by Elly Fishman
Mariah takes this in. There’s a lot about Sullivan she’d like to change.
“But that doesn’t mean it’s going to work,” one student responds.
“You’re right. But what’s the point of not trying? If you don’t try, there’s a one hundred percent chance it won’t work.”
The teacher continues. She describes her grading schematic. Everyone in the class will have to propose a bill and vote on their classmates’ bills. Jocelyn starts tossing out ideas on how to improve the school. What about more extracurriculars? she asks. A longer passing period? More snacks? Mariah raises her hand.
“What about getting rid of school uniforms?” she asks.
“Sure, that’s good,” Jocelyn responds. “But you’ll need the votes.”
Mariah has a stake in her proposal. School dress has made her unhappy since she entered high school. First, prior to Sullivan, at her previous high school, Mariah was one of only a few Muslim students. When she began her freshman year in 2016, she felt as if the entire school were talking about her headscarf. Her classmates peppered Mariah with questions about Islam. Some whispered “ISIS” when she passed them in the hallways. Mariah, at a loss then, watched how her older sister Farha negotiated the halls. She had always looked up to Farha, and whatever Farha did, Mariah followed suit. Farha, Mariah discovered, took off her hijab when she arrived at school. When Mariah still had her own phone, she saw her sister’s selfies on social media, Farha’s hair cascading down her back. Farha smoked cigarettes behind the school and drove around with boys in their cars. After their parents went to bed, her sister spent hours talking on the phone. Sometimes Mariah stayed up to listen. A month into her freshman year, Mariah decided to remove her hijab, too. She and Farha would arrive at school an hour early and head directly to the girls’ bathroom. There, Mariah would stuff her headscarf in her backpack and, when her classmates asked her where she was from, Mariah, who spoke with a Boricua flare ever since she began learning English from her Puerto Rican middle school classmates, told them she was from Puerto Rico. It seemed few remembered her headscarf.
By the time Mariah enrolled at Sullivan, Farha had left Chicago. She moved out after the girls’ mother challenged them over a Snapchat story she heard about. It showed Farha and Mariah posed in tight tops without their hijabs, and in front of the neighborhood McDonald’s. Farha dropped out of high school and in quick order was engaged to a cousin in Atlanta. The news crushed Mariah. She thought Farha was far too young to marry. She spent weeks cursing her sister, berating her for choosing marriage so young. Farha soon shut Mariah out. “It’s not your business,” she’d say. “I’m making my own choices.”
Mariah heard from another cousin, a young woman who completed two years at Sullivan before dropping out to get married and pregnant. The cousin said that Sullivan was a welcoming place for Muslims, so Mariah decided she’d try the hijab again. She figured it would cheer up her mother, too. Mariah’s battles with her mother over the hijab had nearly ripped her family apart. She wanted to repair the damage.
Her first lunch period at Sullivan was on the late side. At that hour in the fall, light poured sideways into the cafeteria in the geometric shapes of the windows. Mariah surveyed the cafeteria for signs of a crowd she might fit into. It appeared to her that every table hosted a different group. One corner of the room was occupied with a few boys—Rohingya, Iraqi, and African, throwing around a soccer ball across the cafeteria’s blue linoleum floor. In another, a group of American kids blasted the latest hit from the Brooklyn-based rapper 6ix9ine. Mariah knew the song. She heard it often. Loud, reflexive shouts mixed with the heavy hip-hop beats rose from the center of the room where a group of girls watched videos on their cell phones. Most of them wore less conservative gambar and pashmina hijab styles, but they spoke a language that Mariah could not parse.
Still sussing out where she belonged, Mariah made her way to a table of Arabic-speaking girls in layered hijabs paired with trench coats tied over their school uniforms. Mariah could tell from their Levantine Arabic that most of the girls hailed from Syria. When she sat down, she greeted the girls in Arabic. A few smiled politely, while others ignored her. Mariah soon learned that the girls saw their clique as a cut above their Sullivan community. They complained that they could not attend gym class because it was haram. Discussing human anatomy in biology is haram. Teachers who wore sleeveless tops in class? Very haram. Whatever cordiality they mustered toward Mariah that first day soon soured. A few days in, Mariah spied the girls mocking her turban-style hijab. They wrote to one another over text. Why would she wear a scarf at all? What kind of Muslim is she, anyway? After that, Mariah left her hijab at home. If her former school felt unwelcoming to Muslims, these Muslim mean girls were no better.
Mariah soon fell back into her bad habits. She skipped class. She rarely wore her uniform. When Sullivan security guards reprimanded her, she rolled her eyes ostentatiously. By November, Mariah was notorious among Sullivan staff. Whenever staff would address Mariah, her answers were pointed and sardonic.
Just two months into the new year, Matt Fasana heard Mariah had been causing trouble. He called a meeting with the girl and her mother.
As Mariah and her mother, Fatmeh, stood outside Matt’s door, the sophomore was filled with dread. Meetings with school staff, she knows, can sometimes prove dangerous.
A little over a year ago, the worst day of Mariah’s life started at the mirror. It was a chilly morning in early January, early enough in the year that Christmas lights still hung from shop windows. Mariah stood in the bathroom, door closed, examining the scratch and bruise around her eye. Fatmeh, in what she said was an accident, had hit Mariah in the face in an attempt to stop a fight between Mariah and one of her brothers. When Mariah arrived at school, she was immediately peppered with questions about her bruises. The first few times she was asked, Mariah explained she’d gotten in a fight with a friend. But when one of her teachers asked, Mariah broke down and revealed the truth. She explained that she and her brother had been fighting when her mom hit her in the face. Mariah’s teacher called a social worker to the room and Mariah repeated the story. When she did, the social worker explained that they planned to call the Department of Children and Family Services and an investigator would likely visit her parents to inquire about her home life. The investigator’s job, he said, was to determine if Mariah was living in a safe environment. The news sunk Mariah. Reporting the incident had been a mistake. What if an investigation broke their family apart? What if they tried to deport her parents back to Iraq? What if they deported her? There were no good outcomes to this news. Fuck it, Mariah thought to herself.
Later that day, when the sun had nearly set, Fatmeh discovered Mariah looking dazed on the couch.
“Mariah, you look tired,” Fatmeh said in Arabic, leaning over her daughter.
“I took a pill from the counter by mistake,” Mariah explained. “Ibuprofen. I had stomach pain.”
Fatmeh told her daughter to drink some water. Mariah complied, but her pain did not subside. A few minutes later, Fatmeh, increasingly concerned, asked Mariah again. “What did you take? How many pills did you take?”
“Three,” Mariah said, offering a new answer to the question.
“Be honest, Mariah,” Fatmeh urged. “How many did you take? Do you want me to take you to the hospital?”
“No.”
Fatmeh pushed again. Mariah was fading quickly.
“What did you take, Mariah?” Fatmeh now asked, panicked. Before Mariah could answer, she keeled over and spewed green vomit on the living room rug.
“How many pills did you take,” Fatmeh begged. “Just tell me, Mariah.”
“Eight pills … a handful … I don’t know.”
“Why? Because of the scratch on your face? Why would you do this?”
“You don’t know what I did,” Mariah said.
“Whatever you did, it’s not worth losing your life over,” Fatmeh said, reaching for her daughter. “Just
tell me what you took.”
“I took Dad’s pills. I feel like I’m dying, I can’t breathe. I’m dying.”
By now, several of Fatmeh’s children had gathered around Mariah. Alaa, Mariah’s eldest brother, jumped to action. He took Mariah up in his arms and ran her down the flight of stairs to his car. Fatmeh followed.
Mariah could barely hold herself up in the back seat of the car.
“Open the windows,” she begged. “I can’t breathe.”
“Drive faster,” Fatmeh screamed at Alaa, who was navigating to the hospital. “Your sister is dying.”
“Do you want us to die in a car accident?” Alaa shouted back. “I’m going as fast as I can.”
_______
The ER nurses pumped Mariah’s stomach when she arrived at the hospital. She remained delirious for two days, including when the DCFS social worker came to interview her. She told them her father had died in a car accident. She said a nurse had hit her and claimed she could hear the television speaking. Fatmeh sat by the hospital bed day and night. She was also interviewed through a translator. She cried and swore there had been some misunderstanding. Hitting Mariah had been an accident, she said. The room had been dark and when Fatmeh tried to pull Mariah and her brother apart, she had elbowed Mariah in the eye. Once lucid, Mariah seconded her mother’s version of events. It had all been a mistake, Mariah said. After several more interviews and a home visit, the DCFS investigator closed the case.
Mariah spent almost a week in an austere single room on the second floor of the psychiatric ward at Lurie Children’s Hospital. Inside her room, Mariah wasn’t allowed to keep food, electronics, or even wear a bra. She barely spoke in her group therapy sessions for the first two days. When the counselor would call on Mariah, she always responded the same way.
“I don’t need to be here,” she repeated.
“There’s nothing you want to talk about?” the counselor asked.
“No. Like I said, I don’t need to be here. Everything is misunderstood.”
Mariah did, however, listen as other patients told their stories. She was particularly drawn toward one boy who explained he had no one waiting for him outside the hospital walls. Mariah, whose own loneliness could cripple her at times, understood the feeling. But her family came to the hospital every day. They brought her food. They filled her in on family gossip. They asked about her health. No one ever came to visit the boy.
After a couple days in group therapy, Mariah realized that she would never get released if she didn’t start talking. So she opened up. Mariah explained that she fought her parents on everything in America. She wanted to live an American life, but her parents held on to traditional, conservative Iraqi values. The gulf between generations sometimes felt insurmountable. Mariah often pondered why her parents came to America if they were going to just hold on to those ideas, a contradiction she could not understand.
When Mariah was released from the hospital, her father came to pick her up. She told him she had a matter she wanted to discuss.
“Dad,” Mariah said in Arabic, “I’m not going to wear the hijab any more. I’m done.”
“Okay, Mariah,” he replied. “Whatever you want. I just want you out of here.”
As they drove through the Chicago streets, Mariah watched the city pass by through the window. Christmas lights were still up. She’d only been gone for a week, but it felt like a lifetime had passed.
When Matt waved Mariah and Fatmeh into his office, Mariah quietly took a seat in the corner. She pressed her hands against her thighs, though everything about the meeting made Mariah want to flail or shout or leave. Instead, she steeled herself to her mother’s coming fury. But Matt was kind. His even demeanor emanated authority, concern, and optimism all at once. He thanked Fatmeh for coming. He told her that he thought Mariah was nice, but obstinate. Fatmeh nodded in agreement. Mariah had heard her scream aneeda, the Arabic word for willful, at her hundreds of times.
“We’re a proud community,” Matt continued. “We really want to push that we’re family. That we’re together. We also want to just check in and see how you’re doing. How are you liking Sullivan?”
“Good,” Mariah replied. “Like last year, I had a lot of drama at school. And I decided I wanted to be a better person and I wanted a new school with a fresh start. When I came to Sullivan, I started doing better. And I’ve been better.”
Matt asked her about her previous problems.
“Like drama,” Mariah responded, careful not to reveal too many details. “It was stupid stuff. Telling your business to other people.”
Then Fatmeh spoke. “I see she is better here,” she said, looking at her daughter. “She feel good. She get along with people. At her old school, there is nobody there like her. So she feel bad there. And after her sister married, she feel more bad. I know, she do something wrong. I always fight with her about clothes.”
“We have that in common,” laughed Matt.
“Okay,” Fatmeh answered, shifting in her chair. “Give her a chance. She can be better.”
Another Tuesday Afternoon
February afternoons in Chicago Public Schools can be bleak. Looking outside the classroom windows in October or April may inspire daydreams about walks under the colored leaves or budding flowers. But daydreaming about gray, icy February in the city promises far fewer delights. The sounds of car owners scraping their windshields or skidding at the stop signs can be heard in the classrooms. Outside, sooty snow, stained with dog waste, ensures a cold and depressing walk home. Inside Sullivan, the bright lights of the classrooms oddly intensify the dark of the day, and the building is a mix of stifling, overheated (and drafty, under-heated) halls and rooms. Students come to school packing all sorts of tinctures, pastes, and bottles of misted remedies to ward off all the infections they generically call “flu.” It is in February when students who fled warmer climates long most intensely and vocally for the heat they left.
For Sarah and the young ELL teachers at Sullivan, a break from the cold is still six to ten weeks away. The energy of the weekly Tuesday afternoon ELL department meeting begins low, and Sarah knows it will sink lower still as the sun sets. But Sarah works to conjure enthusiasm among the bunch: “It’s pretty cool that we get paid overtime to have these meetings,” she says, placing her laptop computer at the end of the table. “We’re happy to be here. We’re excited to get organized. Yay.” Chips, cookies, coffee, staples of teacher meetings, also fuel the group past the late-day lull.
The meeting agenda covers far more than the usual organizational puzzles. Sarah needs enthusiasm and energy from the room to conquer the bigger challenge of Sullivan’s ELL curriculum. This is the second swipe at evaluating the school’s program since the year began. Among those resources that make Sullivan’s ELL program unique are specialized tutoring, smaller classes, and a social worker dedicated to working with the school’s ELL population. Sarah also maintains close partnerships with local resettlement agencies and neighborhood organizations that provide counseling, food, and after-school programs for refugee and immigrant teens. With the revamp also comes a grand new name, Sullivan’s International Academy. For this meeting, Sarah has invited Ambareen Nasir, an educational consultant and lecturer at Loyola University—the university is among Sullivan’s partners—who will lead the meeting. Her research focuses, in part, on preparing green ELL teachers. Sarah brought her in to speak about methods that work in the classroom.
“Thank you for having me here,” Ambareen says, looking out at the group and their full plates of snacks. “And welcome to today’s session on “What do we stand for? What is our vision for the ELL program here? Today we’re establishing a vision.”
Ambareen asks someone to read the department’s current vision statement. A teacher toward the end of the table volunteers.
“The International Academy offers a comprehensive program that will meet the academic, social, and emotional needs of students and their families,” she recites from her open lapt
op. It’s the kind of muffled, drone-ish delivery most teachers would interrupt were it a student speaking. “We work in partnership with refugee agencies, elementary schools, and community organizations to provide a seamless experience to transition into American culture.” The recitation seems to speed the sun’s descent outside.
Ambareen asks the same woman to read the mission statement. The woman complies.
“To provide a strong education for all of our students and help them to become participatory citizens in the democratic society,” she says, “life-long learners, and productive working members of their local communities.” Outside, the streetlamps begin to glow.
Ambareen asks the group to meditate on these statements and write a short reaction to them. Once they’ve finished she encourages everyone to read over the responses, which they put into a shared Google document.
“I don’t want to call people out,” says one of the newest teachers in the bunch, “I just read something interesting. ‘We give them the tools to become productive Americans.’ I didn’t really like that. We never really use that descriptor. I’m wondering what tools do we provide?”
Sarah jumps in: “And what does it even mean to be an American?”
“And does that define character?” adds another.
“I like that we all have this idea that it is good to pay it forward,” says Sarah. “That we’re helping the students as newcomers, but then when they leave here, it’s their job to help another newcomer along the way.”
After quickly scanning the groups’ responses, Ambareen jumps in to focus the conversation. She is politic and careful with her words as she knows it’s late and that complaints from a tired room of teachers can spiral. “I’m seeing some shared goals,” she says, “Transitioning into American culture. Mentorship. Strategy. What we want to do today is try and unpack what all of this means.”