When everyone was finished eating, the girls helped clean up and were given peanut butter and jelly sandwiches of their own, along with an apple each. Their reward for a hard day’s work. By then the dining room was empty and the girls sat in a group to eat. They were too tired to talk. Or perhaps they were simply too sad. Everyone looked morose.
Cornelia was sitting next to Admeta on the farthest bench from the door. She heard a noise and looked over. Standing by the door was a teenage girl wearing a hijab. She was short and slender and was wearing an unusual outfit. It was a very loose fitting linen dress that looked more like a robe. It had vents on both sides and it was so long that Cornelia could not see the girl’s shoes. Her hijab was not elegant silk like the ones Mrs. Hakim wore. It was plain brown linen, like her suit and it was very tattered. Cornelia thought it looked itchy.
Without thinking, Cornelia rose from the table and walked to the door to greet the girl. Admeta had not seen the girl, so she was confused when she saw Cornelia get up and leave without a word. She watched as Cornelia walked to the entrance. Cornelia started to lift the gate that had already been pulled shut, but not locked. Just then Miss Thompson walked out from the kitchen.
“Girl, what you doin’?” Miss Thompson asked Cornelia.
“Oh,” Cornelia began, still lifting the gate. She gave a grunt as the gate gave way and went all the way up into the ceiling. “I was just letting her in,” she said, pointing to the girl.
“Oh, no, ut uh!” Miss Thompson said, waving an index finger in the air. “We’re closed, young lady,” she said to the girl who looked quite sad. “I’m sorry, darlin’, I truly am, but rules is rules and I can’t go breakin’ no rules for one person. Otherwise I’d have to break them for everyone. You understand?”
“Miss Thompson, please. You don’t even know what she wants,” Cornelia pleaded.
“She wants what everyone who comes here wants, child. I’m sorry, but rules is rules,” Miss Thompson said sternly. Cornelia could see that Monica was standing behind Miss Thompson watching the scene play out. The girl turned and started to walk away.
“Wait!” Cornelia said, and grabbed the girl by the arm. “What’s your name?” she asked.
The girl looked at Cornelia as if she was going to answer, but then she looked over at Miss Thompson. Cornelia turned too. Miss Thompson’s face stayed stern for a moment, but then seemed to soften. Monica’s expression did not change. It was as stern as ever, but she was watching with a great deal of interest.
“Well, go on girl, she asked you a question. Least you can do is answer,” Miss Thompson said, waving her hand and giving the girl permission.
Shyly, the girl very quietly replied, “Talibah.” She pronounced it Tah-lee-bah with a heavy Arabic accent, much thicker than Mrs. Hakim’s accent. Cornelia couldn’t help but think it sounded a lot like Taliban. She instantly felt ashamed of her thoughts. Why did her mind always go to these places? She couldn’t understand it. She led a sheltered life before attending public school, but it wasn’t like her parents taught her to think these things about people of different colors and ethnicities. She dreamed this stuff up on her own and it frightened her to think that she always went to a bad place first. She tried to push the thought far from her mind.
“My name is Cornelia. It’s nice to meet you,” CC said and offered her hand.
The girl looked at her hand for a moment before shaking it. She looked frightened and Cornelia wanted to put her at ease. She barely gripped Cornelia’s hand and Cornelia was afraid she might break the girl’s fingers if she squeezed at all.
“Are you hungry?” Cornelia asked. She could see Miss Thompson out of the corner of her eye. She looked like she was getting ready to say something, but the girl spoke first.
“I do not wish to cause trouble,” the girl said. Cornelia thought she sounded a lot like Mrs. Hakim but her accent was different somehow and much heavier. Neither Mrs. Hakim nor the girl used contractions when they spoke.
“It’s no trouble at all,” Cornelia said, grabbing the girl’s hand and leading her into the cafeteria. Before Miss Thompson could protest, she added, “I’m not hungry, you can have my lunch.” She looked at Miss Thompson who seemed satisfied with the compromise.
“Look, now, girls. Rules is rules, but if you want to give this girl your lunch, then that’s on you and I ain’t gonna interfere. Just so we’re clear. Don’t forget to put down the gate, now. We don’t need no stragglers,” Miss Thompson said and then she turned around and walked back into the kitchen followed by Monica who Cornelia could have sworn smiled just a little.
Before Cornelia could grab the gate the girl stopped. “Really, I do not wish to cause any trouble. I can go.”
“Oh, no you don’t,” Cornelia said, pulling her arm. “You heard Miss Thompson. You’re already here now. It’s no trouble. What’s trouble is disobeying Miss Thompson,” Cornelia said reassuringly.
She could hear Miss Thompson in the kitchen say, “You know that’s right.”
Cornelia pulled the gate shut once again and the girls walked over to the table. The other girls didn’t seem to notice the scene at all. They were all tired and eating their lunches quietly. Admeta was the only one who was paying attention. She scooted down on the bench so Cornelia and Talibah would have enough room to sit. As they sat down, Cornelia scooted her untouched lunch in front of Talibah. The girl hesitated.
“It’s o.k.,” Cornelia said. “This is Admeta,” she continued, pointing to Admeta.
“Hi,” Admeta said with a wave.
“Hello,” Talibah replied. “I am Talibah. I am sorry I came late.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Admeta said. “We’re all friends here.” Admeta smiled at Talibah and then Cornelia. Cornelia was touched that Admeta called her a friend and she smiled back. Talibah looked down at the plate. She looked as if she could devour the entire thing in one bite, but she picked up the sandwich and ate very slowly as if she were savoring every bite. Admeta elbowed Cornelia and handed her half of her peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Cornelia smiled and accepted it without a word. She had lied when she told Talibah she wasn’t hungry and Admeta knew it.
When the girls were finished eating, their energy level returned and they were all chatting happily. Cornelia and Admeta were talking to Talibah. It was small talk at first. They explained where they were from and that they were volunteering for The Family Connection. They told her the story of plucking the chickens. Admeta was a very good story teller and she made Talibah laugh. Cornelia couldn’t help but wonder if this was the first time the girl had ever laughed. She looked so forlorn.
“Where are you from?” Cornelia asked. Admeta gave her an elbow to the side. “Ouch!” she said, rubbing her ribs.
“What was that for?”
“That’s a rude question, Cornelia.”
“Really? I didn’t mean to be rude,” Cornelia said, honestly.
“No,” Talibah said and she laughed at the girls’ banter. “It is o.k. I am from Iraq,” she said. The girls looked on in awe. Neither of them had met anyone from Iraq before. The Iraq War had been long over but American troops were still there dying every day, along with civilians. Admeta and Cornelia couldn’t imagine what it must be like to be from such a war torn country.
“My family came here to escape the war,” she added.
“Where is your family?” Cornelia asked and again Admeta elbowed her.
“Would you stop that?” Cornelia asked. “She said it was o.k.”
Talibah laughed again. “You must be good friends,” she said. Cornelia and Admeta couldn’t help but burst with laughter.
“What is funny?” Talibah asked, confused.
“Oh, nothing,” Admeta said, still laughing. “It’s just that if you would have said that before today I would have been disgusted at the thought,” Admeta said. Then she looked at Cornelia’s hurt face and added, “I said before today, Cornelia. You know it’s the truth.” And she jabbed Cornelia i
n the ribs again, this time playfully.
Cornelia laughed and said, “Yeah, you’re right, I guess. I can be an idiot sometimes.” She wasn’t kidding. She was looking at Talibah and thinking about the hurtful words she wrote about Mrs. Hakim. She wondered what Talibah would have thought had she seen what Cornelia wrote. It probably would have broken her heart or at the very least her spirit. Cornelia looked into Talibah’s eyes. They were a very light color, like nothing Cornelia had ever seen before. They weren’t quite hazel and they weren’t quite brown. They were the color of an iced mocha and Cornelia felt there was quite a story hiding behind them.
“Oh my,” Talibah said, looking at the clock. “I must go,” she said and stood up.
“But why?” Cornelia asked. Talibah hesitated. She looked at the two girls who had been so kind to her. She didn’t want them to think less of her, but she also could not tell a lie.
“I have to get to the shelter before all of the cots are taken,” she said, looking down at the floor, ashamed. “It is first come, first served and if you don’t come early they can turn you away,” she finished. The girls didn’t know what to say. Their hearts sunk to think of someone their age living in a homeless shelter not knowing if she’ll have a place to eat or sleep from day to day.
“But what about dinner?” Admeta asked. Cornelia nodded as if she wanted to ask the same question.
“It is a choice,” Talibah said. “You can either eat dinner or have a place to sleep. It is cold outside. I choose a warm place to sleep.
“Besides,” she continued. “Thanks to your kindness I have eaten and my stomach is full.” The girls were looking at her with great sadness in their eyes. Cornelia felt as though she might cry.
“Do not fret, my friends. What I have described is a good day. I thank Allah for my many blessings and I thank both of you. I really must go,” she said and she headed toward the gate before Cornelia or Admeta could say anything. But what would they say anyway? It wasn’t like they could take her home with them. They barely knew her. Admeta’s father couldn’t afford another mouth to feed and Cornelia’s mother would go through the roof is she brought home a stranger. Both girls had heavy hearts. They sat there watching Talibah open the gate and shut it behind her. She faded away out of sight as the girls simply watched, helpless. They did not speak, but simply sat in silence, still looking at the gate.
Monica came in from the kitchen and interrupted the silence. She asked Cornelia and Admeta to fetch some boxes she had brought from The Family Connection while the rest of the girls started to clean up the kitchen. The boxes contained some clothes to be donated to the soup kitchen. Cornelia and Admeta went through the kitchen and out the side door to search the bus.
When they got outside, Cornelia scanned the area for Talibah, but she was long gone. Cornelia’s heart hurt for her. She couldn’t bear the thought of Talibah giving up dinner so she could get a cot at some church, surrounded by strangers. She wondered why Talibah hadn’t answered the question about her family. Cornelia wondered if she had any family at all. Then she thought about Mrs. Hakim. She had come to America from Iran when she was 16, just a few years older than Talibah. Cornelia wondered what she was like back then. She thought she was probably a lot like Talibah and it pained her to think about her crime. For the first time she not only know what she did was wrong, she knew that she must apologize to her teacher as soon as possible.
She was just about to tell Admeta about her plan, but she was interrupted. Before the girls reached the bus, the Hispanic boy who had approached them earlier stepped right in their path.
“You never answered my question earlier, chica,” he said to Admeta, brushing his finger on her chin to raise her eyes to his. “¿Qué es su problema, la princesa?”
“You’d better leave her alone!” Cornelia yelled before she even thought about it.
“I don’t have a problem,” Admeta interrupted. “You’re the one who’s going to have the problem.” Admeta pushed the boy’s hand away from her face and he grabbed her around the waist.
“Let go of her!” Cornelia screamed. She was terrified that the boy was going to pull out a knife or worse. Cornelia grabbed the boy’s arm but she couldn’t make him release his grip on Admeta who didn’t make any attempt to free herself. In fact, she remained perfectly calm. The crowd of teenagers the boy had been standing with earlier had gone. Only a few boys remained behind. They were laughing at the scene, but they made no attempt to interfere with what was happening.
Cornelia did the only thing she could and scraped her well-manicured nails across the boy’s arm, leaving crimson scratch marks in their wake. “What the--!” the boy yelled and pushed Admeta to the ground.
“Oh, you just made the wrong move, white girl!” he yelled in English. Then he wrapped his wounded arm around Cornelia’s neck and turned her around to face Admeta.
“Your friend doesn’t have any manners either, chica!” he spat. Admeta struggled to get to her feet while the other boys laughed and pointed.
“You’d better let go of her right now, la Hijo,” Admeta said, putting an accent on the Spanish part.
“What did you say?”
“You heard me. If you don’t let her go right now I’m going to tell my brother.”
“Oh really? Did you hear that, boys? Little Hispanic Princess here is going to tell her brother on me! Oh, I’m scared, amiga!” His grip on Cornelia loosened as he made fun of Admeta, but she was still frozen with fear.
Admeta had a strange look on her face, like a cross between terror, anger and smugness. “My brother is Raoul Vasquez!” she screamed and the boy released his hold on Cornelia almost immediately. Admeta grabbed Cornelia’s arm so she didn’t fall. Cornelia gasped for a moment and bent over to catch her breath, rubbing her neck with her other hand.
“Raoul?” the boy questioned as if he hadn’t just been holding the girls hostage.
“Yeah,” Admeta said, flipping her chin in the air arrogantly.
“Is Raoul your only brother?” the boy asked skeptically.
“No, stupid,” she said, “Jorge, Manuel, and Vuello are also my brothers.” Admeta smiled a little bit as if she were drunk with power. Cornelia was still holding her throat and catching her breath. Cornelia wanted desperately to run back to the kitchen for help but she was afraid of what might happen to Admeta if she left her there and Admeta did not relinquish her grip on Cornelia’s arm.
Admeta and the boy stood there staring at each other for a moment, then the boy roared with laughter. His group of cronies followed suit. “Did you hear that, hermanos? This is the Raoul V’s sister! Why didn’t you say so in the first place?” he looked at Admeta curiously.
“Because I didn’t think I needed to condescend to address filth like you.” Admeta pointed her index finger right at the boy’s nose. Cornelia nearly had a heart attack. Just when she thought the boy was going to leave them alone, Admeta went and tried to pick a fight with him. But to Cornelia’s surprise the boys just laughed.
“I like you, Raoul’s hermana. You have spirit. Why aren’t you with your brothers? Over-the-River can be a dangerous place, you know what I mean, amiga?” Cornelia thought he meant dangerous right at that very moment, but Admeta knew exactly what he meant. He was asking her why she wasn’t in the gang.
“I have better things to do,” she said and Cornelia was wondering why she continued to provoke the boy who was obviously unstable.
“Whatever, chica,” the boy said, waving both of his hands in dismissal as he walked back to his friends.
Admeta pointed to Cornelia and added, “And she’s under Raoul’s protection too, so don’t go bothering her again!”
Admeta pulled Cornelia’s arm and headed toward the bus. Cornelia protested. She wanted to go back in the kitchen to get help. Admeta whispered to her, “If you run, they will see your fear, let’s just do what we came to do. Show them they don’t matter. They’ll respect that.” Cornelia did not reply,
but reluctantly followed Admeta’s lead.
As they picked the boxes up off the back seat of the bus, Cornelia could see the group of boys still staring at them from the corner. They were laughing and making exaggerated motions, seemingly reenacting the scene. “Don’t look at them,” Admeta said. “Don’t give them the satisfaction. Just pretend they don’t exist.”
“That’s not so easy to do considering he almost just killed me,” Cornelia said in a surprisingly calmer voice.
“You’re exaggerating,” Admeta replied. “Don’t worry. They think you’re under my brother’s protection, they won’t bother you again.”
“What does that even mean?” Cornelia asked.
“My brother is the head of their gang,” Admeta said, matter-of-factly.
“Oh,” Cornelia said, surprised. She had never known anyone in a gang before, or even the sibling of someone in a gang.
“It’s o.k., I’m not a member or anything. I think that stuff’s stupid. My brothers are wasting their lives just like those idiots over there,” Admeta said, careful not to look in the boys’ direction. Cornelia did not reply; she didn’t know what to say.
The two girls carried the boxes back to the kitchen in silence and Miss Thompson accepted the donations and thanked the group for coming. She said she hoped to see them someday soon. Monica promised to return in the future. Cornelia was actually happy about her reply. She wanted to come back again, despite what happened with the gang. She felt for the people she met that day and she wanted to do something more for them.
The girls didn’t talk much on the way home. They were all tired and drained. When they got back to The Family Connection, the other girls departed while Cornelia waited around for Monica to sign her community service log.
When Admeta turned to leave, she said, “See you in school.”
“Yeah,” Cornelia replied and she turned to Monica holding out her papers.
“Here you go Mo’—er, sorry, Monica.”
Monica laughed a little and said, “No, it’s o.k. girl, you can call me Mo’. You’ve earned the right today girl,” she said, signing her name to “day two” on the log.
Cornelia smiled and said, “Thanks, Mo,” and turned around and walked out the front door.
As she was walking she could hear Monica repeat, “Earned the right,” and Cornelia felt a certain level of pride, not just for earning Monica’s trust, but for the work she had performed that day. As she rode home with her mother thinking about the day’s events, she suddenly realized what she was going to write about for Writers on the Storm.
Chapter 10
Write On
Writers on the Storm Page 9