the senior

It's just some Thursday in the dregs of February. A day after day after day.  But then she sits down and asks to talk, and it becomes something else. 

She starts in the middle of the discussion, right where we left off last time we plotted her strategy. She is inclined to believe that she is destined for a lifetime of taking orders for sweet and sour chicken, and she does have reason to think so.  The restaurant is the be all and end for her parents, and for good reason: it is their income, their hope, their come-to-America story. 

I am not going to call it a dream

As she launches into her doubts, any twinge of been-there, done-that evaporates in the suddenly serious atmosphere.  On another day in this same spot we'd pasted together a delicate framework of if-this, maybe-that intended to bridge the gap between her college hopes and her parents' expectations. If she went part-time, if just took English. . .we'd hoped the mutual benefit would be a toe-hold. 

Alas. 

Alas they are steadfast. They are intent. Whether out of belief or need they have offered up a steady stream of reasons why she could not, should not go to the community college she's mapped out.  They tell the girl who's breezing through pre-calc that she's not smart enough to try. They tell the best writer I have that her English is not sufficient. They tell her there's no point, no hope, that she cannot work, that she'd be taking a job from an American. They tell her-- and this is the crux-- that if she were to go it'd be doubly expensive because then they'd have to pay a worker. 

"I understand," I say a thousand times.  


And then I tell her what I know about her smarts and her potential. I tell her why I know she can do it, and despite all truths about Asians and eye contact she looks at me directly when I say, "I am not wrong. I believe in you."  


My heart breaks when she says I'm the only person who does. "You and me," I remind her. "That's two." 


As we sit huddled across the corner of the desk, we acknowledge all realities and my encouragement is tempered except for my urging to have faith. What she wants is possible, eventually, if she does not concede the dream. I make no promises to this girl I met in August except to be there for her long past her May graduation. I give her my phone numbers and addresses. She takes the card and cries.

Home

He is my object lesson, my there by the grace of God goes he.  Up until a month ago, not even a blink ago in geologic time, his home was an orphanage atop a fault line. But then the paperwork finally emerged from the byzantine Haitian bureacracy and his world shifted on a scale not measured by Richter. He was there, and now he is here-- except, of course, for part of his heart. 

This evening he sits in a middle American suburb where earthquakes are thus far only novelty and watches scant pictures from his home. The phones are out, of course, and all that is known-- if it is known for certain-- is that the hospital in his old neighborhood has collapsed. The fate of everyone else he knows in the world is unknown. They are all there, and he is here.  

American Red Cross  


Doctors Without Borders

broken

My seventh grade daughter was in kindergarten when my grandmother died; to remember the year, I have to count back, do the math. Every time, the answer is a surprise. And so are the feelings that welled up when the handle of that depression glass plate snapped off as it slid off the loveseat and hit a stool on the way to the floor. That's what we get for dusting.

"That was my gradma's," I said more quietly than the girl frozen with "Am I gonna get it?" expected. I may not have replied to her meaningful, "Oh," though I managed to laugh at an offer to get scotch tape that may or may not have been an attempt at comic relief. But I could cry, easily and right now, for no reason at all. Except one.

It's not as if I picked out that tray as a token; my aunt sent it over with the companion bowl that I keep filled with napkins on the kitchen table. They aren't rare pieces, far as I know, and, once glued, that plate will still serve as well as it ever did as a candy dish, or tray, or collector of end-table detritus. It's not as if I'd ever sell it. And it's not as if she'd have cared, either, about its new flaw, especially one caused by her only great grandkid. It's just that once upon a time, long before the Alzheimer's that really took her away years before she died, my grandma filled it up with Christmas fudge and that awful fondant and set it out on that antiqued green buffet and, I've been reminded, I miss her.

The Real World

"I got my Passport!" she beams as she walks in the door.

 I don't detect that capital p, don't remember the jargon, so my, "Did you!" is especially emphatic and pleased, befitting a paperwork miracle.  To her, it doesn't seem out of line.

With a flourish, she hands it over, and at once I remember. "Passport" is the name of the tech school portfolio; I keep my mistake to myself, glad not to have sullied her moment. I page through the vinyl binder, genuinely impressed:

"Look at everything you know how to do!" I say as I look up to meet her smile. Her certificate is backed by a pages-long checklist of the nursing skills she has mastered; it's a real guarantee, spelled-out and explicit, for anyone looking to hire. 

But that was yesterday.

 "Hi," she says flatly, as she walks in the door. 

When I ask how she is, she claims to be fine as she slings her bag on the desk, but as her shoulders fall she admits:

"I'm a little disappointed." And then she explains her understatement. Today, on the last day of her hospital rotation, she had been working with a supervisor. A supervisor who offered her a job. 

"Go get your CNA, and I'll hire you," she'd said. "You'll have a job before you graduate." 

Except she won't, not there. Not with "not valid for employment" printed across the front of her card.  

There's so much to say but we've already said it, in this place but in other times. 

"If it weren't for my dad," she trails off, emotion, as always in check.  She knows how to endure. The father in question has been absent for years; his whereabouts are unknown. But once upon a time time he was in the States, legally, and he had applied to be a resident. The one adult in her life who has done her wrong may be her only way to make things right.  The world is often cruel. 

We sit on opposite sides of the desk, our helpless grimaces as mirrors. 

 

my fellow Americans

Numbers are easy to argue against; the unknown has no gaze to meet as you make your case, theoretical consequences are easily dismissed. But when a statistic becomes an individual, and that individual becomes your friend-- your friend, or your student, or your neighbor, perhaps, a real person who's part of your world, doing, like you, the best that he can--well, then, it's different. The sharp truth of experience can puncture puffed-up principle, but what happens next is the tell.

Noe Guzman, is, by most measures, a thoroughly American kid. He has lived, worked, and gone to school here for nearly all of his life. His English is surely fluent, his interests the same as his neighbors'. Noe had no idea, he says, that he was not an American citizen until the Marine Corps discovered the Social Security card his mother gave him was, in fact, a fraud. So much for enlisting, so much for college money, so much, it seems, for his American dream. Enough people vouched for him that his deportation was thwarted, but at this point, he's just here, not legal--the same non-status he'd unknowingly had since he crossed the border at the age of 4, the same non-status as so many others.

"That's not fair!" said his friends.

"He should have a chance!" was the community consensus. I do not disagree. I share their indignation, but I aim it a little wider. Noe is just a name to me, no one I'll ever meet. But I do know dozens of others who, save for the shock of belated discovery, share that same complicated story. They live in Missouri because their parents moved here, or because they were sent to an aunt or an uncle to strive for a better life. They live, and they work, and they go to school. They are part of our communities, and largely, they are stuck.

The realization that doors were closing on Noe has rallied his community around him; to them he was not an unknown and threatening alien, but their neighbor, their coworker, their friend. They want him to succeed, to be a Marine, to go to school. They believe he deserves it, regardless, not because of, his documents. Even their Republican state representative has been recruited to the cause:

Said state Representative Charlie Schlottach, "We have a young man who wants to fight to become an American; a young man who has met and surpassed the American standard ofwork, willing to obey this country's laws. A young man who has the support of every teacher, school administrator, fellow student and community member I have encountered. … I offer my whole-hearted support to Noe and his quest to gain American citizenship."

Ironic then that Rep. Schlottach voted for the current Missouri law that denies Noe and others like him the "benefit of post-secondary education." While federal law does not prevent undocumented students from going to any state college they can afford, Missouri HB 1549 does. A year ago Noe could have paid the inflated international rate as a down payment on his dream, but that's not an option today. If he tried to do what he's been raised to expect, what he planned and hoped and wished for--what his community thinks he deserves--he would be turned away. I imagine that Rep. Schlottach may not have known of Noe when he voted; even today he may try to claim one situation is not like the other. The catch is that it is.

Noe is not the only kid trapped by circumstances. He's just the one whose newspaper connection and agitating friends may give him a shot at a private bill granting citizenship. It's a long shot, but it could happen. Still, it's no solution; it's only a patch. If I were to go to New Haven, Noe's current home, or Rep. Schlottach's office, and share the stories of people I know, match up each accomplishment and effort, could they now see the connection? Could they admit that the system is broken, that the issue is not the exceptions, but the rules? From here, that seems the first step. My dream is that we take it.

Former journalists gather here

I suppose it's about time I weighed in. And today is an apt day. In a prior life, I was a newspaper reporter -- a reasonably good one even. I won some awards, at least.

I flamed out about 13 years ago, though I have to do the math each time. The fire still burns, though the pilot light goes out frequently. Every election, every homicide, and every now and then, I miss it. Not today. And not lately.

I left on my own terms, kind of, but I have no regrets. But I still feel for my Gazette colleagues, both those now jobless and those left behind. Even my first newspaper boss isn't popping champagne.

This land

Whatever happens in the next 4-8 years, let's at least remember this.

intervention

"I'm not going to tell them that. Are you nuts?"

"You won't be in trouble," I say, without quite knowing if it's true. But he rouses himself from his slouch in the corner and goes willingly to Chemistry for the first time maybe ever. And when he leaves I abandon my gathering class and warn him as he walks that if he won't go to the nurse, I will. I veer first to Guidance, roust his counselor then his principal, assemble a posse that fans out between classroom and clinic. The speed of our steps tells the story.

Doors are opened and shut, chairs pulled up beside. Denials are issued and vitals are taken. All are inconclusive.

I again meet his principal out in the hall. "He says he was joking, that you just overheard." I tell him the actual story, the one about the friend and the pills and the pain he was feeling: the facts as presented to me directly a ten-minute eternity ago. The father is called.

I'm not wrong. I am not mistaken. His past habits, his struggles, his complaints this morning--it adds up to a negative sum. Officially, what's true is irrelevant. His early morning confession is like shouting "bomb!" at the airport: say the word, be exited regardless. Liability is the watchword. But it's not why I dashed down the hall.