SHE DRAGGED HERSELF THROUGH THE CITY, FROM WORK TO SCHOOL TO home, because she needed to carry on as if nothing had changed, as if their lives hadn’t just been opened up to unravelment. She couldn’t summon a smile, sing a song, or string together two thoughts without the word “deportation” finding its way in there, and yet she propelled herself forward the morning after the news, dressed in pink scrubs and white sneakers for a long day of work, an overloaded backpack strapped on her shoulders so she could study at work while the client slept. Fatigued but unbowed, she traveled every day that week from Harlem to Park Slope to Chambers Street, even though she had a headache so vicious she groaned on subway platforms whenever trains screeched toward her. Once, on her way to work, she considered getting off the train to run into a Starbucks bathroom and have a good cry but she resisted the urge, because what good had all the tears done? What she needed to do was start sleeping better, stop staying up all night dreading the most horrid things that had not yet happened. We’ll take it as it comes, Jende said to her every day, but she didn’t want to take it as it came. She wanted to be in control of her own life, and now, clearly, she wasn’t, and simply thinking about the fact that someone else was going to decide the direction of her future was enough to intensify her headache, leave her feeling as if a thousand hammers were banging on her skull. This helplessness crushed her, the fact that she had traveled to America only to be reminded of how powerless she was, how unfair life could be.
Six days after the news, her headache abated—not because her fears had diminished but because time has a way of abating these things—but new symptoms cropped up: loss of appetite; frequent urination; nausea. The symptoms could mean only one thing, she knew, and it wasn’t something to cry over. And yet when she told Jende about them, she burst into tears, her joy and despair so mingled she seemed to be crying tears of joy out of one eye and tears of despair out of the other. She couldn’t join him in laughing in amazement at the fact that it had finally happened, just when they had stopped worrying about whether it was ever going to happen after almost two years of trying. She couldn’t marvel at how wonderful it was to get good news at a time like this, but she hoped she would be happy soon, as soon as she could eat without throwing up and get through a day without feeling like a movable lump of hormones.
“Mama,” Liomi said to her one morning as she packed his lunch, “please don’t forget we have the parent-teacher conference today.”
Tell your teacher I cannot come, she wanted to say, but she looked at him sitting at the dinette eating his breakfast cereal, peaceful in his ignorance in the way only a child could be, and she knew she had to go to the meeting, because Jende was right—they had to keep him happy.
“Liomi’s a good student,” the teacher said to her by way of opening the conference, after she arrived fifteen minutes late from work. Neni nodded absentmindedly. Liomi was a good student, yes, she knew—she sat with him most evenings to do his homework. She didn’t need to attend a meeting to hear this, not after having spent ten hours attending to a bedridden man while her stomach churned from not having eaten lunch because of a lack of appetite. It had been about as awful a day as any other to be a home health aide: Every time the man had coughed and asked for his spit cup to deposit yellow globs of phlegm, her nausea had returned and she had rushed into the bathroom to throw up the water and crackers she’d had for breakfast.
“The only thing that concerns me about him,” the teacher went on, “is that—”
“What concerns you about him?” Neni asked, suddenly alert.
“Oh, nothing too bad,” the teacher said with a short laugh, a faint accent (Hispanic? Italian?) seeping through her warm voice and causing Neni to wonder if she was an immigrant or a child of immigrants. If she was an immigrant, she didn’t appear to be a poor one, not with the dazzling diamond ring on her finger and the Coach bag on the table. She was new to the school and seemed no older than twenty-four, probably only a year or two into teaching, and it was clear to Neni, from the young woman’s cheerful demeanor and easy smile, that she was enjoying her job, and that regardless of why she initially took the job, she believed in what she was doing, in the difference she was making in the lives of her students. It was evident she was nowhere close to being as disillusioned as Liomi’s teacher from the previous year, who repeatedly shook her head and sighed at least ten times during parent-teacher conferences.
“Liomi’s a good student, Mrs. Jonga,” she said, “but he could be more attentive in class.”
“Attentive, eh?”
The teacher nodded. “Just a little bit more, yes. It could make a world of difference.”
“And by not attentive, what do you mean? Is he sleeping when you are talking?”
“Oh, no, not at all,” the teacher said, smiling again, apparently to put Neni at ease. Her makeup and pink lipstick were fresh, as if she had applied them between the end of classes and the start of her meetings with the parents; every strand of her hair was pulled into a neat bun at the back of her head. As far as Neni was concerned, she looked as if she was all set to go out to dinner with her fiancé, or to one of those lounges where young women without family responsibilities went to drink and laugh after work.
“I didn’t say he’s not attentive,” she said. “He is. He’s a good listener. But every so often, he lets himself get distracted in class. He and his friend Billy—”
“They do what?” Neni asked. She was aware of the anger in her voice but didn’t care to tell the teacher that the anger wasn’t directed at her.
“Billy’s the clown, but Liomi can’t stop himself from laughing at every silly thing Billy says or does. Liomi’s a great kid, Mrs. Jonga. He’s obedient, he’s sharp, he’s just an all-around good boy. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you this—I can tell from his performance how involved you are in his schooling.”
“But he makes noise in class?”
“He loves to laugh. Which is fine, of course. It’s a good thing to be happy, don’t get me wrong, but when he’s in class, it would help for him to be less … giggly?”
“And you spoke to him? He does not listen to you?”
“He listens sometimes. I’ve moved him and Billy to extreme ends of the classroom. It’s not just Liomi. Other kids get a kick out of Billy and his little brand of comedy—we’re working on him. But in the meantime, it’ll be good if we can help Liomi so he doesn’t continue to—”
“Oh, don’t worry about anything continuing,” Neni said, widening her eyes as she stood up to button her jacket. “None of this nonsense will continue after today.”
The teacher nodded and was about to add something, but Neni was already out the door. She ordered Liomi to stand up and he complied, jumping up from a bench in the hallway and strapping on his backpack. She said nothing more to him until they got home, though she held his hand firmly as they walked down Frederick Douglass Boulevard, tightening her grip as they hurried past a housing project where two young men had been gunned down the week before.
At home, she gave him crackers and orange juice. She could see his fear as he gingerly moved the crackers into his mouth.
“Lio,” she said to him softly, after he had finished his snack and she had asked him to sit next to her on the sofa. She hadn’t envisioned herself speaking to him this gently when she’d walked out of the parent-teacher conference, but something about walking past a place where young men had died, then watching him eat his crackers so sadly, had softened her heart.
“Lio, do you know why we send you to school?” she said.
He nodded, looking down to avoid her eyes.
“Do we send you to school to play, Liomi?”
He shook his head.
“Tell me why we send you to school.”
“So I can learn,” he said slowly, almost shamefully.
“To learn and do what else?”
“You send me to … nothing, Mama. Just to learn.”
“Then why do you play in class? Eh? Why do you not listen to your teacher?”
He looked at her, then the floor, then the wall, but said nothing.
“Answer me!” she said. “Who is Billy?”
“He is my friend.”
“Your friend, eh?”
He nodded, still looking away.
“Because he’s your friend, you have to let him distract you? Have I not told you that when it comes to school, you cannot let yourself be distracted?”
“But Mama, I did not do anything—”
“Listen to me, Liomi! Open your ears and listen to me, because I will say this once and then I’ll never say it again. You do not go to school to play. You do not go to school to make friends. You go to school to sit quietly in class and open your ears like gongo leaf and listen to your teacher. Are you hearing me?”
The child nodded.
“Open your mouth and say ‘Yes, Mama’!”
“Yes, Mama.”
“Do you think Papa goes to work every day so you can play in school? Without school, you will be nothing. You will never be anybody. Me and Papa, we wake up every day and do everything we can so you can have a good life and become somebody one day, and you repay us by going to school and playing in class? You know what’s going to happen if I tell Papa what the teacher told me? Do you think he’ll be happy to hear that you think school is a place to play?”
“Mama, please …”
“Why should I not tell him?”