Wednesday, July 29, 2009

"Sushi sushi. Rice rice."

“Mr. Barrett,” Dan – one of my summer school students – innocently began, “what’s your first name?” After I said, “Tom,” he looked contemplative as he replied, “Tom. That’s a cool name. I wish I had a cool name. Like a traditional Asian name.” Laughing to myself about the idea of a traditional “Asian” name, I wanted to know more. “Ok. So what name would you rather have?” “Hmm…” he paused for a moment. “Something like Ping Pong Table! Or just Ping Pong. Or just Ping… and then Chris can be Pong!” The rest of the class that stuck around during the break burst into laughter and Dan’s face lit up.

Earlier that morning before class started, a student not in my class came in to chat with me. I told him that he looked familiar and he responded, “Well, we all look the same.” Hoping that he meant students, I unassumingly asked, “Who does?” He answered with a wide grin, “Black people!” Having absolutely no idea what the appropriate professional response should be to such a situation, I chose instead to laugh at his comment and to dismiss it with a playful “Shut up.” He laughed too and then headed to his classroom.

Growing up white and without a distinct cultural background – I’m a veritable mutt of a man with Russian, Irish, Italian, and Mexican grandparents – I never felt a particular attachment to one nationality, nor did I ever feel ostracized by my cultural upbringing (I don’t count the “Mexi-Jew” comments). In fact, I’ve always been jealous of my purebred friends. Having relatives to visit around the world, knowing a second language from childhood, or even having a parade to go to: I always thought it would be cooler to be an ingredient in the big melting pot of America instead of a dish ready to be served. Call me ignorant, but I couldn’t believe my ears when I heard these two teenage boys belittling their ethnicities and stereotyping themselves so blatantly.

Curious about his background, I waited for the giggling to calm down before asking, “Dan, where is your family from?” “America,” he responded flatly. “Right. I know that, but I mean where did your grandparents or great grandparents come from?” “Oh,” he seemed a bit more puzzled this time. “I think China. But I don’t know. My parents don’t really talk about it.” And with that comment the topic dropped for the day, but Dan’s self-deprecating remarks were only just beginning.


The next morning, I heard my students parading down the hallway as they did the morning before. When they entered, I saw Dan conducting an orchestra of teens mimicking, “Sushi, sushi. Rice, rice. You want poke fry rice? It cost fo fohty-nine niney nine.” Their movements were like a malfunctioning animatronic hibachi chef, repeatedly offering the same platter. Having absolutely no idea how to quell such racial mockery and having even less of an idea if it was in my place to do so, I feigned fumbling through my textbook as if I was just preparing for class. Realizing the jokes were not going to stop, I started class several minutes early. Thankfully, the clock was fast in my room.

The 9:30 break hit, and after turning my back for one minute to help a student with a problem, I turned back around to find my blackboard covered in Dan’s new song lyrics. The song went something like this:

(Verse 1)
Sushi, sushi. Rice, rice.
Sushi, sushi. Rice, rice.
Sushi, sushi. Rice, rice.
Sushi, sushi. Rice, rice. (Repeat 42x)
(Pre-Chorus)
Sushi, sushi. Rice, rice.
Sushi, sushi. Rice, rice. (Repeat 12x)
(Chorus)
Sushi, sushi. Rice, rice.
Sushi, sushi. Rice, rice. (Repeat 200x)

And there were at least four more verses, a few more choruses, and even a bridge. You can guess the remaining lyrics.

And then, a light bulb moment. “Ok, Dan. How about for every time you say the word ‘sushi’ I take off two points on your test? And one point for every time I hear the word ‘rice.’” The guys knew I was kidding but they played along. Dan feigned panic and shouted, “No!” before running back to his seat. When another student mimicked, “Sushi, sushi. Rice, rice,” I continued my playful reprimand. “And if anyone else says ‘sushi’ or ‘rice,’ Dan loses points.” “What!” Dan exclaimed, popping out of his seat and then just as quickly slid back down into it. The class chuckled and I returned to the lesson, surprisingly undisturbed.

For the next week and a half, my fake test-point-threat kept the “Sushi, sushi. Rice, rice” outbreak miraculously low, but the racial jokes were far from finished and were simply festering under the scope of my radar. Then one day, while the students were doing problems in, I became disillusioned of my apparent success.
“Mr. Barrett,” one of my students called out to me, “come check out Dan’s new song lyrics.” Oh no, I thought to myself. Dan screamed, “What!” and hid his notebook and his typical jittery fashion. Do I really want to see these? I decided that I did and made Dan hand them over. If I were still a fourteen year old, I would have pissed myself laughing at these lyrics, but as someone who was now called ‘mister’ they seemed more scary than funny. Here’s how Dan’s second single went:

My lips taste like China
I have chinky eyes
For 4.49.99
I’ll give you great pork fried rice

The song kept on going for another twelve lines or so, but I couldn’t bring myself to read any more. I had to say something this time, but what?

“Dan,” I started, hoping the right words to enlighten this young man would somehow follow, “you shouldn’t belittle yourself like this.” He looked back at me with a nervous, but mostly confused glance. “What do you mean?” “I mean,” I paused, waiting for the words, but the right ones didn’t seem to be coming. “I mean this is your culture. That’s your family…” still waiting. “But my family doesn’t really talk about it. They say we’re American. I feel more white than Asian.” I looked away for a second and when I looked back Dan stared at me with his hands smushing his eyes together, making them wider. “Dan!” His hands shot away from his face. “Being American doesn’t mean being white.” The words were starting to flow a bit more now. “Don’t make fun of yourself by using stereotypes that some dumb white people made up about Asians.” And then I was out of ammo. Dan looked away with a possible pensive but more probably confused glance and simply said, “Ok, Mr. Barrett.”

The confrontation had finally happened, but nothing felt resolved like I had hoped it would. There was no cheesy music playing in the background signaling that some profound realization had occurred in Dan’s mind. There was no High School Musical dance scene with a song about embracing diversity. Instead, there was just another student raising his hand across the room asking how to do number 22.

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

The Silent Ringing

Every day, between two in the afternoon and nine at night, our home telephone will ring anywhere between seven and twelve times. The call ID always reads the same: Pay Phone from a 609 area code. It rings and rings and rings, but we don’t answer. No, these days we hardly even flinch. Every so often, the silence is broken and one of us will check the phone to see whose calling, but once we see who it is we forget immediately. It’s too painful and frustrating to do otherwise. Once every few days, one of us will forget to check the Caller ID and we’ll say, “Hello.” We’ll hear “Collect call from” followed by a shaky voice carefully pronouncing the name Beverly Cohen. That’s our cue to hang up and call back. “Mom,” whoever picks up will shout, “Grandma Bev’s calling again.” “I know,” she wearily replies, the mere thought of the painful conversation to be draining her energy instantaneously.


Last November, my Grandma Bev tried taking her own life. After being institutionalized for a couple weeks and subsequently released, she tried again. She has remained at Trenton Psychiatric Hospital. Back in those days, the phone calls would be answered. My mom would talk to her, trying to be there for her mother and help her get through these darkest of times. But my mom’s calm and hopeful demeanor at the start of the conversation would quickly diminish into the words “Mom! I ca… Mom! I will call you later,” as tears welled – tears that can only come from the frustration of watching a loved one suffer with absolutely no way of helping. Slowly but surely, my mom – as well as the rest of us – realized that answering her every call to her about her every worry would only give her one more way to avoid confronting her real problems. At first, we’d hear the phone ring. We’d want to pick up, but we knew that it would not do any good. The twenty seconds or so of sonic torture wrenched our hearts as we waited for the call to drop. But, like everything else in life, if you do something enough it becomes an unconscious habit. Now, over half a year since her hospitalization, the phone ringing gets no more attention than the furnace turning on.


Tonight, however, was different. Tonight I decided to acknowledge the ringing phone. While I was cutting up some bell peppers, the phone rang on the counter next to me. The screen read Pay Phone and I disobeyed my instinct to put it down. “Hello?” I said, waiting for the automated recording. I hung up, took a few deep breaths, and then redialed.


“Hello?” My Grandma answered. The last time I talked to her, her voice was strained from crying incessantly for weeks straight, literally. This time, she sounded different. Her voice was less hoarse, but still weak; it sounded frail and resigned.


“Hey Grandma Bev. It’s Tommy.” “Oh, hi Tommy. Is your mother home?” “No she’s at Angie’s swim meet.” She becomes silent. “But… how are you doing Grandma Bev?” “The same,” she mumbled pessimistically before rambling on about them giving her the wrong meds. For the past nineteen years, doctors were always “giving her the wrong meds.” It’s not the meds! You don’t need them and you have to stop telling yourself you need them, I shouted against the inner walls of my skull. She paused and for several seconds there was silence.


“So, are you working now?” she asked, but not in the typical condescending adult manner. She was genuinely interested in what I was doing. As small of a question as it may have been, it was one of the few times I had heard her take a genuine interest in someone else’s life in a long, long time. Usually she buried herself too deep in her own anxieties to wonder what the rest of the world was up to. “Yeah I do actually. I’m teaching Geometry at St. Joe’s,” I responded proudly. “That’s wonderful,” she said sincerely. Then silence again.


She broke the silence with her usual laundry list of complaints: “they’ve got me in here with drug addicts and homeless people,” “it’s horrible the way they treat you,” “there’s nothing to do,” and so on. My head began to spin but this time, however, she caught herself. “I know I shouldn’t be complaining, especially not to you.” I calmed myself. “It’s ok, Grandma Bev, but don’t think so much about what you shouldn’t be doing. Just focus on what you should be doing to get out of there soon.” She took a breath before admitting, “That’s good advice.” Maybe she is doing a bit better, I thought, wanting to be optimistic.


Then she slipped. “But when I go home I don’t know how I’ll afford all of this. I don’t have enough Social Security… I have to get a new driver’s license, but I don’t know where any of the documents are…” and so she continued. It was as if I could see the furious winds of worry swirling inside her head as her speech failed to grasp each anxiety individually. Frustrated but trying to remain patient, I let her finish. Then silence again, longer this time.


“I had a dream about you this week,” I said changing the subject. “Was it a good dream or a bad one?” she nervously inquired. “A good one. You were over my house and you seemed happy and healthy.” “That would be nice,” she lamented, as if this dream could only be just that. Desperately trying to stay positive, I responded, “Well just keep doing what you have to do to get out of there. Like I tell my students, the KISS method: keep it simple stupid.” She almost chuckled. “Just focus on getting yourself better and when you get out we’ll all work on the other problems together, as a family. You know we’re here for you,” I reminded her. “I know, it’s just so hard. There’s nothing to do here and these new meds make me feel anxious. It’s like a prison.” One that you put yourself in, I thought bitterly. She continued, “On Sundays we don’t even get out of bed because there’s nothing to do.”


I desperately wanted to lambaste her; wanted to tell her, step by step, everything she did wrong and what she needed to do to make it all better. But I bit my tongue. She’s been told these things hundreds of times before, I reassured myself, They don’t sink in for her. “Just focus on what you need to do to get healthy and come home to everyone. Keep it simple,” I say finally. I heard only her labored breathing for a few moments before she broke the silence. “Make sure your mother calls me back. But not between 7 and 8.” “I will,” I said, half relieved the conversation was over but half heartbroken the it ended where it did and where it always does: the same place it started. “I love you,” she said and meant it – or at least wanted to. I sighed – reluctantly accepting that this phone call wouldn’t be the one to change her life either – “I love you too, Grandma Bev.” “Don’t forget to tell your mother. Love you,” she blurted anxiously. “I love you too,” I reiterated, hoping these words will magically summon something in her. And with the push of a button our worlds became separated again.


I returned to cutting the peppers, trying to distract my brain from what just happened. She sounded better, right? Or is she just getting too tired to sound as bad as she did? My mind would not stop.


Minutes later, the phone rang again. It was her. Why is she calling? She can’t be calling to see if my mom’s home yet, could she? Oh no, she’s losing it. I forced my thumb to answer the call and then again to redial the Pay Phone. Come on Grandma Bev. You can do better. I know you can. The ringing stops. “Hello?” I ask. “I just wanted to say how proud I am of you,” she said unexpectedly. “Oh,” I stumbled, shocked by how wrong my presumptions were. “Thank you, Grandma Bev.” She continued, “I didn’t feel anxious. Usually on the phone I feel anxious, but I felt calm talking to you.” “Good. I’m glad I can help you calm down,” I said, at almost a complete loss for words. “Maybe I can come see you soon. Would that be ok?” She replied instantly, “You can come Sunday. There’s nothing to do on Sundays. No reason to get out of bed…” she started again, but all I heard was my mind raging, You’ve got to give yourself your own reason to get out of bed! Appreciate your family and use that as motivation to get yourself better. I remained silent, though.


“Don’t let them give you any problems,” she said randomly, her mind jumping from concern to concern once again. “Who? My students? They’re good. Don’t worry about them,” I reassured, trying to relieve her of at least one unnecessary worry. “Well, that’s good,” she said before silently returning inside her head. “Well I’ve got to finish making some dinner here. I’ll tell my mom you called,” I said, now looking for a reason to end my discomfort. “I’m very proud of you,” she repeated. “Thank you… I love you. Just take care of yourself,” I said again desperately. “Ok. Tell your mother to call after 8.” We hung up.


I told myself she sounded better – at least compared to last time we spoke – and I convinced myself that there was still hope for her. I went back to cutting my peppers – to my life as usual –, the conversation echoing in my head like the phone ring in my ears.

Saturday, July 4, 2009

Installing Appliances

I really shouldn’t be here, I thought to myself as I did my best to avoid the paths of crisscrossing forklifts and followed Jimmy across the warehouse floor. “You can come in tomorrow, if you want,” he told me ten hours earlier on the phone. After two weeks of fruitless Craigslist Job Posting inquiries and my bank account bleeding dry, such an offer seemed too good to pass up. “What about training? I’m not really experienced with this kind of work,” I asked. “You’re a smart kid right? You’ll pick it up no problem. So I’ll see you tomorrow?”

For the two weeks prior I hadn’t gotten out of bed before 10:30 a.m., so making my body get out of bed at 6 that morning left me in that fuzzy area between sleep and consciousness. After roaming Carteret for 15 minutes, I finally found the tiny PC Richard & Son sign that eluded me. I drove by the security gate without stopping and the guard waved at me as if I’d been driving in every day for the past four years. Tight security, I mused.

Jimmy met me outside and I followed him up a loading dock and into the warehouse. As a subcontractor, he had three trucks to call his own and his own five-man crew to run them. By his loading docks his guys rushed to load up their trucks, stopping quickly to shake my hand and then disappearing into the sea of workers hustling back and forth in their navy blue PC Richard’s shirts. “Hey Jimmy, is there any paper…” I started to ask when I realized he was nowhere in sight.
I really shouldn’t be here, I thought again as everyone else’s uniform tees made my usually dull grey Villanova t-shirt glow like a firefly. I could feel the regular workers’ stares piercing through my feeble disguise as they strolled by. “Ha. Hey Bill, get a load of this little pretty boy. Hope he doesn’t break a nail today,” I imagined them saying to one another.

“Hey Tom, I’m pairing you up with Victor. He’ll teach you everything you need to know,” Jimmy said, reappearing suddenly behind me. “Uh… should I… don’t I have to sign some kind of paperwork?” I finally asked. “Na, we can take care of that later. There’s Victor.” Glancing at Victor in the distance as he emerged from the truck trailer, I started, “Hey, I’m not sure how I feel…” but by the time I turned back to Jimmy, he was gone again.

Left with no other choice, I walked over to my new coworker. “Hey, I’m Tom. Victor, right?” I said as I offered my hand. He reciprocated and his hand, dry and rough from constant use, engulfed mine. He was just taller than me, and he looked like a Hispanic Gary Sheffield. I later found out he was only 25, but his face was worn and aged and it made him look almost a decade older. “Do you have a box cutter?” “No. Should I?” I replied as panic set in. “I’ll grab you one.” As my new on-the-job trainer ran to his trailer, my mind began spiraling. A box cutter? I’m such a spaz. What if I cut myself? I really shouldn’t be here. What if I hurt myself? Or worse, him?

Saying that I had no experience with appliance installation was a gross understatement. Truth is I was not allowed to even mow the lawn until I was eighteen because my dad worried about me losing a foot. The only time I handled a pocketknife as a kid I cut myself within seconds of flipping the blade. I was always led to believe that I was much too inept to handle any type of tool; that even touching one could potentially leave me maimed for life. Now I’d have to install washers, dryers, AC units, electric ovens, and the like without as much as a safety video or at least signing a waiver. It was all too much to think about.

He must’ve forgotten about the box cutter along the way because he came back with a dolly and told me to load the washer, dryer, oven, and the ceiling units onto the truck. Spastic as I am, it took three tries to get the first box on the cart, and then two for the second one. I feigned confidence as I walked the units over to the truck and then panicked once again when there was no “Place washer here” sign. It turns out that the random spot on the trailer bed that I chose sufficed, and, after securing all our deliveries, we were good to go.

Climbing into the truck made me akin to an infant trying to climb on an insurmountable couch. As we left the warehouse lot and any chance I had of backing out, Victor made a quick call to his girlfriend as he handled the hula-hoop-sized steering wheel. I examined the contents of the cabin, our office for the day. A lone cigarette rolled off the dashboard and I snagged it from its descent and proudly returned it to its owner. I sat in the passenger seat thinking – a bit more optimistically this time –
At least I’m not completely useless. I really shouldn’t be here, but maybe I’ll learn something new. For the rest of his phone conversation, I watched a mental montage of myself decked in a tool belt and heroically repairing anything from leaky pipes to a blown car transmission. Yeah, this’ll be good.

I’m not good with silence, so after Victor hung up I had to fill it. “So how long you been doing this for?” I said sheepishly. “Oh me, man, I been doin’ this for about three fawkin’ years now. Yeah, man, but I gotta tell people I’ve been doin’ it for five. They look at me and think I don’t know what I’m doin’.” Silence again. “So, uh, you from around here?” Stupid, Tom. “Yeah, I don’t live to far from here. But I’m from the Dominican Republic.” “Oh, cool. So when did you move to the States?” “Well, first we moved to Puerto Rico and then I came here when I was 16.” Then he explained that his stepfather was a total douche bag and he ran away for months at a time and lived with his aunt and uncle. He got a job as soon as he could to support himself independently and live on his own.

The conversation was going well. Wondering if I actually wanted to stick with this job, I asked Victor what he thought about the work. “You know man, sometimes it really sucks. You got some days, you get in the truck at seven and you don’t get back home until eleven at night.” For instance, our day was supposed to be a “light day” and we were on the road until 5:30 p.m. and only finished two jobs. He went on, “But then you got some days when you can make a hundred bucks in cash alone. On a bad day, maybe you get twenty bucks.” We made five apiece that day. Six days a week of anywhere between eight and fourteen hours of work a day hardly seemed worth the six hundred dollars I’d be making a week. He added, “Right now you’re just lucky to have a job. Used to be I could find a new job every two weeks if I wanted to. Not these days, man.”

I thought to myself, I can’t do this job. I’d have absolutely no life and then suddenly it all came colliding together in my brain. Why did I have this choice of taking this job or leaving it in a time when so many people would wipe your ass for you if you gave them a steady paycheck? Why was this job good enough for Victor but too much for me? I thought back to my childhood, growing up with parents could afford to sign me up for little league and send me to a private high school. How different would I be if I moved here from a different country as a teen and lived with a stepfather who I couldn’t bear to live with? Would I have done so well if I didn’t have parents who encouraged me to work harder than my hardest? Going to a school like Villanova made me very aware of where I stood in society, but never before had I realized what this privilege meant than I did at this moment. It meant that I could turn down an undesirable job and chalk it up to it simply “not being for me.” It meant that if I didn’t work now, I’d still have a comfortable bed to sleep in, food to eat, and even money to go out with. Why was I so fortunate? Was there really that much separating Victor and me?

These questions lingered in my head throughout the rest of the day. When we installed the washer and dryer, Victor sprawled out on the wet floor – the result of my inability to hold a washer hose upward – without hesitation while I fumbled with the power drill trying to attach the base of the dryer. I watched him worm his way into a ceiling crawlspace and navigate his way to above the kitchen, practically baking himself along the way. Three times he had to explain that a job would cost much more than was previously estimated, and three times I watched the homeowners’ eyes study him suspiciously. While they questioned him silently, they questioned me about my Villanova shirt and would look at me with sympathy and even admiration. “What a noble young man to take such a lowly job in such hard economic times,” they seemed to be thinking, yet all I was capable of was carrying an oven here or a dryer there and maybe handing Victor a wrench or screwdriver when he needed. Despite my ineptness, their eyes always focused on Victor and seemed to say,
He really shouldn’t be here.