The Bridges We Will Build E-Book

Kacie LeCompte Renfro

• Herausgeber: Modern History Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Seitenzahl: 359

Beschreibung

We hear a lot about refugees in the news, but how many of us really know their stories?
The Bridges We Will Build, follows four women of various countries of origin and drastically different life experiences, refugees and Americans, as they come together at The Unity School, a charter school for refugee and American children. Here, they rediscover the hope and inspiration that seemed lost to them before. But when one of them is killed in a violent hate crime, their new-found hope for the future is tested. The Bridges We Will Build provides a vision of the possibility of true solidarity. It compels us to believe that communities can transcend socially constructed barriers towards a recognition of our common humanity.
"The Bridges We Will Build reminds us of the ways women negotiate the inter-sections of their lives. It is accessible even as it crosses into important complications in the lives of its main characters. Enjoy!"
--Dr. amina wadud, American Muslim theologian, Professor Emeritus of Islamic Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University
"Renfro creates characters that bring the reader closer to becoming compassionate and understanding of refugees struggling to assimilate into a new culture. This story is a reminder that we have the power to end this hatred and that power resides in our actions to confront racism and injustice themselves."
--Matilde Simas, Founder of Capture Humanity, Visual Journalist
"The Bridges We Will Build is an insightful, well-written book about finding friendship in a world of conflict, misunderstanding, displacement and intolerance. This book renewed my faith that love and human connection can overcome even the most destructive forms of trauma and prejudice."
--Christopher White, Professor of Religion, Vassar

Leseprobe

The Bridges We Will Build: A Novel

Copyright © 2022 by Kacie LeCompte Renfro. All Rights Reserved.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, business, events and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

ISBN 978-1-61599-657-5 paperback

ISBN 978-1-61599-658-2 hardcover

ISBN 978-1-61599-659-9 eBook

Audiobook editions from Audible.com and iTunes

Modern History Press

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Ann Arbor, MI 48105

www.ModernHistoryPress.com

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Distributed by Ingram (USA/CAN/AU), Bertram’s Books (UK/EU)

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Epilogue

Discussion Guide

Recipes - A Taste of Home

Acknowledgements

About the Author

1

Hanan

Death, she thinks, this is the freedom I long for.

Shifting her weight from right foot to left, arms drooping lifelessly at her sides, all that remains to be seen is the water, that endless expanse of life and death, sustenance and deprivation. Picturing the remnants of boat and bodies, the parts that never made it to shore, remaining forever in its depths, she doesn’t shiver but stands there stoically.

Unaware of how long she has been standing there, is the silent acknowledgement that time is of no consequence. She doesn’t care. The life pulsing inside of her died on that beach eleven months, thirteen days, five hours and six minutes ago. Glancing at the watch on her right wrist to confirm, knowledge of that moment being the beginning and end of whatever life remains for her to live from now on has been accepted. It is all that defines her, anchoring her, tethering her to the hell this world has become.

The car engines starts, signaling to her it is time to go. Baris had agreed to take her here one last time. He is the incarnation of his name, its meaning, peaceful. His mother had correctly predicted what his nature would be and labeled it accordingly. Despite all the carnage, all the bodies, the death, disease and decay; despite the hopelessness of the refugee camp where the UN has stationed him and the approaching winter, he remains hopeful, jovial. He is kind and so he humors her, pities her. They all do.

There are no waves, just the slow and consistent motion of sea meeting land. The only fracture in the silence is its soft lapping sound, water against pebble. With no shoes on, despite the rocky shore beneath her feet, it isn’t painful, just smooth and hard.

The water has worn down the rocks that now make this beach, taking jagged chunks of a far-off cliff and wearing them down over time, bringing them here to their final resting place. The air is cool and dry, typical of the Mediterranean mornings she is now accustomed to.

Tomorrow she leaves for America, alone. She was notified by United Nations High Commission for Refugees of her acceptance as a refugee two weeks ago. She was ready then and she is ready now. With nothing to pack beyond the clothes she is wearing, and no one to accompany her, she is free to go anywhere, anytime. That is the word the UN officer used when he told her of her updated status, free.

“Hanan,” Baris had said in a rushed fervor when she informed him. His Greek-accented Arabic something she still spent time interpreting. “You are free! You have been admitted to the U.S. Someday you will be a citizen. You are free!”

The irony of that word, ringing in her ears every time he used it, made her want to choke him. In that moment she nodded complacently, passively, as he stared at her incredulously. “Hanan, do you know what this means?” he implored. She looked on, at him, through him, on and on.

She accepted this freedom, along with its chains. That is all this life represents for her now. Bearing the chains that hold her to this earth, she waits for the sweet blessing of death to call her name.

Strange that she would choose to come here, rather than the cemetery. Perhaps it is because here she can at least feel something. The horror of what came to pass is the only thing that makes her feel alive, the only thought she responds to. She does not need to see the three headstones, lined in a row, one large and two small, before leaving, because the truth is she never left this beach and never will. Regardless of where she physically resides, her soul will stand here, waiting to be called by Allah to join them at last.

Baris honks the horn twice, her final call. The grey water and darkening sky confirm what is already in her mind; there is nothing left to be said or done. Trudging up the beach toward the road, she climbs into the van, and rides toward the promise of nothingness that is her life without them.

2

Sherry

She was born into a life of privilege and she knows this. This is why she wants to offer up her life to service: service to the poor, neglected and forgotten. It cannot be done in just any way though. It has to be achieved in an international context; she knows this too. She has known this about herself since her earliest memory. Sherry was three and living in a comfortable upper middle class home with her mother, father, and older sister in South San Francisco, California. What she was doing before and what she did after, Sherry has no recollection, but she remembers that moment when her child eyes were opened. The year was 1984 and Ethiopia was suffering from yet another famine. Growing up, parents were famous for guilt tripping their children into eating everything on their plates with, “There are starving children in Africa.” Unlike most youth who rolled their eyes at yet another strategic attempt by their parents to harness compliance through the telling of over-embellished truths and cliché wisdoms, Sherry honored this, because she had seen it. The image of a little boy: black, bloated, skin dry and patchy, her age or maybe younger, staring into the camera, while flies, so many flies, tormented him, crawling into the corners of his eyes, up his nose, and into his ears. Sherry remembered this face featured on the evening news that night and carried it with her always.

She thought of that face while drunk in some club in college. She cried about her guilt for not doing something sooner to the one boy who she thought would understand, but it didn’t help. All that would ease this pounding in her heart would be to go to them. She wasn’t sure who “them” was yet or where they were, but she knew her destiny would remain unobtainable here, in her boujee upper middle-class life. She declared her readiness to leave it all behind in search of this one truth that was more important than all the others to anyone who would listen, and they did. They admired her: friends, family, teachers…but deep down they were scared. What would happen to a little blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl in the heart of Africa, they thought to themselves. Nothing good.

In college, Sherry had friends, so many friends. She would jokingly declare that they were the popular ones, but secretly she believed it was true. Unlike high school, Sherry enjoyed college. In fact, she loved it and believed these were four of the best years of her life. She needed to experience what it meant to “belong” just once before throwing it all to the wind, loving it but letting it go in pursuit of that shining truth just within her reach.

People talked about the Peace Corps in relation to her truth and thought that it might be a good way of finding it, but Sherry wasn’t sure. While she was ready to give it all up, the loneliness of potentially being the only American and Peace Corps volunteer in a given area was not what she was looking for. She wanted to meet like-minded people, build community and find her truth all at once. Her older sister recommended the Jesuit Volunteer Corps’ International Program. Sherry was doubting her Catholicism, but it wasn’t enough to dissuade her from looking into this further. She learned that they had both an international and domestic program. The founding principles included living in solidarity with the poor and celebrating intentional community with the other volunteers placed with you. This is it, she thought. This is it.

Satisfied with her decision and confident in her application, Sherry licked the envelope shut and mailed it in. She enthusiastically attended her interview with a JVI administrator, during which she answered all of the questions posed to her honestly and progressively. The final step of many taken, she thought. Now it was in God’s hands. She slept well while waiting, for she knew this was her fate. She knew because she had believed with all of her might since she was three years old, and that was true conviction.

Sherry babysat for several local families to make spending money throughout the school year. During one of these stints, she missed the call. The JVI rep left a voice message, and when she sat on the curb in front of the house and returned the call, the office was closed for the day. How will I survive the next twelve hours? she thought. Then she remembered how sure she was. It was practically a guarantee. If she had known this to be her destiny for so long, and all she was asking to do was serve, who would deny her?

The next morning she called the rep first thing, 6:00 AM California time, 9:00 AM East Coast time.

“Yes, my name is Sherry and I received a call yesterday about my application.”

“Okay, Sherry. Thanks for calling back. Let me transfer you to Andrew. He is handling all of the applications and can let you know why you were contacted.”

“Thank you!” Everything that came out of her mouth was too high pitched, too energetic, too nervous. Why was she nervous? She wanted this more than anything she had ever wanted in her entire life. This was her path and it was time for her to start walking it.

“Sherry?” asked the voice on the other end.

“Yes,” she replied, trying to keep it simple.

“Hi, this is Andrew and I called you yesterday about your JVI application. Thanks for getting back to me. Listen, I want you to know how much we appreciate your application and your patience with this entire process, but unfortunately we cannot offer you a spot this year.”

The words fell flat, heavy to the ground, dragging Sherry along with them.

“We would like to strongly encourage you to apply to our domestic program, Sherry. I think you’d be a wonderful candidate. Please think about it.” His tone was kind and gentle. Sherry knew he didn’t have the capacity to fathom what he had just done to her. She thanked him for the information and hung up the phone. Click went the call and click went her self-identity, off like a light switch, with a single flick of the finger. Just like that, it was gone.

She walked from the kitchen back to her room and sat in the chair in front of her computer, facing the window. She wished she could stop thinking, stop reeling, but she couldn’t. The thoughts that filled her mind were ones of doubt. What was her purpose then? What was her truth? She had been so sure that this was it, but she was wrong. The most frightening question of all berated her from the inside out, taunting her with its cynicism, torturing her with its innate cruelty. Who am I?

She called her mom and divulged the trauma and humiliation of her rejection. She thought of all of the other people she had told about her application and plans, all the people who would be asking her, all of the people she would have to tell.

“Well,” said her mother, “you need to seriously think about what the rep said and decide if you want to apply to the domestic program.” The finality of it all, that she indeed would not be serving internationally, was perfectly captured in her mother’s instructions. Sherry rejected the notion, detested it. She was actually offended by her mother’s suggestion. I am not meant for domestic service, she thought. But then she realized she was, and those words were the words of her former self, the dreamer whose dream did not come true. She pulled up the Jesuit Volunteer Corps website and looked it over. She would not have to fill out another application for the domestic program. They would simply transfer her existing one to the domestic program’s administrator for review. If she wanted that to happen though, she had to decide where she wanted to go.

They split the country up into regions: Northwest, Southwest, Midwest, South and Northeast. Sherry put her head in her hands, but she didn’t cry. She was too pissed for that. She had to think, to wrap her head around this seeming non-truth and figure it out. The whole point of going oversees was to be the “other,” a concept she had become very familiar with in her philosophy classes. She wanted to experience being out of her comfort zone, to be the foreigner, to be the one who was different, and through it all, be recreated. She thought about where she would be able to best accomplish this while remaining within the US borders. The South. She had never been there, but what she had read and what she had heard sounded more foreign to her than any other place in the country.

When she had determined this and had her application transferred, Sherry then had to choose a volunteer site in one of the JV locations throughout the region. When she decided where she might like to volunteer, this would solidify where she would live. Any romantic impressions of the south that she had acquired were derived directly from the Anne Rice vampire chronicles, predominantly set in New Orleans. She didn’t think this was naïve and saw that there was a volunteer option with a children’s shelter in the city. Upon expressing her interest, she was informed that this placement had just been filled. Whatever, Sherry thought. A state of ambivalence threatened to set in as she was making one of the most important decisions of her life. She fought it off, and tried to stay the course. She looked over the remaining placements and found one more that sounded interesting. The volunteer position was as a teaching assistant with The Unity School in Decatur, Georgia. Where the hell is Decatur? she thought, very annoyed at this point. It was right outside of Atlanta. She had at least heard of that city before, and that was where she would be living if this placement worked out. She again expressed interest for yet another volunteer opportunity. This one was open.

She scheduled a call with the school’s principal to complete the process and seal the deal. When they spoke it came to light that he had also attended St. Mary’s College many years prior. Their shared alumni status helped solidify her stellar first impression on the man. He sounded like a kind, older man who had just experienced his truth coming to fruition in the form of this school. If it means so much to him, maybe it can mean something to me, she thought. The school was a charter elementary school with the purpose of providing an excellent education for both refugee and American children. Its founding principle was celebrating diversity, and with children from more than forty countries attending, it prided itself on doing just that. The school, the principal explained, had to maintain a population ratio of fifty percent American children and fifty percent refugee children according to its charter.

She would go, Sherry decided. Her truth had betrayed her, and was thus not really her truth at all. She would go to Atlanta in search of another truth, and she would find it.

All of these memories flood her mind as she sits in a terminal waiting for her connecting flight to Houston. Memories of how she ended up here, everything culminating with this. The Jesuit Volunteer year begins with a weeklong retreat in Texas, during which the volunteers are able to meet members of their future community and learn about the JV philosophy which they will be asked to follow. It sounds a little like a cult, Sherry thinks, laughing to herself. She watches as a few of the volunteers chat, everyone desperate to make a friend. She drops a few questions to be social, and answers the ones posed to her, but mostly she is quiet.

Outwardly she appears to be observing everyone else, but really this is the façade of all facades. Inwardly she is terrified. A year is a very long time she suddenly realizes, now that this year has actually begun, and the clock ticks so painfully slow. Maintaining a calm appearance, and holding herself to keeping it, is the only thing that keeps her from screaming to let it all out.

* * *

Reflecting back, the JVC Orientation Retreat is all a bit of a blur. As they make their way through the streets of Atlanta, to the place they will call home for the next year, she recalls how wrong her preconceived notions were about some of her housemates, notions and mental images based on nothing more than a handful of e-mails exchanged by the lot over the last few months.

When the plane had landed in Texas, one week ago today, Sherry found the group of volunteers destined for the retreat, and observed them. Surrounded by people, she felt incredibly alone, but reassured herself that her soon-to-be soulmates might be in this very crowd.

They had boarded a van to take them to the retreat center, and Rebecca introduced herself. She would be one of Sherry’s roommates. As the van took off and Rebecca kept talking, her volume increased, until she was about to blow out Sherry’s right ear drum. Her short, curly hair had gone wild in the Houston humidity, and her overall effect felt abrasive to Sherry’s cool Cali persona. Are all northerners this intense? she thought to herself, all the while trying to smile through it. Feeling bombarded and claustrophobic, Sherry tried to remain calm. We, she thought a bit judgmentally to herself, will probably not be great friends.

Fransheska was supposed to be chubby. All of her e-mails had been centered on the spices she was collecting from the farmer’s market, and all the cooking she planned to do for the group. She was a petite Peruvian though, and had moved to Florida with her family when she was ten. Her nose was a bit large, but other than that she was actually quite pretty.

The geographic origin of the group was diverse. Sherry and May both came from California, Sherry from the Bay Area, and May from Orange County.

Sherry liked May. She was smart and seemingly chill. They agreed to be roommates, while discussing their current relationship statuses and swinging on the swings one afternoon. May’s long thin legs pumped the rest of her body into the air, her long, straight brown hair flying gloriously behind her.

They had been told there were enough rooms in their house in Atlanta for some members of the group to have their own, but the thought of such isolation terrified Sherry. She found a sense of comfort and solidarity in a shared space, a place for her and May to have deep conversations when they confided in one another about past drunken escapades and dreams for the future.

Ben, Mary, and Rebecca were from the Boston area. Sherry hadn’t connected with them yet, but was confident she would in time. They had an entire year to make that happen.

She had been counting down the days since she left home: one, two, three... They crawled by, one after the other, so painfully slow. A year will take forever, she thought, but she was committed, and so, she would make it.

In Atlanta, Sherry and her roommates would each be volunteering at a different non-profit for the year. They would live in a low-income neighborhood, observing their vows of poverty and living in solidarity with the poor, all the while celebrating a culture of intentional community with one another in their home sweet fucking home. The proverbial shit excreting from some (not all) of those words was something they were each destined to taste on their semi-refined middle to upper-middle class pallets.

“When you arrive,” they were told at the retreat, “a representative from each of your non-profits will be at your house waiting for you. Usually they like to bring dinner, potluck style, just to make sure you feel welcome. They will probably make sure your fridge is stocked so you don’t have to worry about grocery shopping the first few days you are there. You will have enough adjustments to make, without food being one of them.”

As they rolled up in the van, driven by the rep from Rebecca’s volunteer placement, they peered curiously at their house. The neighborhood didn’t look as sketchy as Sherry had expected. The house was brick and the front lawn looked mowed recently enough. Once the van parked in the driveway, one by one they vacated, and made their way to the front stoop. Someone fumbled for the key while the others commented admiringly about the screened in side porch.

The key slipped into the lock, and the door slowly opened.

One by one they walked into the living room, until everyone stood crowded together, looking. The makeshift furniture had seen better days, and that was putting it nicely. A couple of couches and miscellaneous chairs awkwardly lined the perimeter. Who would be the first adventurous enough to sit down and see what critters emerged from the applied pressure?

They continued to walk through the house, step by very slow step. First was the dining room, fitted with a worn round table and chairs that didn’t match. On the opposite end of the room were some bookshelves caked with a layer of dust and dirt. Then, onto the kitchen, where a marinara-stained counter and fridge had become home to a large line of ants, crawling from one end to the other, and back again. There were many comments made, gasps, and whimpering.

On the other side of the wall, separating the dining room and kitchen from the rest of the first floor, were two bedrooms. The first would be Ben’s, huge and empty, with little more than a twin bed and chair. The next would be Mary’s, tiny but quaint, and equipped with a very small, and dark bathroom, but her own.

Making their way to the front of the house, the group made the perilous journey up the stairs. The carpet looked like it hadn’t been vacuumed in years. Lint, crumbs, random filthy debris, you name it, and it was probably there, being crunched and crumbled to an even finer version of itself, beneath seven plus pairs of shoes as they clomped their way up to see what lay in wait.

Upstairs, the smaller bedroom had a door, which was a huge plus. Two queen-size beds and a shabby desk crowded the room. With the consent of the group, Sherry and May claimed this one.

The other room was large and open, no closets, no door, and two-twin sized beds in opposite corners. This would belong to Fransheska and Rebecca.

The bathroom the four girls would share appeared to have been fitted with a piece of junkyard plywood, that when pushed hard enough, scraped to a close, offering sufficient privacy to the chump shaving her legs or taking a dump.

If the house had AC, it wasn’t something currently used, and the Atlanta August heat lay in a heavy bog, coating everyone and everything on that second level.

It was getting late, and the group of volunteers looked tiredly at the “beds” they were supposed to sleep on. Motivated by sheer exhaustion, they accepted their fate for that first night and reconciled themselves to what bites and nibbles that first slumber might bring.

With sleeping arrangements finalized, the crew made their way back down the stairs. They stood in the living room, dazed, confused and hungry. That thing about a fridge full of food, Sherry thought, what a load of crap. One carton of expired milk and a crusted splatter of the same marinara sauce that coated the kitchen counter summed up its contents.

The reps from Rebecca’s non-profit generously offered to go pick up pizzas and drinks. The group eagerly accepted. The reps turned to make their quick exit out the front door, and that was the first time anyone noticed that the door knob was missing. They were trapped, literally. If it wasn’t for the fact that Sherry and her roommates would be living here for the next 364 days, someone might have laughed at the irony, the absurdity of it all.

Someone had the idea of putting the front door key in the lock and opening the door that way, and it worked. “At least we don’t have to worry about fire hazards,” Ben remarked, his sweet demeanor trying desperately to keep the mood light.

After the reps left, May slumped down onto the window sill, because no one had dared sit on the bug-infested furniture yet. Her piercing scream cracked the silence as she jumped up, stuttering belligerently, something about cockroaches emerging from the panes.

Sherry didn’t see anything, but nothing would surprise her now. She was the only girl who didn’t cry that night.

3

Aida

He is trying to tell her what to do again. School has not been in session for a week yet, and this new teacher has the nerve to wag his finger at her, someone older than himself. She looks at him, smiling, nodding while he rambles on. What is his name again? Aida thinks. Something like Michael, or Mike, or Micah. Regardless, he seems like the type who would probably never bother to actually ask her a question that required a response; he likes the sound of his own voice too much for that. Funny how some Americans take themselves so seriously, she thinks. In her country, someone like him would be humble; he would know his place. Aida knows her place, and that is why instead of turning her back to him and walking away, she stands there, taking it. She is a refugee, and while that grants her legal status, which she is immeasurably grateful for, it doesn’t give her access to much else. Catholic Charities had provided them with rent for the first several months when she and her family arrived here, but as with all types of government assistance, it didn’t last nearly long enough.

Her husband qualifies for Social Security and Medicare because of his disability, and that helps, but Aida isn’t getting any younger and has a daughter with an absentee husband, two young sons and two even younger grandchildren, the oldest of whom is headed for trouble. At eleven years old she gravitates toward provocative clothing and brings home the dirty words she learns in the schoolyard.

What’s-his-name finally stops his blabbing and moves on to two of the students who aren’t sitting still enough while eating their lunch. One of the food containers is running low and she lifts it up out of the heating tray and replaces it with a fresh one warming in the oven. For a sixty-year-old, robust woman, Aida can move. She does her job well and prides herself knowing that. The Unity School has given her family a chance it never would have had otherwise. Principal Luna offered her a job knowing that she had no experience in a school cafeteria. “This,” he told her, “is a job that requires someone who is trustworthy. It is for a person that I can count on to run this cafeteria, to feed every child in need of food. This is a job for you.” That was the extent of her interview. He knew her story, and that sufficed. Principal Luna knows all of their stories because he takes the time to learn them, understand them. He has compassion.

Aida takes off the oven mitts and wipes her moist hands on her apron. She looks out into the sea of faces before her. It gets so loud in here and she looks forward to lunch being over, when she can go about her duties of closing up the kitchen in peace.

As a child, Aida loved to be surrounded by people. One of two children, with more aunts, uncles and cousins than it was possible to count, this had been her comfort zone. Being alone was lonely back then, and she detested it. She intentionally sought out the company of others in her days of youth. My how things have changed…

The Bosnian war came and went, leaving nothing but death and decay in its path. She heard of others returning to the old country, willingly staring the aftermath of it all in the eye. This was not for her. Enough was enough. She had seen more than one lifetime should permit, and while the memory of it all was not one that she could forget, she wished she had that option, to shut it off when it haunted her dreams, to forget the sound of the soldier’s voice whispering in her ear moments before things became irreparable.

Looking out upon the sum total of so many children in one room, what many see as chaos, Aida knows it is order. Never in her life has she seen such a multitude of diversity and kinship, color and creed, true awareness and friendship. The so-called differences that people had allowed to tear her country apart were the very same that brought these children together. Mr. Luna was not just a school principal, he was a visionary.

Aida hurries back into the kitchen to check the trays and determine if they need to be replaced. She decides there’s enough food to feed the next group of children, opens the fridge and removes several trays to warm in the oven. Back and forth, back and forth, she makes her way from the fridge to the oven and back again. This repetitive motion does not bore her. She finds it comforting. In the last few years she has seen this shift in herself, the tendency to cling to the smallest piece of normalcy, as though it could escape her without a moment’s notice.

When she was young, Aida saw beyond the box. She lifted herself up with her own strength and peered over its edge at the world lying in wait. She made plans and promises, all to herself. Her eyes were filled with longing and ambition, her heart was filled with fire. She knew herself to be unconquerable, until she wasn’t. Like a balloon popping, she deflated, and all of those plans, the beauty of the world, were burnt to ashes.

Before she can stop it, the memory returns, flooding her person with all of its strength. The smell of the woods in the early spring, the cool morning air that made her shiver as she and a few of the other women returned to their village years after the war had ended, the village that haunted their memories of childhood. She noticed, with hyperawareness, the imprint of her shoe in the decay when they arrived. The smell of smoke still seemed to cling to the air, choking them as they were escorted to the mass grave. The ground softened as it rose up beneath them in a mound, and they realized the horror of where everyone had gone. The women fell, one by one like dominoes, the undeniable impact of one upon the other. On their knees, in the dirt, they wept like the schoolchildren they once were, as their parents and siblings, spouses and children lay beneath them, dead and buried. Aida’s torch blew out and the world she dreamed of went dark.

She is called back to reality by the sounds of the children; the next group has arrived. They wait anxiously in line as the teaching assistants from each class prepare plates and distribute them. It is an inefficient way of doing things, she thinks. It would be more practical to have staff solely dedicated to working in the kitchen,but the school is poor like most of the children who go here. Mr. Luna established the system and so for now it stuck. They would make it work as they did with everything else, making do the first few years until the school proved itself worthy of more state money and funding from private grants. Because the school could not afford a separate kitchen staff, the teaching assistants for each class were assigned the duty of lunch server when it was time for their students to eat. Some arrived on time, some even early, and others not at all. Aida fills in the gaps when necessary, but truly it would be easier if she just did everything. So many people constantly in and out of the kitchen caused nothing but disorder, and this was Aida’s sanctuary.

The second grade students move through the line, one by one, taking their plates, many perpetually disappointed by what they are destined to eat. White, brown, black, the faces pass by her and she can’t help but smile to herself. How many Serbian generals would roll over in their graves if they could see her grandson arm in arm with his little African friend, hijab and all. The thought of this pleases her. She pulls Halim out of line and hugs him tightly. All of the dreams and hopes that left her that day returned in the form of aspirations for her descendants. The world was what it was for her, but for Halim there was possibility. Hope was not a skill she had imparted upon her daughter; survival was what she gave to her child. Halim however, was born in a distant land, untouched and unspoiled. Hope had been bottled up and stored for two generations, and now given as the greatest of gifts to her grandchildren. Halim, Aida knows, will do something with it. His dreams will be Aida’s dreams and these, unlike her own, might actually one day come true.

4

Lydia

Lydia is plagued by nostalgia for her children’s days of youth. Where did I go wrong? she asks herself, standing over the kitchen sink waiting for the coffee to brew. She rewinds time in her mind, stopping and playing, pausing to reflect, and rewinding more. Further and further back she goes, letting time fall away like leaves off a tree. She sees her hair grow longer, turn from grey back to blonde, the now ever-present muffin top melts off her waistline, and she is restored to her former self, her younger self. She thinks about how in the beginning she took it all for granted. That if she had only known how things would turn out, maybe she would have done it all differently. She shakes her head knowingly, brushing off such a thought, because in the end she only had so much control, and this has been one of the hardest lessons motherhood taught her.

Picking up her phone, she goes into her list of contacts and hits “Lillian.” The phone rings to voicemail and she cannot help but picture her daughter looking to see who is calling, realizing it’s mom, and hitting “decline” instead of “answer.” Despite the infinite rational explanations she could tell herself to excuse Lillian’s failure to pick up, she chooses to believe in this moment that a call from mom is discriminately screened. She sets the phone down on the table, even though what she would really like to do is throw it through the window into the yard and for it to shatter into a million pieces. Then when the “convenient call back” came that night or the next day she would not be able to answer it, and maybe Lillian would understand for just a moment what it felt like to be ignored. Instead she looks down at the touchscreen, at the stock image background of bright springtime flowers, and wishes more than anything that it would ring so she could answer and hear her daughter’s voice.

“You have to move forward; stop dwelling in the past,” her therapist told her at their most recent session. She wondered how old his children were. He looked young, and so most likely they still needed his help with homework and cared if he went to their games. The age of ambivalence had not yet struck and so he was ignorant. Give it ten years, she thought to herself as he rambled on, something about picking up a new hobby, volunteering, bullshit.

Lydia never swears out loud, but she finds herself doing it more and more in her mind. She cussed out the barista for making her vanilla latte with whole milk instead of nonfat. She cussed out the beautician for painting her pinkie nail unevenly, but she stored up her most offensive and venomous silent response for Barbara, her next door neighbor, when she set out her sprinklers just close enough to splatter Lydia’s newly washed car with droplets that then dried and left water marks all over her dark red Prius.

Someday she will say it out loud, uninhibited, like a man. She will say exactly what she thinks and enjoy the look of shock and offense that spread across their faces. Maybe she will give someone the finger when he cuts her off on the road. The possibilities are endless, Lydia thinks, and she will get there, someday.

That day is not today though, and so Lydia pours her coffee, adds artificial sweetener and sugar-free creamer, stirs them to a milky brown and takes a seat at the breakfast table to read the morning’s news. Gary suggested “going green” a few years ago, and although recyclable, the first thing to go was the traditional morning paper. She powers on her computer and opens two windows, one for Associated Press and the other for BBC. Scanning the headlines she feels disinterested, even though the whole point of this repetitive ritual is to connect. She questions her ability to do this, connect. Things just feel so bleak now. The proverbial light at the end of the tunnel only lights up when the phone rings and the voice on the other end is one of three.

“What do you do all day Mom?” Brian had asked her the last time they spoke over the phone. This question quietly stroked a fury brewing within her. The insinuation that thirty-five years as a teacher was not enough, the not so subtle ridicule by the youngest and by far most spoiled of her children, was almost enough to cause her to hang up, but she didn’t. She patiently explained to her twenty-five-year-old son the logistics of her retirement. He listened impatiently, hurrying her through the details meant to answer the question he had asked. In the end it was he who practically hung up on her, while she longed for just five more minutes on the other end of the line.

Bored with the morning’s headlines and distracted by her own disenchantment, Lydia exits out of the news and goes to her photos. Aimlessly, she wanders through happier times, moments, days, years gone by and achieves her goal of numbing herself to the present and losing herself in the past. She comes to rest on her favorite picture of thousands taken over the years. Brian is barely a year. Lillian had dressed herself that morning, and at age three proudly flaunted her fashion skills destined to one day take her far from home and settle in a place her mother detested the thought of visiting. Aimee was seven and had that far-off look in her big blue eyes, Gary’s eyes. Lydia joked with her husband that she had come out of the womb with that look: longing, searching, and melancholy. The three of them were so terrifically similar and different all at the same time.

The weight of Rocky’s head in her lap calls Lydia back to reality. Looking down she smiles at her old friend. She rests her hand just above his eyes that look back into hers. Smoothing his short blonde fur back she strokes him from head to tail. Unlike most of the good things in her life that required her to chase them down, Rocky found her. She was driving home late one night from a parent-teacher conference and as she pulled up in front of the house, there he was, sitting in front of her trash bin. That was ten years ago. Knowing the tendency of time to pass and the negative habit of all good things coming to an end, Lydia secretly dreads the day that she knows is soon to come.

She gets up, puts her coffee cup in the sink, opens the pantry and pulls out the leash. Pushing the house key into her jean pocket, she and Rocky head on foot to the dog park. The neighborhood is going downhill, she thinks to herself as they walk. The dry parched lawns are glaringly obvious. The morning is hot and humid and Lydia wipes the perspiration from the back of her neck. Unaffected and oblivious to her perpetual negativity, Rocky pulls on the leash, hurrying her along.