Refugee High

by Elly Fishman

The first students Chad met in his first days at Sullivan were a group of refugees participating in a summer program. They were students who had landed in a school, in a city, and in a time, that put them at the center of the American project. They were the newest Americans. And Chad knew, if he succeeded in his vision for Sullivan, they would become tough, multilingual, multicultural thinkers who could help America’s future. Now, five years into his tenure, Chad feels he is finally fulilling that promise.

  Before the teachers left for their summer break, Chad shared his excitement in a speech to his staff.

  At Sullivan, we know who we are. We know where we’re going. I want you all to walk with that Sullivan swag. You should walk with that S on your chest and be proud to be part of this school. Wear that S with pride. We’ve gone from the lowest-performing school on the North Side of Chicago to a school with rising attendance, enrollment, and graduation rates. Look at this. Look at what we did. Be proud.

  But Chad knows better than to dwell on any one success. That’s why he’s kept written records throughout his fifteen years working inside CPS. Looking over his entries, Chad is reminded how radically different his life looks from when he left Harper High School five years ago. He still keeps Harper’s shield-bearing insignia on his keychain. It reminds him of his hardest days. They may still haunt him, but they also fuel him.

  Soon, Chad will write his fifth Sullivan entry. That’s as long as he’s been at any one institution, and he feels as though the school has become a part of him. His inner clock is the school’s clock, even when he’s not at the school. It’s also reshaped his psyche because unexpectedly, while he’s connected to everyone at Sullivan, as principal, he feels in some ways more isolated and lonelier than he could have imagined. Other principals must feel that, too, but none have ever confided that in him, let alone prepared him for it. The pressure to keep an entire school afloat weighs heavily on Chad. The future of his students does, too. Good news buoys him, but he knows reversals will come, too. And he feels the troublesome trends taking shape in the nation will threaten the education and safety he can offer his students. The excitement of a success can quickly turn to a desperate desire to hold on to it.

  Chad’s cell phone buzzes. It’s the guitar repair center. They tell him that his “baby” is ready. He plays in several bands. Hot as Hell, a Jesus and Mary Chain-cum-Queens of Stone Age band, remains his longest-standing group, and another punk group in which Chad goes by the stage alias Principal Pleasure, has a few gigs booked over the summer. The fun of Chad’s alter ego is a declaration to himself to never linger on the negative. In the band he can briefly push aside the internal rhythms set by Sullivan. Pumping out a punk barrage on his guitar can also help hurdle him forward. It is a phase that he calls Let’s fucking go. Alice Cooper said it another way, but the meaning is the same: School’s out for summer!

  12

  AUGUST

  Belenge

  Stacks of mismatched plates and glasses fill several supermarket boxes on the sidewalk outside the building entrance. A small mountain of black trash bags stuffed with donated clothes and shoes stands next to them. Chicago is a convection oven in August, and thermal drafts carry the stink of trash and other aromas drifting down to the sidewalk. From Belenge’s family’s third-floor apartment, drift the smells of bad plumbing and the sweat of moving day. The building door is propped open so Belenge, Asani, and a squad of friends can carry their remaining belongings down to the street. Belenge’s family has decided suddenly to leave Chicago.

  Belenge’s father, Tobias lost his job earlier in the spring. Since then, he’s collected unemployment. Though Belenge rarely stays at his family’s apartment, when he does, he finds the trash bin filled with bottles. Then there’s the smattering of beer cans around the air mattress that Tobias sleeps on. Tobias’s drinking wasn’t new, but his speed at draining the bottles was. If he wasn’t drinking, he was likely at Mama Sakina’s house sleeping it off. One afternoon in early August, Tobias lay on Mama Sakina’s couch, asleep, while one of her daughters played on the floor next to him. Without waking, Tobias rolled off the couch and onto the floor with a loud thud. The girl yelled for Mama Sakina, who discovered that Tobias was barely breathing. A 911 call summoned an ambulance, which took Tobias to St. Francis Hospital. Belenge was told his father’s organs were failing. Tobias spent nearly a week in the hospital. When he was released, Tobias decided to move his family to Lansing, Michigan, home to a small Bembe community including some of Tobias’s cousins. He reasoned that if he fell ill again, his cousins would help take care of his children. When Tobias broke the news to Belenge, the boy felt his life in Chicago, and especially at Sullivan High School, was being stolen from him. He felt his father was making them all run again, when there was no real enemy but alcohol. But in the end Belenge realized that they were destined to move on.

  On the sidewalk outside the apartment, a small crowd forms. Word has spread that Belenge and his family are leaving Chicago. Theirs is the latest of a series of departures by Congolese families. First Esengo and his family relocated to Iowa. Belenge rarely speaks to Esengo anymore, but he’s heard that his friend suffers from symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder when he recalls the evening of October 13. That night scared many in the Congolese community and pushed several families to move to Kentucky and Wisconsin. Even Mama Sakina says she plans to move her family to the small Wisconsin city of Appleton once she finds an apartment there. Belenge wonders who will remain in Chicago come December.

  Though a shooter has not been identified, and Esengo’s case remains among the 95 percent of unsolved shootings in Chicago, the fears that rattled Belenge at the beginning of the school year have faded. For months, he got rides to and from school, but by the end of the year Belenge was back to walking. The sounds of spring construction projects and honking horns served as his soundtrack. He’d started to like school, too. His English teacher has been taking the class on field trips to learn not only vocabulary and grammar, but also about life in America. In May, Belenge and his classmates walked to the neighborhood grocery store, Devon Market. It may have been a small outing, but it was a big adventure for him. Once they arrived at the store, Belenge stood just inside the entrance, his mouth slightly agape. As he surveyed the crowded aisles, his eyes widened. Never had he seen multiple varieties of bananas or red, green, and yellow apples. There were piles and piles of greens, each one with a different leaf, shade, and shape from the other.

  “What are these?” he asked once inside, holding up a nut still in its shell. Someone pointed to a sign above the bin. “Almond,” he read out loud. He had never heard of such of a nut. Walking over to the butcher counter, he saw a mix of Italian hot sausage, chicken, pork rubbed with Mexican chiles, and heaping bins of ground beef. On top of the counter sat a display of plastic bags filled with chicharróns. He recognized chicken feet from Mama Sakina’s cooking. There were so many new and familiar wonders inside the store. The neighborhood—now his neighborhood—held copious mysteries and delights.

  Moving to Lansing means that Belenge may not visit Devon Market again. He doesn’t know if he’ll ever return to Chicago, either. Gloria Walsh, the American volunteer, has the trunk to her car wide open. She and her nephew have offered to drive Tobias, Belenge, and his siblings to Lansing, in two cars. It’s nearly time to go. Despite some creative stuffing, barely half of their belongings—mostly clothing—fit into Gloria’s nephew’s car. Tobias was told to leave all the furniture from the apartment upstairs, because it was infested with bed bugs. The clothes probably are, too, but he’s grown attached to them.

  The trip is about to take the family through American Midwestern towns, places whose stories are told in songs and on cereal boxes: Gary, Kalamazoo, Battle Creek. But Belenge will be a stranger to them all. He will sleep through almost the entire four-hour drive to Lansing. If he wakes, he’ll be greeted by cornstalks at their full summer height and billboards pointing to exits for gas, country buffets, fast food, and twenty-four
-hour Christian hotlines. What’s a Culver? Is there really a ButterBurger? When they reach Lansing, the buildings will look small compared to those in Chicago. And commercial strips with too many empty storefronts will look desolate compared to the big city. When their car pulls up outside a white single-family house, a group of familiar faces will meet them outside. Belenge will recognize his cousins and an elderly family friend, whom he calls Grandmother. He’ll notice a huge tree with big branches that bounce over the driveway. Out back, he’ll see bicycles piled in a corner and a bouncy ball resting in the dirt. The house they’ll come to belongs to a man Tobias refers to as his younger brother, but he isn’t.

  Inside, two women will stand in the kitchen stirring large vats of beans and beef stew. And, of course, there will be fufu on the stove. Familiar smells will fill the house. The group will gather in the sparse living room, each person taking from the home’s own collection of mismatched plates, likely also donated through a refugee agency, school, or church. The two cooks will carry the pots and dish a ladle full of stew and another of beans onto each plate. As the group eats, Belenge will fall exhausted into a chair, thinking about whether this new place will or can ever feel like home. Whether he will live there, and if his father will die there, in peace.

  That’s all to come. Before they leave Chicago, Belenge says his goodbyes, one fist pound or handshake at a time. When he climbs into the car, he rolls down the window. Sounds of the city flood in. The elevator train rumbles and screeches. Kids on bikes call out to one another as they pedal furiously up and down the block. The neighborhood has more than its share of cars on life support, and the frequent sound of their stubborn ignitions is sending the family off, too. Looking around the busy street, so many elements that once intimidated Belenge really did come to feel like home. As the car pulls away, each grows smaller in the rearview mirror.

  EPILOGUE: SEPTEMBER

  Sarah Quintenz

  The new school year is off to a troubled start. When Sarah arrives at Sullivan, she learns that before sunrise, the first floor flooded leaving the halls covered in two inches of water. It’s 7:55 a.m., just before school would usually open, and some of the flooding has yet to be mopped up. That means the doors won’t open at eight. A crowd of waiting students and some parents are pushed together outside Sullivan’s front doors. Others form in a line down the block. There’s the giddy trading of summer stories and gossip. Some students worked, others seemed to have devoted their off months to mastering the game Fortnite. Everyone is eager to get inside but as the opening time passes, a murmur of confusion takes over the story swapping.

  Mariah, now a junior, arrives one minute past 8 a.m. She takes her place at the back of the crowd, nearly half a block from the school doors. She’s wearing light blue jeans and a matching jean jacket; her hair is straightened and her backpack hangs off her right shoulder. No hijab this time. She also wears her new camel-color, faux suede high-top sneakers. She bought them with money from her job working at a neighborhood diner. Mariah had enrolled in summer school but didn’t stick with it. Her second eldest sister, who has spent the last several years in college and working part-time for an airline company, is now engaged to one of the girls’ cousins in Kuwait. She’s set to get married abroad in December.

  When the doors open, students spill into the school lobby. All must put their backpacks through the metal detector. A typical first-day bottleneck forms, and some students know the drill while others look bewildered. Mariah waits patiently. She’s not particularly eager to get inside. As she ascends the front steps, she reaches for the door and holds it open for a few students.

  This year Mariah will manage the boys’ basketball team; try, then quit, the poetry club; run track; and, taking on a big responsibility, help organize the school’s Martin Luther King Day assembly. That will give her an interest in event planning. She’ll become a leader on Sullivan’s Student Voice Committee where she’ll advocate for her classmates by pushing for better cafeteria food and doubling her efforts to eliminate school uniforms. She’ll also discover the digital media room and meet Nassim in the process. At first, the two will joke around only in English, but eventually, with time, Mariah will begin to tease her friend in Arabic, too.

  As Mariah lets go of the door, she pulls her backpack off her shoulder. “Can’t turn back now,” she says, following the crowd inside.

  _______

  Inside, Sarah, Josh, and Danny Rizk stand just outside the library. They wave to returning students and shepherd new ones into the library and tell them to wait. As feared, there are fewer new refugee students. Judging just from the crowd in the library, now full of seasoned refugee students, most of whom completed one or two years in a Chicago middle school before coming to Sullivan, they seem more at ease, less frozen, less lost than the first-day crowd in previous years. They will need help and guidance, of course, but they don’t look like they’ll need much rescuing. Noticeably absent are the usual bunch of students who have newly arrived in the country. Everyone knew this would come and have consequences for the ELL program’s funding. What’s a little less expected is the deeper disappointment. Those brand-new, wide-eyed refugee students will be missed. Sarah turns her focus to the students who have returned. Last spring, Chicago Public Schools renewed her program for two more years, after which she fears the school within a school that she spent years building up will probably collapse.

  As students push through the hallway, Sarah spots a Syrian junior in the crowd. The boy walks with a kind of “wild and crazy guy” confidence and Sarah erupts into laughter. Of the 260 students she hopes will return to Sullivan’s ELL program, Sarah never expected to see this boy, a particularly obstinate student with a wide variety of disciplinary problems, again. But he is surviving all the setbacks and challenges, including Sarah, who is constantly needling him for his cocksureness.

  “No fucking way,” says Sarah. Josh and Danny look over. They laugh now, too.

  “Wow,” adds Danny. “Did not see this coming.”

  The boy approaches the trio. He asks for his new schedule.

  “Today is the first day of your new life,” says Sarah, grinning. “It’s a new year.”

  Sarah waits anxiously to see if Aishah will walk through the doors. She knows she won’t see Shahina today. The Burmese girl chose to transfer to Senn High School where she will repeat her sophomore year. Shahina wants to start over, but not at Sullivan. Sarah still holds out hope for Aishah.

  At last, at a few minutes past 9 a.m., Aishah walks through the doors. Sarah, who sits at the card table where returning students fetch their new schedules, jumps up from her seat.

  “Oh my god!” she cries. “You came back!”

  Aishah smiles, her hands pressed against her stomach. Her acid reflux has not subsided. Sarah’s visit had moved Aishah. And in her lowest moment, when she felt resigned to give up on school, the gesture helped her see that there were still people who believed in her. She didn’t want to disappoint them, or herself. “I came here to study and I need to go to college.”

  “Right on,” Sarah says, throwing her arms around the girl. “But you’re late. Get going. Have a good year.”

  _______

  After Sarah sends Aishah off to class, she turns toward the library. Inside, a host of students and families wait to register. Scanning the room, she considers where to begin. The room is full of students who Sarah will come to know. They are students who will flirt, dream, work, and try on different personalities, fashions, and spiritual practices. They will perfect TikTok dances and memorize BTS K-pop hits. They will face racism and cope with challenges of urban poverty and oppression. They will become Sarah’s extended family, and she theirs. But first, enrollment. Sarah only lingers in the doorway for a moment. Then, without hesitation, she marches toward a shy-looking girl hovering by the back windows. She’ll start there.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  In January 2017, just a week after Donald J. Trump was inaugurated into the presidency, thou
sands of protesters gathered inside Terminal 5, Foreign Arrivals and Departures, at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago. They held handcrafted banners with slogans like “No One Is Illegal.” Groups of Muslim immigrants waved signs that read “We Are Not Terrorists.” Together, everyone chanted “No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA.” Cowbells rang. Drums were beaten. Just a few hundred feet away, 150 volunteer lawyers planted themselves at the airport’s McDonald’s tables and advertised free legal representation to anyone who had family members who had been detained at customs and put in custody. Under the harsh, fluorescent lights, a palpable sense of urgency, anger, and hope hung in the air.

  That same month, hundreds of protests erupted across the country in response to Donald Trump’s executive action blocking travel from seven majority-Muslim countries and suspending all refugee resettlement for 120 days. Within his first eight days in office, the president had made good on his threat to set a new, anti-immigrant, “America-first” agenda for the nation. Standing among the crowd at O’Hare, I wondered: What does this political shift mean for those refugees and immigrants who made it off the plane? What kind of America will they inhabit? What kind of America will they help build? And how will America take shape around them?

  Those questions prompted me to search for a story about immigrant and refugee life in my hometown of Chicago. A few weeks later, a friend, and former Chicago Public Schools principal, tipped me off to Roger C. Sullivan High School. In the 2016–17 school year, Sullivan welcomed more refugees than any other high school in Illinois. I paid a visit to Sullivan. Standing at the end of the high school’s long hallway lined with flags from around the globe and welcome signs written in more than a dozen languages—Arabic, Swahili, Spanish—I was in awe. I knew the story of Sullivan was one that was both urgent and timeless.