The Newcomers

by Helen Thorpe

  * * *

  PART III

  * * *

  Spring

  1

  * * *

  Well-Taped Boxes

  The month of February—a gloomy period weatherwise, when snow had been blanketing the city for months, and everybody was tired of shoveling sidewalks and hungry for the sight of crocuses—marked the beginning of a new phase in Room 142, a time I thought of as increasingly convivial. Coincidentally, the Broncos were headed to the Super Bowl. On a designated day, just about the entire high school donned their Broncos gear. Mr. DeRose wore his Peyton Manning jersey, and Miss Ruthann from Goodwill appeared in a jersey emblazoned with the name and number of cornerback Champ Bailey. None of the newcomers wore football regalia, however, and Room 142 appeared as an island of drab gray and brown in a sea of bright orange. The newcomers were oblivious to the vagaries of the NFL season, a sign of how culturally out of step they were in general with the rest of America. But they were evolving, little by little.

  One day during lunch, I watched Jakleen walk around the room wearing a black hijab, wordlessly holding out a Tupperware container of peanut M&M’s. Later I saw Grace and Dilli cross the room with their arms twined around one another’s waists. Another day, Grace stood behind Lisbeth and ran her fingers through Lisbeth’s corkscrew curls, and then petted the girl from El Salvador on the top of her head. Shortly after that, Lisbeth walked over to Mariam and picked up big handfuls of her hip-length hair, lifting it up and letting it fall. Friendships were starting to form. It was like seeing leaf buds on tree branches early in the spring; you could not see green yet, but you could tell that leaves would soon unfurl.

  Another day that month, Lisbeth found herself facing Abigail, the new girl from Mexico, when Mr. Williams had them stand in two lines to converse, and Lisbeth impulsively reached over to hug the other girl warmly. Then Shani, from Tajikistan, felt inspired to pinch Lisbeth, Abigail dropped her cell phone as she got bumped by Shani in the process, and suddenly all three girls burst into laughter, which startled studious Solomon, who looked over with an expression that said, What is so funny? Afterward, Saúl and Yonatan took advantage of a brief pause in the lesson to stage a lengthy push-up competition. When they both proved equally magnificent at ordinary push-ups, Saúl upped the ante by putting both of his feet on the seat of a chair. He cranked out one extra-hard push-up after another, while Yonatan studied his form intently, then proved he could master the same stunt. Even Mr. Williams paused to watch the competition.

  The kids were not actually talking to one another a whole lot, but they were engaging. If anybody was trying to talk at this stage, it was Lisbeth. One day, when Uyen showed up to visit her old classroom, Lisbeth cried, “Ayiiiieee!” and then stomped over and threw her arms around the Vietnamese girl in a full-body embrace. “Uyen! Back in newcomer class!” Mr. Williams called out. “Hi, Mister,” Uyen replied, with shy delight. Uyen was not back in newcomer class—not formally. She was flitting into the room nearly every day, however, trying to regain the sense of security she had once found here. Going upstairs had been hard. When I asked how her new class was going, she gamely said, “Good.” Then she shared that the teacher upstairs spoke a lot faster than Mr. Williams, but a girl from Thailand who spoke a little Vietnamese was translating for her when she couldn’t follow what the teacher was saying.

  That wasn’t the real issue, though. The big problem was that she was foundering socially, because she and Stephanie had experienced a falling-out. The way Stephanie explained the rift was that in the higher-level class she had found new Spanish-speaking friends and hadn’t wanted to spend so much time with Uyen. After that, Uyen had grown jealous. Uyen’s explanation was simply that the two of them were still friends, but were not as close as they once had been. Whatever had transpired, Lisbeth was now Uyen’s current favorite person to sit with at lunch. I watched them try to have a conversation in which Lisbeth proposed that they do something in English, in Spanish, and in Vietnamese via Google Translate, but Uyen seemed unable to grasp the invitation. Lisbeth wound up telling her, in Spanish, “No me entiendes.” You don’t understand me.

  After that, Lisbeth tried to get Mr. Williams to say certain words in Spanish that she thought he might not grasp, such as nalgas, which meant ass, but he knew all the slang and told her he was not going to say “malas palabras” (bad words). Then Lisbeth turned her attention to Yonatan, and they began having a boisterous conversation, which consisted largely of Lisbeth trying to teach Yonatan various Spanish words while giggling at his accent. I heard Lisbeth saying, “Perfecto,” to Yonatan over and over, until Yonatan could say the word back to her.

  * * *

  Another day that month, I walked into Room 142 at lunchtime to find three different tables listening to music from three different parts of the world. Jakleen and Mariam were playing a song on Jakleen’s phone by a Moroccan musician named Saad Lamjarred. On the other side of the room, Solomon, Methusella, and Plamedi were using Methusella’s cell phone to blare African pop music by Eddy Kenzo, a musician from Uganda. I asked Plamedi, using my high school French, if he had ever heard this music before, and he said no, it was his première fois, his first time. Nearby, Nadia and Grace were nodding along to music from Rwanda. Grace said her brother had given her the music, and she was not sure who was singing.

  Earlier in the year, the kids had listened to music individually, using earbuds or headphones. Now they were sharing what they loved. The room was full of sound, creating a festive atmosphere as the students leaned over their lunch trays. Music was one of the few portable through-lines to before, and perhaps the only familiar thing they could access in the middle of a school day. They didn’t yet share a common language, and various groups of kids were listening to different anthems, but the impulse was universal—a song from home comforted each of them. Soon Abigail began playing Latin ballads on her phone, too, which led to a series of lunchtime duets with Saúl. She was from Mexico and he was from El Salvador, but they knew the lyrics to all the same hits.

  * * *

  The following week, when the bell rang marking the end of lunch, most everybody settled down, and then Lisbeth and Abigail burst into the room late, laughing hysterically. Mr. Williams stood at the front of the class, wearing a gray-and-white-checked dress shirt and gray chinos, waiting for the kids to calm down. They had grown a little too rambunctious. He had been lenient for a while, but now it was time to introduce the idea of consequences. He borrowed Saúl’s cell phone and also Mariam’s, when they failed to put the devices away. He held up the two phones and announced that from this point forward, he was going to turn confiscated phones over to the front office. The students would have to ask a legal guardian to get the phone back.

  Next, Mr. Williams announced that he was moving Lisbeth’s seat again. At present, Lisbeth was seated in the middle of the room, a location from which she could easily maintain running conversations in Spanish with Saúl, Abigail, Nadia, and Grace. Mr. Williams asked her to move to a table out on the room’s periphery, one that, from her perspective, might as well have been the linguistic equivalent of Siberia. He seated her at a table with Kaee Reh and Bachan, two of the quietest students in the room. The languages they spoke (Karenni and Nepali) were about as far from Spanish as one could get.

  “I think this is better because you’ll be able to concentrate more,” Mr. Williams told Lisbeth. “You won’t be as distracted.”

  Then he asked the class to get busy completing the following sentences:

  Today is __________.

  It is a __________.

  We have __________ more days of school this week.

  There are __________ days in this month.

  He spent only a few minutes on this exercise, because it was a review for most of his students, but it was important to go over so that the recent arrivals could catch up. When Mr. Williams checked on Bachan, he saw that the Bhutanese student was not writing. “Bachan, do you have a notebook?” he asked. “No not
ebook? Let me get you one.” Mr. Williams brought over a backpack that he kept stocked with school supplies, in case students lacked them. He gave Bachan a notebook and got him started on the assignment.

  Then Mr. Williams moved over to work with Abigail. When she failed to answer his questions, he began cupping one hand behind his ear to pantomime that he needed to hear her speak. She really didn’t want to. Generally, Abigail understood a lot of English, but she had a crippling shyness about answering back.

  “Today is . . . ,” prompted Mr. Williams.

  A silent stare, no dimples.

  “Today is . . . ,” he said again.

  Mortification. Mr. Williams asked Abigail gently in Spanish if she could please repeat what he said in English, and finally she did, with deep dimples. The teacher worked with Abi until she could say the date in English. After that, Mr. Williams knelt down facing Shani and repeated the whole ear-cupping routine. By the time Mr. Williams went to check on Plamedi, that student had finished the entire warm-up on his own, even though he, too, was new. French has many similarities with English; January and February were recognizable to Plamedi, because in French those months are janvier and février.

  Once Mr. Williams had worked with each of the newest students individually, he returned to the front of the class. The next lesson was about giving commands. Helpfully, some of the longtime students began coaching the newest arrivals. Nadia often played the role of supplemental teacher, but Dilli—the very quiet girl from Eritrea—now began copying her behavior. Four students sat together at one table, with Nadia and Dilli (the longtime students) facing Shani and Abigail (the new arrivals).

  Dilli said, with obvious delight: “Say, ‘I am from . . .’ ”

  Shani, relieved at getting a question she could answer, replied: “I am from Tajikistan!”

  Nadia ordered, in a perfect teacher voice: “Say, ‘My name is . . .’ ”

  Shani, gleeful again: “My name is Shani!”

  Then Nadia pointed to Abigail and instructed: “Say, ‘My name is Shani, but her name is Abigail.’ ”

  And Shani did so, perfectly.

  Mr. Williams noticed what was going on. “Thank you!” he said. “Dilli and Nadia, thank you for helping our new students!” Their table remained engaged for the entire period, allowing Mr. Williams to concentrate on the rest of the room; he didn’t need to worry about Shani or Abigail, because Dilli and Nadia were tending to them.

  Nadia decided to try a linguistic pirouette. “My name is Nadia, but your name is Shani,” she announced. “I am from Mozambique, whereas you are from—” but there, she tripped. “What was the name of that country again?” Nadia asked.

  “Tajikistan,” supplied Abigail.

  Nadia tried: “Ta-jiki—, jiki—”

  Dilli started tittering, and then the whole table broke up. I brought over an atlas, so that we could all find Tajikistan. There it was, sandwiched between the Middle East and Asia. The tiny country shared a border with Kyrgyzstan to the north, China to the east, Afghanistan to the south, and to the west, Uzbekistan. Shani pointed to Dushanbe, the country’s capital, and looked up with pleased expectation in her eyes.

  “That’s where you’re from?” I asked.

  “Yes!” she said.

  “Big?” I asked.

  “Yes, big!” she said, happy with this rudimentary confirmation that I knew at least one thing about her home.

  Shani brought out her cell phone and showed us pictures of the city where she had once lived. I saw gray cobblestone streets and high stone walls, interrupted by a door painted bright red. One splash of color in a monochrome landscape. That was her house, Shani said. It was the kind of house that is conjoined with others; I knew that style of building because my father was raised in a town house like that, on the north side of Dublin. As a child, I had been fascinated by the fact that some of the town houses had attics that connected with those of the neighbors.

  Shani told us that she was Muslima, even though she did not wear a hijab. We all wanted to say who we were to Shani, but she wouldn’t understand if we used English. We leafed around in the atlas instead. I found Mexico, and I pointed to Abigail. Then we looked for Eritrea, a skinny country hugging the eastern coast of Africa along the Red Sea, directly across from Saudi Arabia, and I pointed to Dilli. We dropped southward to Mozambique, down beside the Indian Ocean, and I pointed to Nadia. Shani kept saying, “Ah!” She seemed delighted to obtain this information and surprised to learn there were so many places represented at the one table.

  Just then, a young woman with short blond hair appeared at the door of the classroom. A senior at South whose family had emigrated from Russia, she had begun in Mr. Williams’s newcomer room as a freshman and remembered just how lost she had felt.

  Mr. Williams called Shani over.

  In Russian, the other girl asked, “Do you speak Russian?”

  “Da! ” Shani cried. “Da! Ya govoryu po-russki!”

  “Take a moment, please, and welcome her,” Mr. Williams instructed the visitor. “Be a buddy, check in, and see: Is there anything she needs from me, or anyone at this school?”

  The girls walked over to a far corner of the room to talk, one of them strikingly dark-haired and the other just as fair, babbling together in Russian. Shani had so many questions that the senior made a plan to talk with her at greater length the following day. Before leaving to head back to her own class, the other student reported this to Mr. Williams, who looked pleased—the two girls had hit it off.

  Mr. Williams turned his attention back to the rest of the room. Lisbeth was throwing things at another student, and he chastised her sharply. She got red in the face and clutched her hoodie over her mouth to smother the sounds of uncontrollable giggling, but we could hear muffled squeaks emerging anyway. Meanwhile, Abigail handed Dilli a copy of the book the class was reading, and Dilli responded with “Gracias.” Abigail’s dimples appeared again, hearing this Eritrean girl thank her in Spanish. The students were increasingly engrossed with one another, which forced Mr. Williams to exert more discipline, and at the same time, they were able to comprehend more English, which was how they could interact more. The double effect of all this learning was amusing to observe, because Mr. Williams was succeeding and failing at the same time. He was gaining control of the room academically and losing control socially. Later that month, the kids would even push him to the point of yelling, after he repeatedly asked them to be quiet, the only time I saw him lose his composure all year. We had traveled a long way from August, when the room had been so hushed and watchful.

  * * *

  At the same time that I was tracking the increasingly complex dynamics in Room 142 and trying to get to know each of the students individually, I also was hoping to understand who Mr. Williams was as a human being and to ascertain why he found his fulfillment in this particular room. In terms of his personal life, however, he was highly guarded. All he ever said to me was that he had never been married, and he had a son, to whom he was clearly devoted (Mr. Williams was coaching his son’s soccer team, and he referred often to the time he spent with Owen). After his son had been born, his relationship with Owen’s mother had not worked out. Period, end of story.

  As it happened, Mr. Williams and I lived in the same neighborhood. One evening, I bumped into him and Owen while we were shopping at the local market. Mr. Williams looked slightly abashed to be caught in his role as a parent instead of his role as a teacher. It left me curious to know more, but he did not seem interested in talking about his personal life. When I gave him a few chances to elaborate, and he did not, I figured it was none of my business. Because he allowed me to sit in his classroom for an entire year, shared with me his roomful of kids, and took time out of his own breaks to help me wrestle with this project, I wanted to respect his boundaries.

  He was happy to share his thoughts about his charges. Mr. Williams expressed consternation about how much work Jakleen and Mariam were missing, wondered how best to contain
Lisbeth, strategized about how to push Methusella, and mentioned that he was keeping an eye on Bachan, who struck him as unusually discombobulated. Over time, Mr. Williams and I discovered that we were getting to know the same students in different ways. Because I tended to know the arc of their journeys, I was gathering information about a side of the kids they did not usually show to their teacher. One day, up in the copy room, when I was telling Mr. Williams about some of the things the students had survived, he grew visibly upset at the level of difficulty some of the families had experienced. “I almost can’t know these things,” he said. “To teach them, I mean—it’s sometimes too much. I almost can’t bear it.”

  Sometimes, because we were getting to know such different aspects of the students, Mr. Williams and I wound up possessing divergent views of the same individuals. Kaee Reh, for example, I knew as one of the loneliest students in the room. He was so quiet about his plight, and I was so busy listening to him be incredibly unassuming (or busy noticing that Kaee Reh had pulled the top of his hair into a small ponytail, and then used a series of rubber bands to make the ponytail stand straight up in a stick-like protrusion, and wondering what that was all about, and then noticing that upstairs in the cafeteria all the other Karenni-speaking boys were doing exactly the same thing with their hair), that I missed how vast Kaee Reh’s accomplishments in the classroom were until Mr. Williams praised some of his work. The same thing happened with Dilli. Those two students were more confident on paper than they were in class discussions, and until Mr. Williams showed me their written work, I missed their intelligence.