms, and it was great. It was a really nice space, and we always need more space around here. But they ended the contract, saying 'we need the space back,' but that was a euphemism. It was because stuff was untidy--you see how they throw things around on the table out there."

Yes, the table in the hall just outside our basement classroom was often piled with clothing or household donations that had overflowed from the donation center in the other half of the basement. Refugees rummaged through the pile for what they wanted or needed, always leaving things messier than they had been. Random shoes or plates or

128 hats ended up in piles on the floor, in the short hallway leading to the bathroom, on the stairs, or even on the floor of our classroom. More than once I had come to class and found a box of mismatched women's shoes abandoned on the front table.

Susan continued: "And there were always people hanging out in the hallway over there, congregating in the building when there wasn't a class."

That was common behavior here at the Institute. I had never arrived for class and found our foyer unpopulated; at every hour of every day, there was someone on the bench there. Whether they were waiting for something specific or merely passing time was impossible to say.

"And bathroom cleanliness was an issue," Susan went on. "Whenever you're in a cultural setting like this, and there are things that don't match up, like levels of cleanliness, it can be offensive for some people."

I had resolved not to use the bathroom at the Institute anymore. I had used it twice in the past couple of weeks, very soon after my arrival for the day, and almost passed out from the heavy, thick smell of the inside of someone's colon. And all the students, women included, left the seat up when they were done, so I was forced to touch it.

"And it's just too bad," Susan continued. "We always have to juggle for space around here."

After I empathized with Susan about the space issue--the offices upstairs were crammed together in the most haphazard fashion, with boxes of paper and supplies stowed in every corner--she told me about a "boot camp" for the citizenship exam the

Institute held the previous Saturday, something I very much would have liked to attend.

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"I wish I'd known about that," I replied. "We don't seem to get a lot of information, do we?"

"Well, I'm a Project Learn employee, not an employee of the Institute, so that adds another layer of remove for me," Susan said. "But yeah, communication is not so great around here. A lot of stuff falls on the floor. You know Nick, the coordinator? He's a

Project Learn employee, too, but he's also a part-time employee of the Institute. He's great with face-to-face communication. But when it comes to thinking outside the box, thinking about who really needs to know this or that, he's not so good."

Having exhausted all the news she needed to share with me, Susan turned her attention back to the students and the white board. Next up was a lesson on quantities and prepositions: This is a pencil. Where is the pencil? The pencil is on the desk. There are two pencils on the desk. Etc.

I'd noticed the lack of communication Susan mentioned, but not in the most straight forward way, probably because I was a volunteer and not a paid employee.

Everything about the Institute felt temporary and unsettled, as if we were all just waiting for a new office that was being constructed, so we left all our stuff in boxes until we could unpack in the more permanent place. Perhaps it was because of the nature of the clientele. Refugees are by definition unsettled; they have been uprooted from homes by forces beyond their control. They have come to the U.S. because there is nowhere else for them to go. And their contact with the Institute is intended to be temporary until they can establish a new home here and become somewhat autonomous.

This is a place of transition, not permanence.

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6. Group Work

"Reach for the ceiling! Reach up, up," I said as I stretched my arms up and smiled at the expectant faces smiling back at me.

Some of the students got up and went out into the hall to wait for the bathroom; others stood up to participate in the stretching we did around ten o'clock, the half-way point of our two-hour class period. I was leading the exercises today in Susan's absence.

With my hands still reaching for the ceiling, I continued the routine.

"Hands open; hands closed. Hands open; hands closed. Hands open; hands closed."

We did approximately the same set of exercises every time, with very little variation. It was just enough to get everyone out of their chairs, get the blood moving, and keep us from falling asleep during the sometimes tedious work of repeating boring phrases in English.

"Okay! Now, with arms at shoulder height! Palms up; palms down. Palms up; palms down. Palms up; palms down. Now circles!"

We did a set of elbow circles with our hands on our shoulders, first forward then backward, then a set of circles with our arms fully extended. Then we put a hand on one hip with the other over our heads and bent to one side at the waist, repeating on the other side.

The best part was walking in place. This could get people laughing or giggling, making faces at each other, sometimes goofing around a little. I tried to get Yadu, the little non-verbal boy, to actually walk by chasing him once, but he seemed a little upset by it. His father, Bibek, who was also more or less non-verbal, was not happy about the

131 idea of us being mischievous in the classroom. One sharp-eyed look from him and Yadu became very still.

There was the cohesive feeling of a village in this group. I don't know if they were all from the same village, of course, or if they were all together in the same refugee camp in Nepal, or if they had all simply spent a great deal of time together since coming to the

U.S. I'll probably never know those details. But it was clear they had a fairly vested interest in each other.

They were always helping each other out. If Susan and I were going around the room to ask a question of each student individually, Deepta would usually repeat the question in Nepali to Anaswya next to her, since Anaswya's English skills were not as sharp as Deepta's. Parbat would often hold his hand over his mouth and quietly say the correct answer, one slow word at a time, so that Lok, who is a few years older than

Parbat's seventy-one, could benefit from Parbat's better memory. When Mahasweta volunteered to go to the board and write out the day's date, the entire class coached her through the difficult spelling of Wednesday by calling out letters to her one at a time. I found this kind of support really uplifting. No one in this room took any pleasure in seeing someone else fail. Everyone here was a little better off because they all did a little better. Susan and I never discouraged this kind of help they offered one another, even though we knew it was not the best way for individuals to learn a language. Maria had a different take on this.

Maria, the intern who informally supervised me, was in her mid-twenties and so thin she looked like she'd snap in two if you bumped against her too hard. She had long blond hair that she pulled back into a pony tail most days and a kind, forthright manner

132 that I liked right away. I met her during the first couple of weeks of our Basic Life Skills class, when she had come down to take a few students out for fluency assessment. She worked on the Institute's website and generally helped keep up with the mountains of paperwork that flowed through the place. She had volunteered to fill in for Susan today, who couldn't be here for personal reasons that she did not reveal.

Susan had asked me if I would be comfortable taking the class on by myself for one day, and I probably should have said yes right away. But I hesitated and let my fear show a little too much I guess, so she found a substitute. I have always been a little uncomfortable being the one in charge. Maybe it's because I'm the youngest of five children, so I'm used to always having someone else to follow. I'm just not what you'd call a natural-born leader.

So Maria led the class today, and there were only a few small differences between her pedagogical method and Susan's. Maria did not start off by writing the words speaking, listening, reading, writing on the white board, nor did she point out that there were two teachers in the classroom today, as Susan invariably did. She did write her own name on the board for the students' benefit, but then she launched right into a series of conversation exercises that were very challenging for our students.

The biggest difference between Maria's style of teaching and Susan's was that

Maria often called on the entire class to quiet down and listen to how a single student was pronouncing a particular word or phrase. Usually during the class, there were a lot of side conversations in Nepali, a lot of extraneous chatting or discussion, either about the topic at hand or not. Susan simply tolerated this, worked around it. It's part of their culture, she told me.

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Maria didn't shush them, exactly, but she did a lot of:

"Hey, hey, listen up everybody. Everybody? Listen!"

She did this until the majority of the conversing had stopped and all the students were looking at her and whichever student was answering her question or performing her assigned task. I cringed inwardly every time she did this, and I noticed expressions on the faces of Anaswya and Mahasweta and a few of the other older women that were unmistakably insulted by this behavior from such a young person.

But she did get many of the students out of their chairs and in front of the room in paired conversations. With Susan, we had only accomplished a very stilted version of this exercise, where one person asked a series of questions for a partner to answer, then the partner asked all of the questions for the first student to answer. It was hardly what you'd call a conversation. Maria and I, on the other hand, modeled the back-and-forth question- and-answer form of conversation that seemed more natural, hoping to give the students a little more confidence in approaching native speakers.

"Hi, how're you?" Maria began.

"I'm good. And you?" I answered, tossing the question back to her.

"I'm fine. What's your name?"

"My name is Sharon. What's your name?"

"My name is Maria. Where are you from?"

"I'm from Akron. Where are you from?"

"I'm from Cuyahoga Falls."

This was our template, and we worked on it with different pairs of students for an hour. We started by pairing students with me, then pairing students with each other. Then

134 we took our break. I could tell the students were getting a little frustrated because Maria couldn't keep the din of side conversations under control after a while. After the break, we moved on to working with money again.

The following class day, I walked into the Institute basement to the usual chorus of good morning, teetser and set my bag on the side table. After greeting Yadu's smiling grunts, Arya caught my eye from his usual place at the middle table.

"Hi," he said. "How're you?"

A little thrill of recognition shot through my stomach and my smile broadened.

"I'm good. How're you?"

"I'm good. What's your name?" He continued our routine from the previous class.

"My name is Sharon. What's your name?" I tried to keep my excitement from spilling out and ruining our nice conversation.

"My name is Arya Katel." He stopped. He didn't seem to know where to go now.

"Where are you from, Arya?"

"I am from Bhutan. Where are you from?"

He just tossed that question right back to me! We hadn't worked with that one on

Monday! I was so thrilled by this bit of learning that took place right in front of me that I almost exploded into a thousand joyous pieces right there in front of twenty-five

Bhutanese refugees in the basement of a former church on Tallmadge Avenue on a

Wednesday morning.

"I am from Akron! That's great Arya! Great job!"

I rushed over to him and shook his hand across the table, grinning like an idiot, my cheeks reddened and shining, tears brimming in my eyes. Arya looked placid as

135 always; Chitrangada sat next to him, smiling serenely; conversations in Nepali buzzed around me in the curry-scented air.

Then Susan walked in to another chorus of good morning, teacher and we began our usual routine of speaking, listening, reading, and writing.

* * *

Karma is Mahasweta's husband. Mahasweta is really sharp and proficient in her English skills. When we worked with counting coins, she was the quickest in the class, both with the names of all the numbers and the arithmetic. She had no problem answering rapidly when I asked her, "When did you come to the U.S.?" "I came to the U.S. on...," she said, filling in a date with the correct format of month, day, and year--no problem. Then she turned to Karma and seamlessly asked him, "When did you come to the U.S.?"

Karma stared at the table and waited.

Both Mahasweta and Karma were probably in their late forties or early fifties, with scars and creases across leathery faces that smile easily. Karma was tall and thin with somber, heavy-lidded eyes; Mahasweta was short and compact with narrow eyes that miss nothing. Mahasweta painted the tika on her forehead and wore sarong skirts with a large purple hoodie; Karma wore a black collared shirt and black jeans with flip- flops and did not mark his forehead. They had seven children.

No matter the question posed to Karma, he would stare at that table until

Mahasweta told him what to say. So long as Karma sat next to Mahasweta--and he always sat next to her--he would remain dependent on her for his answers.

So Susan started picking out four or five students who had the most difficulty producing words and sentences on their own, and I took them off to the side to work as a

136 small group after the exercise break. My job was to go extra slow with these students and have them repeat simple questions and answers over and over, so they could build some confidence in their own speaking capabilities rather than just repeat the sounds others make.

One week, I had Karma in both Monday's and Wednesday's small group. Monday,

I split the group of six into three sections according to what I saw as their respective levels, and had each work on different activities. Drolma and Esther, our two newest students, seemed very adept at writing already, so I had them work on some more advanced conversation involving days of the week. Buddha Maya and Saradha seemed befuddled by writing, but spoke readily, so I had them copying sentences down, in order to perfect written syntax and spelling. For Karma, whose notebook looked like that of a first-grader, with a jumble of fat letters in no particular order, I wanted to get down to basics. I wrote out the alphabet for him, capitals and lower case, and asked him to copy all of it. He took to the task assiduously and completed letter g by the end of our half hour.

Switching gears from the mini-conversation to correcting sentences to praising

Karma's letters was exhausting. And I don't think I did anyone much good that day. More than once, I saw what looked like disdain in Saradha's face, as I stammered and corrected myself, tried to figure out just where I had left off and what point I had been trying to make. All of the students were kind and polite with me, smiling, laughing gently. They spoke to each other in Nepali a great deal, and I wondered what they were saying, assuming, of course, that they were telling each other how ridiculous I was.

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On Wednesday, I took a different approach, both for their benefit and for my sanity. We do a lot of writing in this class, so I decided to take this one half-hour to focus only on speaking. I had Karma, Deepta, Saradha, Anaswya, and Jordan, who was in his seventies and sometimes got a little belligerent when I made him repeat things.

Jordan had become very confused earlier when Susan called him to the board to write his name and the date he had come the U.S. I found it astonishing: to answer her command he wrote the words name and date. And it was clear from his sincere expression that he was not making a joke. Rather than just dismiss him, I wanted to work with him and clarify what, exactly, "name" and "date" meant, because these were concepts he had known and been able to communicate weeks earlier. So we had already spent a good half hour separate from the class, at a table off to the side, working out what today's date was, teasing out the date Jordan had come to the U.S. Jordan became so confused at one point that I had him get out his identification card so I could look at it.

Unsmiling and without his topi5 in the photo, he looked even older than he does every day. The gray stubble on his chin looked forlorn; the tika on his forehead seemed cartoonish; his eyes were wide with childish fright. My frustration with his obtuseness melted away, and we began to make some progress.

I wrote out the sentence when did you come to the U.S.? As Jordan copied it into his own notebook, he repeated the words aloud, sounding out the letters phonetically and elongating them, so the words became a lilting song. I noticed how pure his concentration was, how he seemed not to notice the sounds of the rest of the class behind him, or the sound of his own voice ringing out when the others fell silent. He focused only on my

5 Nepali for hat 138 yellow pad, on the letters forming from the tip of his pencil, and on the music he made of them with his voice, forming a deep connection with words through music. When Susan and the class stood up to take the exercise break, I had to touch Jordan's arm to break his magical spell of concentration. And I was almost sorry to do it.

In our small group after the break, we worked our way through four questions and answers: where are you from? what day is today? are you married? and do you have children? For each question, I started by asking Karma; he answered, then asked Saradha, who answered and asked Deepta. She answered and asked Jordan, who answered and asked Anaswya, who answered and asked me. Around and around we went, ever so slowly. I gently corrected each of them for slips in syntax or mispronunciation; we laughed at ourselves and let each other take as much time as needed to get it right.

When I asked Karma the final question, he surprised me. He had been gaining a bit of confidence throughout the half hour, hesitating a little less when it was his turn, making more eye contact, speaking a little louder.

"Karma, do you have children?" I expected to have to repeat the question, as I had all the others. but he answered right away.

"Yes, I have seven children," he said with a grin.

"Wow! That's great!"

I blurted it out before I could help myself. We hadn't really worked on inserting a number like that, just the generic yes or no answer. His was a rather sophisticated response, in perfect syntax, without hesitation. I wanted to reinforce this progress as much as possible. I gave him a thumbs up.

"Good job, Karma! Really good job!"

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We finished our set of questions, and I saw that our time was up. Mahasweta came over to fetch her husband, as everyone gathered their notebooks and bags.

"Mahasweta, Karma did really good work today!"

I don't believe I have seen a more genuinely happy smile on a grown man's face than I saw on Karma at that moment. The shadows around his brow lifted, and he looked like a much younger man for a moment.

Maybe teaching wasn't so bad after all.

7. Numbers

"Budget cuts," Susan said on the phone. "State funding is down thirty percent.

The only way to keep the number of classes we have is to reduce the number of meetings for each class. That means fewer class hours for the students, but at least they're getting something. At least it hasn't been canceled outright."

It was a Sunday night in mid-October and Susan was explaining why we were not going to have our ESOL class for the next two weeks. Our fall session had begun just six weeks earlier; these classes usually went nonstop for sixteen or eighteen weeks.

The budget in question was not that of the International Institute, but that of

Project Learn, a United Way affiliate that got most of its funding from the state's education budget. I had known about the planned budget cuts, had absorbed them as reinforcement of my decision to seek a career outside of academia. I had never expected to feel their direct impact.

Susan had told me, near the beginning of our fall ESOL session in September, that she was struggling with her personal budget because of the changes Project Learn was forced to make to its classes.

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"I also teach GED classes," she had said then. "And now those classes are all on for six weeks, off for two, then back on for six weeks again. And I only get paid for teaching hours, with a small addition for prep time. So it's an adjustment."

At that time, Susan had assumed the Basic Life Skills classes were exempted from these changes. Nick, the coordinator for volunteers and teachers at the Institute, had assumed the same thing. Susan had asked Nick about all this a few weeks ago, and he had assured her that classes for refugees and new arrivals were not subject to Project Learn's new constraints. Then, last week, at exactly the end of the first six weeks of our fall session, Nick heard otherwise.

So we had to take two weeks off and pick up again in November for another six weeks. I asked Susan how this would affect our refugee students.

"There's always some back-tracking when we don't meet," she said. "You can tell when we're not meeting that they forget things, they're not speaking English at home. It's hard for them."

I also asked her how this would affect her, whether she'd be able to enjoy any of the two-week hiatus.

"It's a drag," she said. "I'm only paid for teaching hours, so I get paid for six weeks, then not for two. I have to rethink how I do money now. It's a drag."

Susan said she'd be proactive during the break, taking care of professional development requirements and doing projects around her house. But those things don't buy groceries or pay the rent.

"Will I get paid for it?" she wondered. "Not right now, I guess. I just have to trust that it's worth it in the long run, that it's all for the good."

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For me, missing two weeks with my new Bhutanese friends leaves a hole in my schedule and a bit of an ache in my heart. But I'm a volunteer, so it doesn't leave a gap in my finances.

Nonetheless, this disruption in the status quo of the ESOL class has rattled me a bit. I had come to depend on the Basic Life Skills class to be there for me every Monday and Wednesday. Walking down those basement steps and submerging myself in the curried scent of my Bhutanese friends, hearing their welcoming cries of good morning teetser, seeing their sweet, smiling faces: these small yet enormous things had buoyed my spirit innumerable times over the last six months, kept me going when I wanted very badly to just hide from my own life. For the two weeks off, I constantly felt as though I'd forgotten to do something.

8. Back to Basics

On the first Monday after our two-week break, only two students came to class: Prem, a bowl-legged Karen man from Burma, and Riad, a tiny, elderly woman from Jordan.

Susan learned from one of the interns that this Monday was a Nepali holiday, so the

Bhutanese were all at home celebrating.

On Wednesday, about a dozen of our regular students showed up. Chitrangada,

Arya, Jordan, Amita, and Mahasweta all greeted me enthusiastically, with good morning teetser and how are you today? But the group as a whole was subdued. There was very little extraneous conversation, and several of the older women refused to write in their notebooks. Deepta said she didn't have her glasses; Anaswya said she had a headache.

Poudel Nishita simply said no when I encouraged her to practice writing. Even during the exercise break, which usually devolved into silliness and laughter, their faces remained

142 sober, their voices hushed. They all looked tired; perhaps they were hungover from the celebrations. But it seemed our familiar connection had been lost.

A week later, we had two dozen of our old regulars back, with a surprising new addition. A tiny woman with worried eyes and no teeth sat alone in her enormous blue scarf at the middle table, far away from the other ten or so students who had arrived early.

As I went around greeting everyone, this little woman put out her hand for me to shake, but couldn't quite understand that I was asking her name. After I had asked her twice,

Bibek turned around from the front table and caught my eye.

Bibek grunts more than talks, as his son Yadu did, so I couldn't understand what he meant right away; he gestured to his notebook and to the toothless woman, then touched his own chest, all while maintaining meaningful eye contact with me. When he started gesturing only to the woman and to himself, I got it.

"Oh, is this your wife, Bibek?" I asked. He smiled with relief and nodded.

Bhudhav made his glissando laughing sound, as if he, too, was relieved to have solved the mystery of who this new student was. I pointed to Bibek and the toothless woman simultaneously with my index fingers, then brought my fingers together in front of me.

"So you two are together, yes?"

Bibek smiled more broadly and nodded very happily at me. His wife smiled, too, showing me her gums and putting her hand out for me to shake again. I do not know why they didn't sit together.

When Maria, the intern, came down later to take a student out for placement testing, I introduced her to the woman as Bibek's wife. The intern looked back at me with

143 her eyebrows arched and mouthed the mother of those little boys? I nodded. Susan told us her name was Pabithra.

The resemblance between her and her sons was startling: big, dark brown eyes; delicate nose and chin; high, angled cheekbones; tiniest, bird-like hands. I wanted to ask

Pabithra how Yadu and Ashtavakra were doing now. I wanted to tell her how much I had enjoyed throwing paper airplanes with Ashtavakra, how much Yadu's innocence and affection had meant to me over the summer. But it became clear within the first few minutes of class that she had the same learning deficit as her husband and elder son. I could do nothing but repeat questions slowly to her and help her mimic the sound of the answers.

After class, Susan and I talked about the repetition we'd need to do to gain back the progress two weeks of break had eroded in our students' collective learning. Susan looked tired already.

"The survival skills are paramount," Susan said. "How to say their names and addresses, the date they came to the US. These are things they'll need in an emergency.

We've just got to keep up the repetition. That repetition is really important."

"Okay, well," I said, "I'll see you Wednesday."

"Yeah," she replied with a sigh; "see you Wednesday."

9. Holidays

On our last day of class for 2013, Susan and I put together a small Christmas celebration for our Life Skills students. The first hour of class went as usual, speaking and listening, reading and writing. Then after the break, Malati and I passed out gingerbread cookies I

144 had baked and fruit punch Susan had brought, along with poinsettia-printed paper plates and napkins.

"December twenty-fifth," Susan said, writing her words on the white board, "is a

Christian holiday celebrating the birth of this man, Jesus Christ. It's a very important day for Christians."

Many of the students dutifully wrote these words in their notebooks. Then Susan read two children's books to the class, showing them the pictures as she went. The first was about different animals and how they watch over their babies, then how they watched over Mary and baby Jesus in the stable. Bhudhav seemed to enjoy identifying the different animals, but the nativity story passed over most of the students' heads. The second story was very strange and complex, about a boy living at the North Pole who adopts a polar bear. The boy and the bear go to stay with a girl in a hut, then monsters come and invade the hut while everyone is sleeping, eating all the holiday food the girl had prepared. The polar bear wakes up and scares the monsters away in time to salvage enough food for the boy and girl and bear to have a nice holiday dinner. I could barely follow it; I'm sure it made little sense to our students. Indira asked me several times what a monster was and if they only come at night. At least I didn't have to explain a virgin birth.

* * *

As I left the Institute for the last time in 2013 and pulled into the traffic of Tallmadge

Avenue, a light snow was blowing around in an arctic wind. Temperatures had not crested the freezing mark in several days and wouldn't for at least a few more. I turned my car heater up full blast and shivered.

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A few blocks from the Institute, just past a major intersection, I spied three of my students walking home on the sidewalk. Mahasweta, her husband Karma, and Saradha were hunched against the cold, none of them properly dressed for it. Saradha wore a pink terrycloth bathrobe instead of a coat; Mahasweta had topped her purple sweatshirt with a thin green scarf; Karma had the hood of a thin black windbreaker up and tied tightly beneath his chin. I was cold in my down-filled parka and snow boots. Before today's class, I had asked Mahasweta how far she had to walk to class.

"One hour half," she had said.

"An hour and a half?!" I must have looked truly shocked because she modified her answer.

"No! Half," she said, running her right index finger along the back of her left hand, as if she were cutting it in half. So they had a half hour's walk home in this icy, windy snow.

I slipped my car around a tow truck and made a quick right turn into a driveway just ahead of the trio of Bhutanese pedestrians. I threw the vehicle in park and got out.

"Hi!" I said. "You guys want a ride home?"

Without hesitation, they all piled into the back seat of my little sedan. I got back into the driver's seat and adjusted the blowers so more of the heat would go directly to the back seat.

"It's so cold," I said, looking over my shoulder and smiling. "Where do you live?"

They all three looked a little blank but kept smiling at me. I realized I hadn't used the same phrasing we did in class.

"What is your address?"

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"Garfield," Mahasweta said.

"Okay; Garfield Street. You'll have to tell me where to turn; okay?"

Mahasweta, sitting in the middle, nodded solemnly.

I backed out of the driveway and onto Tallmadge Avenue, then proceeded slowly in the same direction they had been walking. At every cross street, I looked into the rear- view mirror and asked, "Turn here?"

"No," Mahasweta answered three or four times in a row, looking very serious and pointing forward with her right hand.

About a quarter of a mile from the Institute, just before the street ran down a steep hill, Mahasweta called out "Right turn!" I followed her direction. At the first stop sign:

"Left!" At the next intersection: "Right!"

"Good job, Mahasweta," I said, meaning it was good that she knew right and left.

It must have been difficult to navigate like this; I imagined they didn't get to ride in cars very often. Then I remembered that Mahasweta and Karma had come to the US and been placed in North Hill three or four years ago. They probably knew this entire neighborhood much better than I did.

A block or two down Garfield, Mahasweta indicated I should stop at a tidy, one- and-a-half story bungalow, clad in white vinyl siding. I pulled into the driveway, and my passengers started climbing out of the back seat, thank yous on their smiling lips. I got out, too.

Before I could say anything, Saradha put her arms around my waist and hugged me tightly. Her head came up no higher than my armpits. I leaned down and hugged her back.

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"Thank you," she said once we separated.

"You're welcome," I said, clasping my hands in front of me and bowing slightly.

"Namaste."

Mahasweta and Karma thanked me also, and returned my Namaste. Mahasweta hugged me, but Karma hung back, looking unsure of what to do.

"Can I hug you, too, Karma?" I asked, hoping I wasn't breaking any cultural taboos about men hugging women who were not their wives.

He smiled sheepishly and came forward. I was shocked by how thin his body felt.

"We see you again January..." Mahasweta began to say, then petered out.

"Yes," I said. "I will see you on January thirteenth. That's when our class begins again. I will miss you!"

Saradha and Mahasweta smiled at each other, then at me.

"Yes," Mahasweta said. "Miss you. Namaste."

* * *

I don't know if I'll eventually get a certificate to teach English for Speakers of Other

Languages, but I know I'll keep volunteering with Susan and her class, at least for one more semester. I've come to know and care about these people I see for four hours a week much more than I had expected to. I worry about their safety and their future; I wonder about their past. Last week, when I asked Riad, the elderly woman from Jordan, the standard question where are you from, she broke down in tears. I know she misses her two grown children who are still in Jordan, and probably wonders if she will ever see them again. All I could do was rub her arm and say I was sorry. But at least I could do

148 that much. A little human kindness can go a long way when you're far from everything you've known all your life.

So I'll show up for class in January and continue learning some basic life skills from my students. And I'll keep showing up until there's nothing left to learn from them.

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CHAPTER XIII

LUCKY

The sun was already hot at a little after 8:30 am on a Tuesday in September when

Lorenzo6 walked from his hotel to the American Consulate office in Rome. It was an easy walk through the wide, tree-lined streets of central Rome, past block-long white-washed buildings offering long shadows of relief from the relentless sun. Lorenzo loves Rome, the capital of his homeland, despite its reputation among some American tourists as a dirty, overcrowded, overwhelming place. This reputation is ridiculous to Lorenzo, who finds Rome cleaner and more welcoming than Washington, DC, with its rats and litter and swampy humidity. Lorenzo was happy to be in the Eternal City, even as he was nervous about his appointment this sunny Tuesday.

A little more than halfway through his vacation, Lorenzo had to keep an appointment he had set up some months earlier with the American Consulate to get his passport stamped so he could return to the U.S. and his job in the Midwest. He'd been working at this same job for almost two years now. It was thanks to this employer that he was able to transition from his J-1 student visa, leftover from his PhD studies at the

University of Akron, to an H-1b worker visa. His visa status had been approved by

USCIS about a month earlier. If he hadn't wanted to go back to Italy for this vacation, to see his parents and his sister and his little niece--already so much bigger than in the

6 Not his real name. 150 photos he kept on his shelf at home!--if he hadn't wanted to see his family again after so long, he could have just continued working and living in the Midwest without any further bureaucratic headaches. But no, he had wanted to come home, so he had to make this walk down Via Sallustiana, across Via Friuli, and over to Via Vittorio Veneto in the hot morning sun to the Palazzo Margherita, an imposing, three-story construction in yellow- painted stone that once housed a prince, then a queen, and now the U.S. Embassy.

* * *

A green card isn't green. It does have color-shifting ink that goes from green to gold if you tilt it in direct light. But the card itself is white plastic and looks a lot like a driver's license or state ID card. The color-shifting ink is a security measure, designed to make illegal copies of the card more difficult, just like the shiny holographic image stamped near the card-holder's photo, or the embedded radio frequency identification (RFID) technology lasered into it.

The technical name for it is a Permanent Resident Card, but the colloquial "green card" remains much more common. This colorful term originated in something that really was green, much the way pink slips were once pink and the phrase "yellow journalism" arose from the use of yellow ink in a newspaper cartoon.

In 1940, President Roosevelt signed into law the Alien Registration Act, which required for the first time that all alien residents in the US register their status at a local post office. This was largely a reaction to the growing unrest in Europe at the time, as well as perceived threats to American security at home. The Act allowed the US government to prosecute traitorous activities, like plotting to overthrow the government, but did not distinguish between legal and illegal aliens. Immigration overall slowed to a

151 trickle during World War II. Once the war ended, alien registration was moved from post offices to Ports of Entry, where the Immigration and Naturalization Service issued different kinds of receipts that indicated the different statuses of permanent and temporary residents. Lawful permanent residents received a green receipt. Hence the term green card. And just as the look of a driver's license or state ID card has evolved with the technology over past decades, so has the appearance of a Permanent Resident card.

* * *

Lorenzo's appointment was to speak with a consulate, verify his documents and visa status, and get an official stamp on his Italian passport so he'd be allowed to re-enter the

US at the end of his vacation. Just a bureaucratic matter, a small deviation from sightseeing, a minor inconvenience. But what if something went wrong? His visa had already been approved by USCIS, yes, but what if the consulate denied it? What if there was a problem with Lorenzo's documents? Anything could happen. He had already waited a long time: three months just to get his student visa approved, then two years of studying at the University of Akron, then the month-long application process for the work visa. He was lucky to be snapped up by a good employer six months before graduating, so they were taking care of the immigration paperwork and fees, and he didn't have to wait out a long vetting process. But then there was that lottery fiasco in April. That was the really frustrating part.

Because there had been so many applications this year for skilled-worker visas--

120,000 applicants vying for an allowed total of only 65,000 visas of this type--USCIS had decided to choose applicants differently. Rather than approve and process applicants on a first-come, first-served basis, the solution to the overflow was to select applicants

152 randomly, from computer-generated numbers. A lottery. No matter how meticulous an application was or how conscientiously filed, a random drawing would determine which chemists and engineers and scientists would get to stay at their jobs in America, and which would have to pack up and go back to their home countries. USCIS was deciding the course of people's lives the same way we might decide which household chore a child must do on a Saturday morning.

"You are putting the life of a person in a lottery? It's crazy," Lorenzo said.

Luckily, Lorenzo's number had been chosen, so he was one of the "winners" who got to continue living and working in the U.S. But he still didn't have a hard-copy visa, even though the lottery drawing had been completed five months earlier. The information was all digital anyway; all the consulate would have to do is type a few details about

Lorenzo into her computer and she would be able to see that. Right? This was all just a formality. So why was Lorenzo nervous? Why did worst-case scenarios keep playing through his mind? Months and years of uncertainty had taken their toll, had eroded his confidence in the system. The lottery had felt like an insult, piled on top of the frustration and helplessness that marks the long, slow progression through an immigration system designed to remain long and slow. If it hadn't been for his employer navigating the tedious mountain of paperwork involved, Lorenzo might have returned to Italy long ago.

He knew he was lucky in more than just the lottery.

What would happen if Lorenzo had to leave the US and return to Italy? It wouldn't be the end of his life, that's for sure. Yes, Italy's economy is struggling, as are many others in the European Union, but Lorenzo is highly educated and comes from a family that is comfortable, if not well-off. Perhaps he would not be able to find a job that

153 pays as well as the one he has in America, and perhaps he could never buy a house despite the soft Italian real estate market right now because of banks that are skittish about the current economic climate. But he would certainly manage to survive. After all, he has status, education, and luck on his side.

* * *

A green card--permanent resident status--is the penultimate step in the immigration process. Getting one can take a decade or more, depending on how an immigrant enters the country, whether he is sponsored by a relative or employer, how many times he returns to his home country during the process, how well (or ill) he can afford to pay the filing fees and an attorney to help navigate the baroque bureaucratic process. Just the filing fees--not including lawyer fees or the medical examination fee--for one individual to obtain a green card and apply for citizenship is $1,070. The whole process, from temporary visa to final citizenship, can run into the tens of thousands of dollars when lawyer fees are figured in, depending on where and how a person first enters the country.

A green card means a veritable green light for citizenship. For many people, it is the culmination of a life-long dream. For Lorenzo, it means something else.

* * *

At the Embassy, Lorenzo had to wait outside with a small crowd of others in the rising

Roman heat. Once his name was called, he surrendered his cell phone to the security guards and passed through the metal detectors in an orderly fashion. He proceeded to the first window, where his documents were double-checked. Passport, letter verifying employment, proof of residency: check, check, check. Then he waited his turn to speak with the Consulate. The woman in line in front of him was from Africa and struggled

154 with very poor Italian fluency. The Consulate switched to French with almost no hesitation. Lorenzo was impressed that this government employee spoke English, Italian, and French; he wondered if being a polyglot was required for all embassy employees.

His own time with the consulate went quickly. She asked his reason for needing the stamp on his passport, what company he worked for, and what his specific job was.

"When I told her I am a chemist," Lorenzo said, "she said 'good for you,' and granted my status. She was a very nice lady."

His total time at the embassy was under two hours.

"When you're already working, it's very frustrating," Lorenzo said. "I just want to keep working, to keep doing what I have been doing. The uncertainty is very frustrating.

If I don't get the H-1b, I have to go back to Italy. And I already have a job! It's not like I want to have a visa so I can find a job. And what about the other sixty thousand people who weren't chosen in the lottery? You just kick those people out? I think the process is cuckoo."

* * *

Lorenzo's situation is certainly not uncommon. 65,000 H-1b visas are issued every year, and every one of them goes to a worker with some version of Lorenzo's story. Thousands upon thousands of other highly educated, highly qualified applicants are denied every year, as well. They return to their countries of origin to work, or to wait until they can apply again. Those who run out of patience or money or time simply give up. Some simply stay in the US illegally on expired visas, playing their own game of chance against the odds of being caught by the already overstretched Immigration and Customs

Enforcement agency.

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For every H-1b visa denied, that means one fewer of the “best and brightest" of the world living and working in America, paying American taxes, contributing to

American intellectual capital. As for those who say immigrants are taking jobs away from willing and able Americans who are already suffering under crushing unemployment and a struggling economy, Lorenzo becomes even more frustrated.

"The company is just taking care of its own business by applying for my visa," he said. "It is not a favor they are doing to me."

Lorenzo doesn't see his status in the U.S. as a stroke of good fortune, but as a product of his hard work and planning. And while that is true, he is also lucky enough to have come this far on the road to citizenship without any major set-backs. His is a best- case scenario in the immigration picture. Hard work and dedication beget good luck, yes, but there is no substitute for good luck in a system fraught with potential disaster. Perhaps the labyrinthine rules and regulations of the USCIS were developed to deal with an intrinsically complex and varied process--no two immigrants have identical situations, and people's lives are difficult to distill into neat, bureaucratic compartments. And there is no shortage of nefarious sorts who constantly look for ways to subvert the rules and exploit loopholes for their own dark purposes.

Still, Lorenzo sees it as deliberately obtuse, at least when it comes to dealing with the highly-skilled workers, like himself, that America should be happy to welcome into its economy.

"Why does Congress limit this type of visa?" he said. "Why are so few Americans working in the hard sciences? When I look around the chem labs at the university, less than ten percent of the chemistry students are Americans. All the rest are foreigners like

156 me. American companies want the highest skilled workers in their jobs, but they have to pay more taxes for their immigrant workers. Why do they do this? Why should they not have the best workers? The whole system is cuckoo."

Lorenzo is one of the lucky ones for now. He has six years on this visa to live and work in the U.S. And his employer will begin the paperwork toward a green card for him as soon as possible. He knows this process is so much harder for a lot of people who don't have corporate lawyers on their side. But his frustration with bureaucracy is understandable.

"When you grant a visa, you grant an opportunity," he said. "I understand that maybe you want to be sure not to grant visas to people who are up to no good. But when you have all these documents to prove the person is sane and working and doing it the right way, you should be a little flexible. Being an American citizen is not my dream; it is just a way to deal with the bureaucracy more easily."

We like to think we are in control of certain aspects of our lives. We like to think we get a say in where we live, where we work, what we choose to make of our lives. But so much in our lives is up to chance. It's easy to reduce the misfortunes of others to poor planning, poor organization, or lack of foresight. It's also easy to attribute our own successes to hard work, initiative, or skill. But the truth is often so much more complicated, vulnerable as we are to larger forces governing our lives. What if I hadn't been born in the US? The only thing that makes me an American citizen is the fluke that I was born here. For this serendipity, I count myself as one of the lucky ones in the lottery of life.

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CHAPTER XIV

BODY OF SIN

"Hey, hey! Ho, ho! My uterus is not yours!"

I shout these words as I walk down Ontario Street beside Bella Sin on one of the hottest days Cleveland has seen this July. Bella, the organizer of today’s protest rally, has encased her curves in a long-sleeved t-shirt and long jeans tucked into black boots, while my sweaty appendages peek out of loose-fitting capris, a sleeveless blouse, and flip-flops.

I'm also sporting very dark sunglasses and a straw hat against the raging mid-afternoon sun, whereas Bella's hot-pink ponytail is bare to the sky, and her thick black eyeliner and deep red lipstick seem unperturbed by the egg-frying temperatures. She is almost a foot shorter than me, and I'm surprised at the thick roll of belly fat that brazenly bulges over the waist of her jeans. Many of the body-image problems I struggled with as a teenager have stayed with me all these years, and I am always impressed by women who appear unashamed of their less-than-slender silhouettes. Bella walks like a dancer, though: light on her feet and fluid through her wide hips. The small crowd of mostly women that marches with us also wears varying levels of weather-appropriate garb, from gauzy sundresses and picture hats, to skinny jeans and Chuck Ts. Some of us hand out fliers detailing HB 59, the anti-woman legislation Governor Kasich signed into law in June that is the object of our outrage today.

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One young man in a black t-shirt and slim Levis has duct tape over his mouth with the phrase I don't speak for women written on it in purple marker. He keeps it on for the entire rally.

Bella tells me a compressed version of her journey to the North Coast while we traverse the ten or so blocks between City Hall, where our protest rally gathered, and

Public Square, where we will reconnoiter for better visibility. Along the way, our conversation is punctuated with group chants of this is what democracy looks like! and call-and-response drills of what do we want? Rights! When do we want them? Now!

People we pass seem startled by us as our voices echo up through the glass and steel canyon of office buildings above us.

"I came here because of a man," Bella says, "but a man couldn't keep me in

Akron. I'm a gypsy."

Bella first came to the U.S. from Mexico with her mother as a teenager in the

1990s. They lived in Colorado, where she found two of her first loves, one that would last and one that wouldn't: dance and a man. That man led her to Akron, where she lived for a while before moving to Cleveland.

"I was in love when I came here, but I was silenced," she says. "I was dating an oppressor, but I didn't know it. The first time he hit me, my family said, 'what did you do to deserve this?' But I spoke out. I shared my story on Facebook. Being a sexual figure and an immigrant makes me a minority in many ways. I'm a woman with no country right now."

Bella is a burlesque performer, founder of a troupe called La Femme Mystique now located in Cleveland, and an advocate for the LGBT community. She also co-

159 produces the Ohio Burlesque Festival, now in its third year, which is a two-day showcase of sensual performers of every persuasion, along with information about the history of burlesque and vaudeville in America, and classes for aspiring young professionals on everything from feather boa technique to how and why to form your own corporation.

In her photos on Ohio Burlesque's website, Bella poses enticingly in tight corsets or sumptuously beaded bikinis that she sewed herself, often covering parts of her ample semi-nude body with feathered fans. She is voluptuous and expressive in attitudes from seductive to playful, often gazing directly into the camera with a frank challenge in her eyes. Her confidence is eminently sexy. It is easy to imagine Bella on stage, shimmying and swaying to the rhythmic pulse of music.

The festival includes drag performers, mostly because of the long shared history of burlesque and cross-dressing. And each year, the festival endorses a charity, making it a source of support for the community and not just a spectacle or performance competition. This year's Charity of the Year is Equality Ohio, something very dear to

Bella's heart.

"I like to raise awareness through performance," Bella says between chants of

Shame on Kasich! "People are really afraid of difference. You know, gay marriage is legal in Mexico. I had always heard about how America is the 'Land of the Free,' and the 'Land of Free Speech.' But when I came here, I was always silenced. I was abused, and they told me not to talk about it. I wanted to dance and they told me not to. I have friends who are gay and transgender, and they tell me not to speak out about it. Well, I won't be silent!

That's why I volunteer. Advocacy, leadership, and charity. Those are my only voice right now."

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Bella was chosen as one of Cleveland Magazine's Most Interesting People in

2011. In her interview for that award, she assures prospective audiences that burlesque is not sleazy, but appropriate for "everyone from girlfriends to grammas."

"Burlesque is about punch lines and little reveals," she says. "The most important part is enthusiasm, so I don't hold back. I will do everything and anything to get a laugh."

Bella has been a Legal Permanent Resident, with a green card, for much longer than the five years required to apply for citizenship. The only thing keeping her from that application now is money. She says it will take about another year for her to save up the

$845 filing fees, plus lawyer's fees, she will need for all the paperwork involved in the final steps of the naturalization process. But she will persevere, as she always does. And what will she do once she is a citizen?

"Vote! I will vote so hard," she laughs and wipes beads of sweat from her upper lip. "And go back home to visit. And maybe have a party."

We have reached Public Square, and our motley crew of fifty or so spreads out, most of us seeking the shade that cools the steps in front of the Huntington Bank building. Many of our small legion have brought homemade signs of poster board bearing pithy slogans: Government So Small It Fits In My Vagina; If Abortion Is Murder, Then

Blowjobs Are Cannibalism; May the Fetus You Save Be Gay.

A policeman comes out of the bank building to tell us that if we go inside, we cannot display any of our signs because the building is private property. That's the closest brush we have with any kind of authority today. No newspaper reporters, no cameras, nothing. In fact, very few people are out at all on this, the hottest day so far, in the hottest week so far in July 2013. Still, it feels like a success, if only a small one.

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This is the first rally Bella has ever organized, indeed the first rally she has ever attended, and she wasn't even sure anyone would show up. I've only been to a few political rallies myself, and what this one lacks in volume seems compensated by enthusiasm. I find it particularly inspiring that Bella is concerned about protecting my rights to privacy, healthcare, and equality―rights she doesn't even have access to yet as a non-citizen. She is willing to stand up and speak out for the rights of others, even before she can exercise those rights for herself, because she understands how important having a voice in the government is.

Hers has been silenced for too long

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CHAPTER XV

ALLEGIANCE

Shortly before registration begins for the Oath of Allegiance Ceremony on this Friday late in June, the high-ceilinged atrium of the public library begins to fill with new citizens and their families, awash with both early morning sunshine and excitement. Flashes go off every few minutes, some from camera phones in the hands of leggy teens in towering heels, others from 35-millimeter jobs slung around the necks of proud husbands or fathers in pressed shirts and slacks. Everyone looks happy but a little nervous, with fresh- scrubbed faces and freshly-combed hair. I sense the same electricity I felt at my college graduation ceremony a couple of years ago: the heady, exhausted elation of accomplishing something you've worked and waited a long time for.

Under the most ideal circumstances, the journey to citizenship takes a decade. It is no small thing to leave your native country for a new one, to make a new life somewhere with a new language and landscape. The weight of collective courage in the atrium is too much for a moment, and I seek sanctuary in a small room off to the side.

Even here, though, the bustle is inescapable. Volunteers and library staff are setting up a table for coffee urns and two large sheet cakes decorated with tiny American flags and red, white, and blue icing. Rebecca Jenkins from the International Institute rushes in to tell Evis Moss, one of the immigrants to take the oath today, that the Knights of Columbus have agreed to let her lead the Pledge of Allegiance during the ceremony. A library staffer, a sturdy woman in jeans with a noisy ring of keys on her a belt, runs in to

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fetch Rebecca, saying one of the K of C guys is following her around "like a puppy" and complaining about the library's restriction against them carrying their swords.

This bit about the Knights of Columbus and their swords is driving Rebecca—a short, pleasant woman in her mid-fifties with brown hair and glasses—almost to distraction. As the Institute's Citizenship Coordinator, she has organized this event for seven or eight years now, always including a civic organization, like the girl or boy scouts. Not all of the new citizens here today are clients of the Institute; they have been referred to this location by the Federal District Court of Cleveland, which permits this special ceremony so long as it is overseen by both a Federal District Judge and an Officer of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). The Institute adds a little more fun and flair to their ceremony than the District Court does in Cleveland, where a very staid and civil oath ceremony is conducted twice a month all year long.

"This year, I just ran out of time and energy," Rebecca says. "So when the Knights asked if they could do it, I just said fine. I wasn't raised Catholic. I don't understand any of this stuff."

The problem is that the library has a zero-tolerance policy about weapons, and the

Knights of Columbus usually include ceremonial swords as part of their caped costumes.

The library has told them they may not wear those swords today, and even though this information was given them in advance, one or two of the elderly men making up the 4th

Degree Monsignor Joseph O'Keefe Assembly have decided to take umbrage at the stipulation.

I saw these guys in the parking garage when I arrived. I had been unsure of exactly where to go until I spotted four balding elderly men in tuxedos, one bent nearly

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parallel to the ground, carrying garment bags and purple hats lined with white fur as they hurried toward the library entrance. Such a group could only be going to a citizenship- swearing-in ceremony this early on a Friday in downtown Akron, I thought, and hastened to follow them. I did grow up Catholic and therefore understand how important tradition is to men who find solace from a changing world in the strict consistency of the Catholic

Church and its fraternal organizations. I do not envy Rebecca’s task in dealing with these men.

Rebecca sighs and grins at me, then goes off to deal with the situation in her usual calm, capable, good-natured way.

* * *

Evis Moss is of average height, but is almost as drop-dead beautiful as that much more famous Colombian, Sofia Vergara, with shoulder length wavy hair and high cheekbones.

She is dressed in a pink striped blouse, black pants, high-heeled black boots, and absolutely no jewelry. Just a little bit of glittery eye shadow accentuates her deep-set brown eyes.

"My first point to be a citizen is my daughter," Evis says in a languid accent that strips all consonants of their hard edges. "I want to be on the same level as her."

Evis's daughter was born here, last year, and so is a natural citizen of the U.S.

Evis came here from Colombia in 2007, as the fiancée of an American man. Her story is not as uncomplicated as many might imagine, though. She did not simply marry this man and become a citizen. And she did not marry him in order to become a citizen, contrary to a very popular stereotype that still haunts her.

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"In my interview it was very difficult," she says, "because they kept asking me,

'why did you marry him? Do you marry him to come here?' No! They don't understand that he treat me not good, that he following me after a while, that in the car he not trust me and I not know who is behind me all the time."

It hadn't always been like that. Evis met the man she would marry at a mutual friend's wedding in Colombia. She was thirty-three at the time, had studied journalism and communications in college, and was living on her own. They danced at the party, got to know each other, and fell in love. Not long after, he wanted to start the paperwork to bring her to the US, as his fiancée. She still manages to sound incredulous about it.

"I just said, 'okay, I guess so,' and we did the papers and I came."

Evis and her American husband divorced after just a couple of years of marriage, mostly because he could not allow her to have any kind of independence from him. And independence was something she was used to having. She had assumed that moving to

America and marrying an American man would only multiply her freedom and autonomy. But this particular man wanted to control her every waking moment.

"His family was very friendly, very helpful," she says. "I thought of them as my own family. But I didn't know anybody else, and it was hard for me. I was really hurting then, and they stop helping me."

To make matters worse, while Evis and her husband were divorcing, a manager at the nursing home where Evis worked as a physical therapy aid thought it was cute to call her "the green card girl." Not just behind her back, but to her face, as well. Evis asked her to stop, and even went to the manager's boss to try and stop the discriminatory practice.

The manager just said she was "kidding" and that Evis should "lighten up."

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"She kept saying I was from Mexico, too," Evis says. "I think maybe she was not too smart. Does she know where is Colombia?"

These personal insults and injuries made it difficult for Evis to focus on studying for the civics portion of the citizenship exam and rattled her composure during her interview with USCIS officers. Those applying for citizenship as fiancés of US citizens have shorter residency requirements as Permanent Residents than do other applicants, three years to their five. When the applicant's status changes, so does the requirement, the paperwork load, and the wait time. And, of course, the attitude of the interviewing officers at USCIS, whose job it is to identify abusers of the system. Their line of questioning returned again and again to her reasons for marrying an American, her reasons for divorcing him; Evis felt pressed her to admit to nefarious aims she did not have.

"They did not understand," she says. "I did not know much about America before

I met him; I was not planning to come to America. It was his idea. But now I am here and

I love it. I work hard and I love it. I want to be a citizen for voting, for political parties. I like that a lot. And maybe a job with the government. I can speak English and Spanish, and many others here cannot do that. But you need to be citizen to work for government.

So maybe I will do that now."

Evis's daughter is in Colombia with Evis's mother right now; she will go back for a visit and to retrieve her in November. After that, she's not sure where the road will lead her.

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"My best friend lives in Charlotte [North Carolina]. Maybe I will move there. I have no family or friends here. But I do like the weather! It can be 9:00 here and it is still daylight! In Colombia, it is dark at 6:00. Always. Even in the summer. So I like that."

Well, it's good to know Akron's got something over Columbia. As for the greater

Hispanic community here in Akron, Evis is noncommittal.

"There is not much from my country here," she says. "At first, I just met my husband's family, like the first year, then just at my job, and only whites, Americans really. Then, after the second year, when the [HIPAA] rules change, I lose that job and went to a restaurant. I met a cook there who spoke Spanish, I think maybe he was

Mexican. He said they needed someone and they hired me. There I met lots of people from Honduras and Mexico, but not from Colombia. I think it's a big group here, but lots of people without papers. It's very sad to do it that way."

One of those people she met from Honduras ended up becoming the father of her daughter. And he didn't do much to change her general opinion of men. He lied to her about being an undocumented worker, lied to her about some translation help she did for a family member, and almost caused her some problems for her own immigration status.

In the end, she had to deny ever knowing him to the USCIS. And now she has to live with the fact that her daughter will never be able to know who her father is. Perhaps having natural citizenship status will ease that burden for the little girl.

* * *

Outside the light wood-paneled entrance to the library auditorium, two folding tables have been set up in an L shape for registration of today's brand-new citizens. The table closest to the entrance holds several stacks of white, 8.5 x 11 envelopes with

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International Institute printed in blue on the front, along with stacks of tiny black and white booklets containing the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution, the front emblazoned with that iconic picture of men in wigs doing the signing, and a stack of programs for the ceremony.

The programs feature a print of a waving flag, of course, and the title Celebrating

Freedom, along with a list of what we can expect to happen over the next hour or so.

Elaine Woloshyn, Executive Director of the International Institute, the sponsor of this event, will speak; the Knights of Columbus, sans swords, will bring in a little pomp and pageantry with their fuzzy hats and sumptuous capes; the Keyed Up Quartet, a

Barbershop Harmony Society, will entertain us with patriotic tunes; and both the

Honorable Judge Adams and Dana Clemons of the US Citizenship and Immigration

Services, Cleveland Office, will speak.

Dana is busy very early on, at the second of those tables outside the auditorium.

He has a briefcase open in front of him and beside it: a bundle of small American flags, a basket full of American flag bumper stickers, a stack of CDs, a stack of booklets entitled

The Citizen's Almanac, and another stack of those booklets containing the Constitution and Declaration of Independence. Dana sports a tan suit, blue striped tie, and expensive- looking, cap-toe black shoes. He is about my height, which is short for a man, burly and freckled, with aggressively thinning blond hair. He is also sweating profusely. Beads of sweat stand out on his upper lip and wide forehead. The temperature in the atrium has been rising steadily with the gathering crowd, and Dana is working hard to keep up with the stream of new citizens relentlessly coming at him.

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One of two Caucasian women at the first table calls each new citizen's name from a list, delicately butchering each non-Western name with inimitable Midwestern flair.

Liliana Olteanu becomes Lilly-anna Ole-tee Anne-you. Birungi Chantale Kiza becomes

Bee-roon-gee Shantallee Kee-zay. And so on. After discerning his or her name from the garbled interpretation, each new citizen steps forward to receive one of the white

International Institute envelopes, verify the photo on the certificate that will be bestowed in the upcoming ceremony, and continue on to Dana.

As each new citizen approaches him and surrenders a green card, Dana holds the small plastic rectangle up and carefully compares the photo on it to the person standing before him. Then he finds the name on a list on a sheet of paper that corresponds to that green card, places the tip of a red pen to the left of it, and draws the tip firmly to the right, leaving a crisp, horizontal red line through the name. The green card goes on top of a growing stack, neatly lined up in the bottom right-hand corner of his brief case. Once the green card has been dispensed with, Dana returns his attention to the person before him, who inevitably has a form N-400, the Oath Ceremony Notice Form, out and ready for his inspection.

This form tells USCIS of any changes that have occurred between the immigrant's interview and today's ceremony. Address changes, work status updates, even a parking ticket or other criminal infraction must be noted on this form. Most of the people today note only small changes in address, though one man does confess to a minor traffic violation. Any major, substantive criminal offense in the period between an immigrant's interview and oath ceremony could threaten the conference of citizenship. And any future discovery that an immigrant misrepresented or lied about something materially

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substantive on these forms could revoke his or her citizenship, as was the case with John

Demjanjuk, Sr.,7 in Cleveland a few years ago. Despite the festive atmosphere in the atrium, this is serious business, and Dana Clemons takes his job very seriously.

This is only the second year that Dana has made the trek down from the

Cleveland office to attend this special ceremony in Akron, though he's been with USCIS for fifteen years. It is clear that he takes his responsibility to heart. He is working assiduously; the sweat on his lip and brow are not just products of the temperature in the atrium.

"This is a very fast-paced, exciting job," Dana says. "The laws are always changing, and I'm always meeting people from different countries. In fact, I'm still learning new countries, after fifteen years. It's never boring."

Dana has no personal opinion on the recent legislation on immigration reform, except that "it's just a challenge to keep up" with the changes. He believes immigrants bring a flow of knowledge and skills to America that add "new blood" to our country and keep us diverse.

7 John Demjanjuk, Sr., was of Ukrainian origin and lived quietly for decades as a mechanic at a Ford plant in Cleveland, Ohio after becoming a U.S. citizen in 1958. In August of 1977, his citizenship was revoked because he had lied about his involvement with Nazis during World War II on his immigration application. He was extradited to the USSR after he admitted to both his role in Nazi activities and his lie to US Immigration and Naturalization Services. He stood trial for war crimes in Israel and was found guilty of all charges in 1988. The Israeli Supreme Court overturned his conviction in 1993, basing their decision in part on the unreliability of eyewitnesses in the case, but also on the fact that the US Office of Special Investigations had failed to disclose exculpatory evidence to the court. Consequently, Demjanjuk's denaturalization petition was dismissed, effectively restoring his citizenship. In 2001, Demjanjuk was charged with new allegations of Nazi involvement. His US citizenship was revoked once more in 2004, and the US Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal. Demjanjuk was deported again, to Germany this time, where his trial began in November of 2009. He was convicted as an accessory to the murder of 27,900 Jews on May 12, 2011, and sentenced to five years in prison. The judge released 91-year-old Demjanjuk from custody pending his appeal, noting Demjanjuk had already served two years in German prison during this trial, as well as eight years in Israeli prison on related charges that had been overturned. Demjanjuk died on March 3, 2012, at a home for the elderly in Germany. Because he died before his appeal could be heard, his conviction was annulled under German law, making him a free and legally innocent man at the time of his death. 171

What Dana does most impressively today is pronounce the names of each and every new citizen as they come to the stage to receive their official certificates of citizenship and have a photo op with Judge Adams. Perhaps this is because he studied history and politics in college, or perhaps this is because he claims to have met someone from virtually every country on the planet—no exaggeration. His pronunciations are flawless. He does not stumble on the Kenyan, Moses Mbogo Ngunjiri; nor on the Indian,

Murty Somayajula Naga Ve Ayyala; not even on the Zimbabwean, Francina Ndaiziveyi

Chinodakufa. He makes each name flow from his tongue as if he has known each individual and called him or her by name for years. The podium from which Dana speaks these names stands directly next to the stairs by which the line of new citizens accesses the stage, so each one passes within arm's reach of Dana on his or her way to meet the judge. Many of them nod to Dana, perhaps in recognition of his nimble elocution.

* * *

I knew I liked the Honorable Judge John R. Adams when he made two specific comments during the ceremony. First, in noting how diverse America has become in the two hundred and some years since the days of the Revolution, he said that "change is the essence of life." He expounded on this with broad statements about the skills, initiative, and knowledge that immigrants bring to the US economy and education system. But that pithy phrase really stuck out.

A few sentences later, he began to quote from the Founding Fathers, as one might expect at a citizenship ceremony. When he got to the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, specifically the line that all men are created equal, he editorialized,

"and they should have said 'and women as well,'" before going on to make the rest of his

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point about the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. Now this is a highly evolved man. He did not speak in platitudes about the greatness of America, but in pragmatic tones of the "blessings and burdens" of voting and keeping informed about issues and candidates.

"I cannot stand up here and say that our country is perfect; far from it," he said to wrap up his comments. Then he quoted President Eisenhower: "There is nothing wrong with our country that the faith, love of freedom, intelligence, and energy of her citizens cannot cure."

These words could have come off as hollow in some situations. But followed as they were by a group of fifty individuals from twenty-five different countries rising to take the Oath of Allegiance to the United States of America, the final step in a very long journey toward citizenship, they sounded positively fortifying. Those are the things our

Founding Fathers built this country with: their love of freedom, their intelligence, their faith in each other, and their energy. They didn't have much else. And it's possible the people taking the oath today don't have much else, either. But as they surrendered their green cards to Dana earlier at the registration table, they received in return something more precious than John Adams or George Washington could ever have imagined: irrevocable citizenship in the most powerful democracy on the planet.

* * *

Marina Gordon calls Highland Square the Ellis Island of Akron, Ohio. But maybe that's just because she still sometimes misses living in New York City.

Highland Square has served as the introduction to Ohio and all of the Midwest for

Marina and her husband, Peter, both new citizens as of this morning. So in a way, it was a

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gateway to an America that is very different from what they had experienced living in that most cosmopolitan of cities.

"You know, in New York, you don't actually live in the United States," she says.

"There is New York, and then there is the United States. It's its own country. But everybody that comes to Akron from every place, first goes to Highland Square and then if they decide to leave they can spread out, too."

Marina's family re-patriated to Israel from Ukraine shortly after the break-up of the Soviet Republic, in 1990, when Marina was thirteen. She spent most of her life there and identifies more as an Israeli than as a Ukrainian. She has almost no discernible accent, though once in a while her syntax gets a little mixed up.

Peter moved from his birth country of Russia to Israel in 2000, looking for a better life, and got a job teaching mathematics at a university there. His accent is decidedly Russian, low and rolling, kind of thick-tongued and hypnotic, like he has liquid in his cheeks. The two met at university in Israel, then lived together in Chicago for a few years, where Peter had taken a post-doctorate teaching position.

"We planned to stay only two years, but we got married,” Peter begins to tell me, but Marina interrupts him.

"Twice. We got married twice." The two pause and look at each other in that knowing way couples who have been together a long time do, with unspoken volumes passing between them. Then Marina continues with the story.

"Yeah, we got married at City Hall in Chicago, then we had all our friends and relatives around us in Israel for the real thing. It was nice."

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Peter and Marina have traveled some within the U.S., but mostly just the coasts, the big cities like San Francisco and New York. Until, that is, Peter got his latest job at

The University of Akron.

"I thought, we are going to the boonies!" Marina says. "I thought, like, there is probably nothing there, nothing going on there. But I found out that it is a nice place with people you can make friends with, and very green here, much better than I had thought.

And at least to raise kids, at least at first, I think it will be easier, probably, than in New

York."

Marina rubs her swollen belly as she makes these concessions. They are expecting their first baby on July 25th, less than a month from now.

"People are slow here‒and that's good!" Peter adds. "I mean, in New York, if you slow down..."

"...if you slow down, you slow down everyone," Marina finishes the thought for him.

"Here, people can relax and more or less take their time with life," Peter says.

"Which is kind of nice, to be honest. I feel like, after many years at my place‒because I feel New York, that's the place that is most beautiful, that's my city and my country‒in

Soviet Union, people have a [here he says a word in Russian that sounds like Deutsche, and Marina translates it for him] a summer house, and I have a feeling we have moved to a summer house."

Peter and Marina both laugh a little at his joke, but he has a point. Life moves at a slower pace in the Midwest than it does in New York, and the people who live here like it that way. Peter and Marina's friends from New York love to visit them in Akron, to see

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the parks and go for hikes and just relax away from the city for a while. For their part,

Peter and Marina love owning a car for the first time in their lives and not worrying about how much they can buy at the grocery store or how they will get it back to their house on a subway.

As far as Israel, though, the two miss very different things.

"I miss my family a lot, and my friends, especially right now," Marina says, caressing her pregnant girth. "You know, the more girlfriends you have around, you tend to make this into a different perspective, and if you get too cranky and serious, it's like snap out of it! I mean I talk to them a lot, but it's not the same. And...maybe the food, a little bit, too. The hummus."

"Yes, the hummus," Peter concurs.

"He's already looking at other places to live," Marina says.

"No, it's just, I like to travel, so I just," Peter pauses, then continues. "We haven't experienced Asia yet, so maybe at some point, I might like to spend a couple of years there, because I'm in love with Japan. But as a permanent basis, I like the United States.

It's very convenient. For me, to live in a country where you have minimal interruption by the government, where all you have to do is just to pay taxes and behave yourself, and that's it. There's no involvement..."

Marina interrupts him again: "But now you have to vote!"

"Yes, and now you have to vote," he concedes. "Basically, in every other country where we have had allegiance, government is much more involved in your life, telling you what to do and how to do it. And I don't like that. And that is one of the primary

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reasons I am here. I know the rules; I respect the rules; nobody intrude in my personal life. That's nobody's business. Exclusively in the States it is like this."

"Yes," Marina adds, "I think America is as close to freedom, real freedom, as it gets."

"Even if it's not perfect, yes," Peter says.

"I mean yes, sometimes you think it's just beautiful, big words, but it's really true."

"I mean, you want to travel, you want to explore different things, but in the end..."

"...we will always come back here," Marina finishes the sentence they spoke in tandem.

"Being citizens will protect us from what other citizenships can't," Peter says. "It's very simple rules. You follow them, nobody tells you what to do."

And that's the bottom line. We are American citizens who know the rules, follow the rules, and nobody can tell us otherwise. It is the closest thing to real freedom anyone has come up with on this spinning blue orb. Such a simple concept, but worth fighting for, dying for, giving up all comfort and aid for, crawling across deserts for, risking torture or other great harm for, worth waiting and waiting and waiting for. And today, fifty more people became privileged to live in it permanently.

* * *

I am not the flag-waving kind of American patriot. In fact, I'm not sure I'd describe myself as a patriot at all. Patriotism has become increasingly conflated with nationalism in recent years, and I have never liked the xenophobic, jingoistic connotations of that term. I'm the kind of patriot who has actually read the Constitution--all of it, Preamble,

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body, and Bill of Rights--multiple times and striven to understand it. I'm the kind of patriot who does not believe Americans are exceptional, but that an adherence to ideals of equality before the law for everyone, regardless of whether they look or live like me, is an exceptional way to function in the world. I'm the kind of patriot who knows how incredibly lucky she is to have been born in the US, and expresses her gratitude for this happenstance by voting in every presidential and most mid-term elections since turning eighteen. I'm the kind of patriot who values diplomacy over violence, equality over entitlement, and facts over mythology.

But I can also be sentimental, and I was raised by a card-carrying UAW man, a

Coast Guard veteran who had a regulation flagpole installed in his front yard after he retired so he could salute Old Glory every morning.

I didn't cry when the barbershop quartet sang My Country Tis of Thee today, though I did think about my dad. I didn't cry when they sang God Bless America, though

I know my dad would have, and I could almost hear him choking up as the Knights of

Columbus took the American and Ohio flags down from the stage. The only time I got a little misty was when Evis Moss led the entire auditorium in the Pledge of Allegiance.

I don't remember having to say the Pledge every morning in public school like a lot of kids had to. I know the thing by heart, so I must've had it tattooed on my brain by rote like a good American schoolgirl somewhere along the line. I do remember not understanding one, single syllable of it, though, and knowing that asking the teacher to explain just what 'indivisible' meant would only lead to embarrassment in front of my classmates.

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But when Evis stepped up to that microphone in front of the Knights of Columbus men, in all their furry pageantry, with the flags there at attention, and all these shiny, expectant new citizens looking up at her with their hands over their hearts, I felt honest patriotism well up in my breast. When Evis's smooth, languid voice entered that mic and poured out through the speakers to run over the auditorium with her strong, proud assertion of "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the

Republic for which it stands," I believe I understood those words fully for the first time ever.

Getting to know and understand a little bit about my neighbors and how they have come to live in Akron from Serbia and Burma and China and Bhutan and Italy and Israel has helped me understand what it means to be a nation of states that are united, that are indivisible, that are one. You cannot separate us, one from the other. We are stronger because we are different, and because we are together. That's what indivisible means. We are not the same, but we are together, united.

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