Disturbed in Their Nests Page 5

  James had shown us a white cloth in the bathroom at the house. “After you shower you wipe your body with this cloth.”

  I took a shower, wiped my body with that cloth and little white things stuck all over my skin. In the camp after our shower, we waited a minute or two, put on our clothes, and came out of the bath shelter.

  America was very sophisticated. I needed education to understand all of these things around me. How did these things come about? What I was seeing made my schooling in the camp seem so small. I felt puny and worried.

  In the refugee camp, it was natural for me to always go about with a pen and a paper to record things. Here in America, I was seeing so many new things, learning so many new things, that I needed to write them down.

  Judy took us to an area in the store where Benson and Cliff were looking at many sizes and colors of composition books and pens, like nothing I’d ever seen before. In the camp, we usually tore a piece of paper into pieces to share. I looked at all of the composition books and decided on the biggest one.

  Benson said, “You need to look at the price and see what it is. If it is less, that is the one you need to get.” He showed me the number on the one I’d picked out. “No, no, don’t be greedy. You must get the small one for less money.”

  I put the big one back and picked a small one. We went to the front of the building. Judy pulled out a card and gave it to the person. Her green card. Food in a king’s restaurant wasn’t free because it was special, but things here were free. I wished Benson hadn’t stopped me from getting the bigger notebook.

  A tall stack of boxes that read slimfast caught my interest. What was that? Did it make people run faster? Be smarter? It seemed that in America, if you wanted to be big or small, you took certain medication to alter you. In the Predator movie, Arnold Schwarzenegger had a huge gun, and he was able to hold it with only one hand while the gun fired. Could SlimFast give me that kind of strength?

  “What is this?” I asked Judy.

  She paused and looked like I had asked her about an American secret she didn’t want to share with me.

  She said, “You drink this to get thin.”

  Why would someone want to be thin? Didn’t they want to be healthy and look rich and powerful? I was disappointed. I wanted to get big and strong and fat. We saw some people in the store who were really big. They walked slowly. Some even rode in chairs with wheels. “Wow, that one is really rich,” we said.

  In the car on the way back to the house we talked about the things we had seen that day. When one of us asked, “Why would anyone want to dry their hair?” we all laughed. I was so excited and so happy. I’d been picked up in a car and taken to an eating place for kings and to a store where rich people bought things. I had new clothes, a writing book, and a pen. What an amazing day.

  Judy drove us back to the house. We got out with Joseph. Judy and Cliff stayed in their car. “Yin ca leec,” she said with an American accent. “Goodbye.” Then they left, and I was stunned.

  Why did she leave us so quickly like that? I thought she was our sponsor.

  DRIVING HOME

  Judy

  We’d nearly reached home before Cliff said a word. “What do mentors do?” he asked.

  “They do things like counselors. Parents are mentors to their children. But sometimes other people can be mentors too. Like a special teacher.”

  “Are the guys orphans?”

  “I’m not sure. They may not know if their parents are still alive. They’re orphans here in the US, that’s for sure.”

  I had questions like that too, and many more. They’d endured such terror as young children, it didn’t feel right asking. They seemed so cheerful. Did they ever talk about the past? Or had they put it out of their minds?

  “Mom, we didn’t get them the dictionary. They need one.”

  “Oh, you’re right. Darn.”

  “Are you going to be their mentor?”

  Part of me wanted to call Joseph, ask more about this mentoring. When Joseph had mentioned mentoring earlier, I didn’t think I wanted any part of it. Now, I was feeling tempted. Slow down, I told myself. Making an impulsive or casual commitment would be unfair and selfish. Showing newcomers around town was one thing. Assisting with education, jobs, health care, and immigration issues was another. What did refugee status mean anyway? I knew so little about the whole process I didn’t even know what I didn’t know. I wasn’t a social worker. My naive mistakes could be at their expense. No rush. I could mentor someone in a few months when my novel was finished and Cliff was back in school. Joseph had said other boys would be coming. Thousands were still in the camp.

  “That’s a big decision,” I replied. “A lot of responsibility. I may not know how to do all the things they need.”

  “You can do it, Mom.”

  Oh boy, he wasn’t helping. But I liked that he’d enjoyed himself so much he wanted me to commit.

  Nevertheless, Benson, Alepho, and Lino had been shorted our first day when our time ran out. Maybe before summer was over in two weeks, I could take them to the zoo or the beach or a ball game. I hoped Cliff would want to come.

  “Mom, when can we take them to get a dictionary?”

  I smiled. “I’ll call Joseph when we get home.”

  • • •

  It was after five when I dialed Joseph’s extension. He picked up on the first ring.

  “Hi, it’s Judy.”

  “I know.”

  “We didn’t get to do much today. Can we show them around again?”

  I sensed Joseph’s warm smile through the phone. He probably knew this would happen.

  “Yes,” he said. “The same three boys? That would be fine.”

  I almost asked what the responsibilities of a mentor were, but was still afraid it might imply more than I was ready to do. “When?”

  He ran through a list of things they needed to get done. “Is Thursday good?”

  “Thursday is fine.” Truth was, I’d probably have made any day fine.

  WHAT IS THE MEANING OF FREE?

  Alepho

  The next day we waited in the apartment all day, but Judy and her son did not come back. Joseph came in the afternoon. “Where is our sponsor?” I asked.

  “She will come again,” Joseph said.

  “When?”

  “In two days.”

  When it came to learning, I was greedy. I wanted to learn about America in one day. America was the land of the free, where everyone aspired to be the best they could be. My life’s work would be a testimony to what freedom could do for an individual. I wanted to be an explorer of the vast mysteries. A warrior of life.

  I took in as much as my mind could handle. Thankfully I had the notebook. Things needed for survival had to be written down in my guidebook. My American life skills.

  Joseph said, “I am taking you to get your ID.”

  “What is ID?” I asked.

  “It is important to have an ID to identify who you are.”

  “Won’t people just look at the person of me to know who I am?”

  “It doesn’t work that way. You need proof of who you are and a residence address.”

  That didn’t make sense to me. I never had an ID in my life. I was known as the son of Deng Akuectoc, and that was enough.

  Benson said, “There are millions of names to be memorized and no one is willing to do such a mundane task as memorizing the names of all the citizens.”

  Millions of Americans would not know there was a person by the name of Alephonsion Deng who lived in the United States, and I wouldn’t know them. Strange. Back in Sudan, everyone in my village, and even distant villages, knew one another. In the camp, there were thousands, but we saw each other so often, we at least knew what family or tribe or country everyone came from and that was enough. We had a ration card to get food but we d
idn’t need an ID to know who we were.

  After the DMV, we went to the Social Security office. We wrote on paper forms that had places to put your name, address, and zip code.

  “What is the function of a zip code?”

  Joseph tried his best to explain things. “Zip code is for mailing letters. Now they will give you your social security number for your tax ID.”

  I knew about taxes but one did not need a number back home. A tax collector came to the open-­air market and approached the seller and said we need this amount of money from you. Tax was collected by hand.

  Joseph said, “You must carry these cards in your pockets at all times, wherever you go. Don’t lose them or you’ll have to pay money to replace them.”

  In the camp, we had only the ration card. Here we had many, and it was only our first week. I wrote down my new responsibilities in my guidebook. I had to be mindful to keep these small cards all of the time.

  By the end of the day I was confused and overwhelmed. We had an I-­94 number, a zip code number, a DMV ID number, and a social security number. These mathematical number sets were my new name. Did people take time to know you in America?

  WHAT HAPPENED THERE?

  Judy

  Questions about Sudan peppered my thoughts. What had happened to the girls? Their parents? How far did the boys walk? What was the refugee camp like?

  “Let’s look up some information on the internet,” I told Cliff.

  We searched “Sudan History” on my computer.

  The situation in Sudan was termed a civil war that began in 1983 and still wasn’t over. Almost twenty years—the boys’ entire lives. Two million Sudanese in the south had died and five million had been displaced. “Like our civil war?” Cliff asked.

  Good question. “I don’t know. Sounds like most of the dying was in the south.”

  A northern Arab, Muslim government fought the black animist and Christian south.

  “Race and religion, that’s typical,” I commented. They’d been neighbors for a thousand years. What had happened in 1983 to spark such a horrible conflict? I read on. Huge oil reserves located in the south but controlled by the north funded the war.

  “Of course: oil.”

  How often was oil behind it all? I hoped no Sudanese oil went into my gas tank. Surely, we wouldn’t buy oil from a government who seized land and killed its own people like some drug cartel?

  Many boys had been outside their villages tending herds of cattle and goats when the attacks came. Their parents were killed. Their sisters sold into slavery.

  “Like real slaves?” Cliff asked.

  “I guess like real slaves.” Cliff was probably referring to the American slavery of the past. I doubted he’d heard too much about the various types of modern-­day slavery, like sex trafficking or captive domestic workers. The girls sold in Sudan had probably suffered from all aspects of slavery. Personally, I’d never known anyone who had been directly affected by any form of it.

  We read on. Tens of thousands of boys had fled. Maybe half survived the hundreds of miles’ journey to Ethiopia. Two years later, the new Ethiopian government drove them out of Ethiopia and back into Sudan at gunpoint. They swam the Gilo River. A thousand boys shot, drowned, or eaten by crocodiles.

  Cliff’s eyes widened. “Crocodiles? Did Benson swim that river?”

  “I don’t know.” I thought it was interesting he asked about Benson specifically. They seemed to have bonded over colored pencils.

  Once back in Sudan and right in the midst of the ongoing civil war, the boys began another trek south. Finally they’d reached Kenya. Sixteen thousand of them languished there for nine years in a camp called Kakuma. From the photos, Kakuma was one really dusty, desolate place.

  I felt pride in America, glad that our country had recognized these boys’ dire situation and taken action. I gave Cliff a hug, thinking about the boys’ mothers. I felt awful for them. How did they endure all this? Their daughters sold. Their husbands murdered. Their sons, only little boys, fleeing alone into a war. Had their mothers survived? How would they know?

  I regularly devoured two newspapers a day, read Newsweek and Time magazines, watched the TV news, and listened to public radio in the car. Why hadn’t I heard about this whole situation in Sudan while it was happening? Or had I heard but not paid attention to a disaster so far away and unlikely to impact me?

  Cliff and I moved to the family room and again watched the 60 Minutes segment. Having just spent a day with three Lost Boys, the show hit me in a whole new way. More personally. More like a mother. Today’s charming incidents when they were learning about American conveniences wouldn’t be so humorous when they went looking for work. Within three months they’d need to have jobs, begin paying for rent and food, and make good on the $850 they already owed the US government for their plane tickets here. Where would they find either time or money for education?

  At one point in the segment, a Lost Boy stood on a busy city street in America. He put his hand to his brow and looked up and around at the tall buildings with a confused expression. He was searching for a job.

  I turned off the television. The boys who had come to the US would be more likely to survive than those left behind, but they would face challenges. I recalled Benson, Alepho, and Lino standing in the IRC office—hope brimming in their eyes, enthusiasm in their handshakes, all eager to begin their new lives. Who knew what they’d heard about America? Cars, houses, a comfortable life? All of it was possible, but first they needed more education. And before that, they needed jobs. That would be difficult now that the tourist season was ending and the California economy was in a slump. Every day the news carried stories of executives taking jobs at car washes and fast-­food places just to put food in their own kids’ mouths. How was a never-­before-­employed, unskilled teenager with an accent, who didn’t drive and was just learning to turn on a faucet and a light switch, going to compete for employment?

  “Can we take them to the zoo?” Cliff asked.

  “Maybe the zoo, or the beach. Let’s ask them what they would like most. Did you hear what they said when they wanted those composition books and pens at Walmart? They said it was to write down what they saw. Let’s get them each a disposable camera so they can take pictures too.”

  “Cool.”

  COAL-BLACK PERSON

  Alepho

  My new shoes from Walmart seemed able to travel a long distance. The next day I decided to walk to the IRC office to test them out. When we had driven places, I tried to remember everything I saw and how to get there, but each place looked the same as all the others.

  I set out from the house and followed the bus route that Joseph had explained, walking from Euclid Avenue to University Avenue. Then I walked until I reached the big sign that read north park and turned right onto Thirtieth Street and walked north until I reached the IRC office. The trip took two hours. I turned around and headed home. Without a dirt trail, big tree, or hill to look for, I had to be mindful to spot the proper street signs. I made it back home. When everything is new, a small accomplishment feels good.

  No one spoke to me the entire way. I greeted each person but it was like they either didn’t hear me or they ignored me. That puzzled me. Maybe they didn’t understand my English. Did American people not like me because I was much darker than everybody else? Perhaps a coal-black person wasn’t welcome.

  When I reached the apartment, I told Benson, “American people did not respond to my greetings. They looked at me like I had an elephant tusk on me. Maybe they are unhappy. But I think they might be just rude.”

  Benson said, “Don’t judge people if you do not know them or have no connection with them. Maybe you are being rude to Americans. You don’t know if it is acceptable to greet first. If you don’t know then why are you greeting them? You are the stranger. You should wait for them to greet you first.”

>   I could not answer my brother well. He always assessed everything first to know if it was right or wrong. His scrutiny and advice did not always sit well with me.

  I asked James, who had been in America longer. “This is the way Americans are,” he said. “Do not put it badly in your mind. You are also an American by being on American soil.”

  I wanted to connect with my fellow Americans. Back home, it was through a greeting that you connected with people. I told myself not to be discouraged. I had found my way through the city. I would find a way to connect to the people.

  POURING WORDS

  Judy

  Eighteen was the cutoff age to be admitted to California high schools. Alepho and Lino were nineteen, Benson twenty-­one. Joseph had told me that Daniel and James were studying for their GED, or high school equivalency exam, in preparation for entering college. They did well on the math, science, and English parts, but American history and literature remained a challenge. Not surprising. I stopped by a local bookstore and selected a few books and a dictionary that I thought might be helpful for their preparation.

  A recently cast-­off computer system sat in our garage. Paul liked new technology the way some people liked new haircuts. “Can I have that?” I asked him.

  He smiled. “Of course. Got any special plans for it?”

  I’d originally considered donating it to Joseph’s sewing center for the Sudanese women, but the center wasn’t ready for it yet. I emailed Joseph and told him that I wanted to give it to Benson, Alepho, and Lino. Joseph agreed. I sensed he would have been too polite to say so even if he didn’t.

  Paul helped me put the system together, and we loaded it into the back of my Explorer.

  Wednesday night I couldn’t sleep. At midnight, I gave up and went to my office. After checking email, I decided to make a few notes. I’d never kept a diary or journal before but there had been something so unique and powerful about my first day’s experience with three Lost Boys of Sudan that I didn’t want to forget any details.