“Yes, sir,” she said. “Is this an emergency?”
McNulty finally broke. “Wait,” he said. “Please. I’m sorry. Really. Please don’t.”
My eyes still locked on his, I told the dispatcher, “Officer, hang on. I think we’ve got this resolved.”
“Are you sure?” she asked. “I can have somebody there in two minutes.”
“Thank you, but I think we’re okay here.”
“All right, Dr. Brockton. You take care, and call back if you need us.”
“I will,” I told her. “I appreciate it.” I hung up, reholstered my phone, and motioned to a chair. McNulty sat, and I did too, leaving a seat between us as a buffer. “Now you tell me, what on earth made you think that was an acceptable way to treat another student? Was it because she’s a girl who’s smart? Do you treat all intelligent women that way?” He shrugged and shook his head. “That’s not good enough. I need you to explain. What were you thinking about her that gave you permission to demean her like that?”
He heaved a heavy sigh. “I guess . . . I guess I just snapped. I see all these Muslim immigrants everywhere, and it . . . it feels like they’re taking over our country. I think they’re bad for our country . . .” He trailed off and shrugged again.
“These Muslim immigrants? Like Mona?” He nodded tentatively. “Mona was born and raised here in Knoxville,” I told him. “She’s every bit as American as you are. Her father’s a professor here. Did you know that?” He shook his head. “He’s one of the best electrical engineers in the world. So you didn’t know that, either, did you?”
His cheeks flushed again. “No, sir, I didn’t.”
“Therefore, you also don’t know that her father’s specialty is the U.S. electric power grid—specifically, ways to make it less vulnerable to blackouts and terrorist attacks. You think that’s bad for our country?”
“No, sir, I guess not.”
“I don’t have to guess,” I said. “I know it’s not bad for our country. It’s damned important for our country. But you looked at Mona, saw a head scarf, and decided she was beneath you—just another raghead immigrant, right?”
“Yes, sir, I guess I did. I’m sorry.”
“I’m not the one you need to say that to, am I?”
“No, sir, probably not.”
“Probably not?”
He sighed. “I should apologize to her.”
“Well, I’ll give you a chance to do so. At the beginning of class next time.”
He looked pained. “In class? In front of class?”
I nodded. “If you want to stay in the class. And avoid a misconduct hearing and a police report.”
Another sigh. “Yes, sir. Can I go now?”
“No, you can’t,” I said. “We’re not quite through here. It sounds like maybe you’re willing to see Mona a little differently, now that you know she’s not just some pushy immigrant?” McNulty’s eyes darted back and forth, and I could see him parsing my words, searching for subtext—seeking a snare—so I laid it on the table. “But what if she were? What if she were an Afghan immigrant, or a Syrian refugee? What’s wrong with that?”
“Well, maybe nothing, individually. But . . . there’s so many of them, and a lot of them are terrorists.”
“Really? A lot? How many?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “But any is too many. Don’t you think so? Or do you want terrorists coming to America?”
“McNulty, if you condescend to me one more time, you’ll be out of here so fast your privileged little head will spin,” I snapped. “Of course I don’t want terrorists here. But I also don’t want to live in a country that’s got a wall around it. I still believe in the Statue of Liberty—‘send me your poor’; ‘I lift my lamp beside the golden door’; all that land-of-opportunity stuff. Maybe it’s corny, but I still believe it’s part of what made this country great.”
I scrutinized the boy’s face: pale skin, dark hair. “McNulty. Is that a Native American name?” He blinked, startled. “I’m kidding. Irish, right?” He nodded warily. “You know when your ancestors came to America?”
“Not exactly. A long time ago. Early eighteen hundreds?”
“Ask your parents or grandparents. Chances are, they came in the late 1840s or early 1850s. You know why?”
He shrugged. “Looking for a better life, I suppose.”
I nodded. “Sure, if by ‘a better life’ you mean not starving to death. They probably came during the Great Famine. Also called the Irish Potato Famine. A million people in Ireland starved to death between 1845 and 1852. A million more came to the United States. You know what they found when they got here?” He shrugged again; he was a shrugger, McNulty. “Bigotry. Prejudice. Abuse by people who thought that these scrawny, dirty Irish immigrants were second class. ‘Irish need not apply,’ a lot of help-wanted ads specified. People said there were too many Irish, that they were dangerous and drunkards, that they were bad for America. Sound familiar?”