by Lev Golinkin
“People talk about ‘whill this’ and ‘whill that,’ but what you need is hard work to change the way you think, the way you look at the shit around you, and that’s the part people don’t want to hear and don’t want to tell you. I may be an ex-junkie, and an ex-Klansman, and an ex-con, but I’ve learned that much.”
Below us the group starts to stir. Wendell spits again and clambers down the rafters. I watch him yank leftover splinters from his palms (Wendell eschews work gloves) and return to work. I don’t know him, but I still want to say thank you for the sincerity, but I’m not sure how to do it, so I spit and follow him down the ladder.
* * *
The outgoing senior leader for Appalachia Volunteers was either not very good at leaving messages or had an interesting sense of humor, because the voicemail he left me began with “We’ve had many strong applicants this year, which made it a very difficult decision,” and continued in that vein for a good thirty seconds before congratulating me on getting the position.
Immediately upon returning to Boston College from Georgia, I had applied to be an Appalachia coordinator, one of six students who assume the burden of organizing 32 trips, recruiting 540 participants, training 58 trip leaders, and raising $200,000 for the mammoth spring break program. Before the outgoing coordinators started the interview, they made sure to inform me of the immense workload involved. They mentioned it to everyone, but they stressed it to me, since I was entering junior year, which is when pre-meds sequester themselves from the world to prepare for the MCAT med school admission tests. I thanked them for the warning and immediately accepted the position.
The graduating coordinators weren’t exaggerating about the workload. At the beginning of fall semester, Boston College’s legal department had informed us that due to safety issues, we could no longer use fifteen-passenger vans. Their decision placed the Appalachia program in jeopardy: the number of drivers had to be doubled, logistics had to be reworked, and an already-packed budget had soared by an extra $20,000. None of us wanted to see the twenty-five-year-old program die on our watch.
At the end of spring break I was on a Greyhound bus returning to BC from Appalachia after spending the past six months helping to keep the program afloat. Buses lined the main campus drag, dropping off students returning from Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, West Virginia, and the Carolinas. Elsa, another Appalachia coordinator, was sharing my bus. Without saying anything the two of us stood up and met in the center aisle. She was crying. Everyone else on our bus was beaming at us. They realized it had been a tough year, but Elsa and I were the only ones who really knew how close Appalachia had come to folding.
Outside, volunteers were chatting, hugging, unloading, laughing, sharing stories. It hit me that I had been a part of 32 communities and 540 students, and the notion left me both honored and humbled. That’s when reality inverted a bit. In the time it took us to wend down St. Thomas More Drive and find a parking spot, I saw smiles and knew they were genuine, and I wanted to be myself and no one else. For nearly two solid minutes, I could’ve looked straight in a mirror.
I sat down on the steps across from the cafeteria, toying with the straps of my sleeping bag, watching the world settle back to normalcy. Clusters of students broke off from the group, carting duffel bags and memories back to their dorms. A line of freshmen snaked up the giant staircase leading to underclass housing at the top of the hill. My mind began compiling to-do lists to keep busy and keep moving; the long row of large, shiny windows on the campus theater radiated with familiar danger once more.
I tucked those two minutes away. It was the second time in my life I was absolutely, utterly happy. By coincidence, the first time also took place on a bus. It was December 21, 1989, the night I climbed onto a bus at 4:00 in the morning, the bus that would take my family off the grid and out of Russia.
It’s when I first began to run.
* * *
* Later on I learned that Pete was something called an “enabler,” that I should surround myself with “constructive” individuals, and that smoking crushed-up codeine to alleviate anxiety was not a “healthy” decision, but that was all way down the road.
UNFINISHED BUSINESS, PART II: STAYING IN AMERICA
Chestnut Hill, Mass., October 1999
“Do you have your citizenship?” asked Dan.
It was around eleven at night, and the three of us—Dan, the dog, and I—were in the middle of our nightly walk. Dan lived two doors down from me. We were both pre-med bio majors, and every night we took a twenty-minute break to loop around the quiet neighborhood behind the freshman dorms, and smoke Camel Lights, and talk about getting laid, which, of course, is the real goal of becoming a doctor. The dog, a silver lab, lived in one of the houses. It wasn’t kept on a leash, and one September evening it tagged along with Dan and me, and ever since then it always joined our walks, trotting around the block a few times, then going off to wherever it lived.
Dan was a Russian Jew, like me. He came to the States when he was young, like me. How he escaped Russia, where he was stationed in Europe, whether he got beaten up in school, or how he wound up in the States, I did not know. I wasn’t even sure which city or republic he was from. I’d overhear him mutter Russian on the phone to his parents, and I know he’d caught me doing the same, but we never exchanged a Russian word between us. This mutual reticence is what bonded us in the Catholic Jesuit milieu of Boston College. It’s like we were the only two on campus who knew where the body was buried, and as long as I didn’t squeal and he didn’t squeal it would remain our little secret. Dan and I never spoke about the past beyond America, which is why his citizenship question surprised me.
“No, I don’t,” I answered. “I applied, but they lost my paperwork. Twice. I’ve been meaning to reapply but I haven’t done it yet.”
Dan looked concerned. “You should do it soon. I just read online about this immigrant who got caught doing something stupid, like public urination, and got deported, even though he had a green card.”
“How can they deport me? I don’t even have a country to get deported to—the Soyuz is gone. Where the fuck are they gonna put me?”
There was an uncomfortable pause as both Dan and I registered the use of Russian. Soyuz means union, as in the Soviet Union, which had fallen apart into its fifteen constituent republics in 1991.
“I don’t know,” Dan said. “The guy I read about, they shipped him to Somalia. It doesn’t matter, man: you gotta get your citizenship.”
“Public urination?” I glanced down at the dog, who looked positively horrified.
“Public urination.”
“Somalia?”
“Somalia.”
I applied for my citizenship the next day; I did not want to go to Somalia.
* * *
On a crisp autumn afternoon one year later, I stepped into the gray Immigration and Naturalization Service Center in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. Inside was a stark vestibule monitored by a bored security guard as well as a six-foot-tall Statue of Liberty made out of green plastic. I signed in, took a seat next to the rest of the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free, and listened for my name. After about an hour, a middle-aged lady ushered me into her cubicle.
“Mr. Golinkin, we have your fingerprints, documents, and application fee. You will now take the citizenship test to demonstrate your knowledge of U.S. history.”
I was in college. I was in mid-term mode. Bring it.
The woman produced a sheet of paper with ten questions. A cursory survey revealed that the test had been designed by an avuncular middle-school teacher who wanted everyone to get an A. “What do the thirteen stripes on the American flag represent?” the first question asked. A few rows down was “How many original colonies were there in America?” Brilliant. I breezed through the questions, nursing my disappointment. I wanted to discuss the Boston Tea Party and the Hayes-Tilden affair, the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan; I wanted to show America that I cared
about the little things, that I had forgotten neither the Maine nor the Alamo. Instead I had to reaffirm that yes, our union was still comprised of fifty, nifty United States … just as it has been since 1959.*
The case officer didn’t share my indignation.
“It’s time for the writing part. You will find some blank space on the bottom of your test sheet. In it, I would like you to write down why is the sky blue.”
Oooh, I perked up. Here we go! Finally, a real question. A little strange, a little unexpected, but still, an opportunity to make my country proud. Last year, in chemistry class, we covered optics and how Earth’s atmosphere diffuses white light into its components. These, in turn, get absorbed by the atmosphere, save the blue wavelength, which gives the sky its characteristic hue. But that’s only the scientific explanation. The ancient Egyptians believed the sky was a heavenly ocean upon which the celestial spheres journeyed in boats. I need to integrate these various perspectives into a coherent yet terse—
“Mr. Golinkin?”
“I’m sorry, ma’am, I’m just thinking it over.”
“Mr. Golinkin, this is a dictation exercise. Would you like me to repeat the prompt?”
“Did you say dictation?”
“Yes. Would you like me to repeat the prompt?”
“I know stuff about the presidents,” I mumbled. Benjamin Harrison was the Lucky Pierre of the Cleveland administrations. Harry Truman played the piano.
“Mr. Golinkin”—she anxiously glanced at the clock—“all you have to do is write down the sentence ‘Why is the sky blue?’ and we’re both done.”
Why is the sky blue? I methodically printed in big letters. It was a bit girlie (the ys looped a lot), but overall a decent sentence. Definitely citizenship material.
“Very good. We will contact you within two months to make arrangements for the naturalization ceremony.” The woman squeezed out her most reassuring special-ed smile. “Goodbye, Mr. Golinkin.”
On the ride back to Boston I contemplated the fact that I had already become a young, jaded American and I wasn’t even an American yet. I didn’t know whether to feel concerned or ahead of schedule.
* * *
INS must’ve been impressed by the handwriting; the naturalization ceremony invitation came within a month, and back to Cherry Hill I went. Dad wanted to come for the ceremony, but I told him to stay home: I was tired of standing around government offices with members of my family. The vestibule was full of people from all over the world, all of whom had come to take the final step to naturalization. I plopped down in the back for about forty-five minutes of waiting and listening to the jumble of languages mixing together in the room.
“Ladies and gentlemen, please stand and raise your right hand.”
Our swear-in officer, a graying man in a standard-issue navy suit, strode into the room. He took a few moments to scan the ranks, as if to make up his mind whether he was going to go through with it. An elderly Indian woman next to me had brought her granddaughter, who was constantly taking pictures, trying to capture the perfect before-and-after citizenship shot. The Oath of Allegiance commenced, the officer prompting, the crowd repeating the various stipulations: fight for the government, reject other citizenships, “renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty,” and so forth.
By the time the oath was over, everyone was eyeing the officer’s assistant, who cradled a stack of citizenship certificates in her arm. But before we got a chance to move in, the officer segued into the welcome speech.
“Congratulations, everyone. America is based on immgrants, we’re all very proud to have such hard-working men and women …”
The speech droned on. He didn’t even need a cue card: judging by the monotone voice and perfunctory delivery, he’d done this hundreds of times. After the first few sentences everything decomposed into an interminable trickle of nouns: America, work, opportunity, you, long history of, melting pot.
He finally ran out of nouns and nodded to the assistant. The Indian granddaughter snapped away furiously. I took my certificate and gave the room one parting look. The vestibule was awash with exhausted, jubilant faces. People of all colors, cultures, backgrounds, chattering, beaming, hugging their documents. Even I was a bit touched. I’m an American. I’m safe. I’m free. I can go outside and publicly urinate from sea to shining sea, and they can handcuff me, they can fine me, they can throw me in jail, but they can never, ever drag me out of this country. Not to Russia. Not to Somalia. No sir, all you motherfuckers are stuck with me. Let freedom flow. The Indian grandmother caught my gaze. She smiled. I smiled. I bet she was thinking the exact same thing.
* * *
* In the interest of full disclosure, I’m not 100 percent sure of the exact questions on my test, but I can assure you, a remedial sixth-grader would’ve aced it.
ALICIA
Chestnut Hill, Mass., November 2002
The cold November wind rushed through the brick avenues formed between the BC dorms and it was already late and it was going to be a lot later by the time I first told someone my story.
I met Alicia at the very end of junior year, and I spent a lot of the fall semester of senior year with her. She was kind, compassionate, very beautiful, and a little sad. She was smart, and she was an idealist, and she wanted to change the world. I felt safe with her. Every time I felt rattled, felt that I had made myself too accessible, she’d say or do something funny, or silly, or endearingly vulnerable, and my jaw would unclench and I wouldn’t run.
I had just returned from one of the numerous retreats offered by BC. The retreat, like most retreats, was supposed to instill the participants with a feeling of identity, a sense of belonging, and hope for the future. It was a good retreat, powerful and thought-out, but none of that happened. I sat in the group circles and shared the minimum, and when others smiled I said that I was also happy and when others cried I said that I, too, was sad, but being there and watching the emotions flow over other people left me aching to talk to Alicia and tell her something real.
I wasn’t happy about doing it so I just vomited it out in a continuous stream. I told her that I hated myself. I told her that I hated others and that I had never believed a single good thing anyone had said about me, because whoever gave me a compliment must’ve been a liar, or delusional, or worthless to say they saw worth in me. I told her that I had been afraid for as long as I could remember, and I told her that I had a good memory.
I took Alicia back to the USSR, walked her over to Austria, brought her to the States, and drew her into the paralyzing, hopeless existence that comes with not having a shred of self-esteem.
We sat on her blue couch. I spoke and stared unwaveringly into the darkness outside her window, but I could feel Alicia trying to sit closer, peek into me. She was always trying to hug me and I finally explained why I hated hugs, why I hated having someone touch my body, how it evoked memories of the beatings, and why I froze and cringed whenever she tried to hug me, just as I had done with everyone since I left Russia. I told her that I hadn’t looked in a mirror in years, and I explained to her why. I choked up when I explained that whenever I finally did open up to people during the last two years, whenever I found something that I cared about like the Appalachia program, that feeling of love, friendship, communion would vanish.
Build all you want, pretend all you want, you’re still a zhid, you can’t stay away from mirrors forever, said the sickly little thing in the mirror. And it was right.
I kept talking, not because I wanted to, but because I was afraid of what would happen when I stopped—Alicia thought so well of me and she was so damn kind. She’d silently mouth “bless you” when someone sneezed in class … not because the person would hear her or it was dictated by the situation, but because she meant it. Upstairs in her bedroom lived a group of ugly stuffed animals she’d bought over the years because she was afraid nobody else would buy them (I’d done the same thing and for the same
reason, except that my purchases involved the timing and execution of a special forces raid as I raced to make sure no one I knew was in the immediate vicinity of the store). When I finally stopped talking it was past three in the morning and I could look outside her glass door and see that the campus, which was usually teeming with people, was completely dormant, and I listened to the silence and stared at the blackness of Alicia’s window, afraid to turn and see the inevitable disgust and horror in her reaction.
She remained quiet, waiting until I forced myself to look at her, and when I did I saw that her dark eyes, jet-black, darker than even the windowpane, were full of tears, and more tears were already on her face, and she would sometimes wipe them away with an absentminded gesture, but more tears kept coming. I looked at her eyes and at that moment I knew that I could have gone on for hours, I could have completely emptied all the hate, and guilt, and vileness in my heart and she would have absorbed it all, and she would have never been repulsed.
I don’t know how to cry, and I don’t mean that in the I’m all cried out emo way. I literally can’t do it. I’d burned it out of me by the second grade. I couldn’t avoid the beatings or the fear, I couldn’t get my friend Oleg back, but I could decide not to cry, no matter what. I tried it one day and soon it became a reflex. It’s a trick, a matter of concentrating, clenching your jaw, and grinding out the knot in your throat until it travels up your neck and dissipates into a dull headache. Headaches were fine, I’d reasoned to myself back in Kharkov: sad people cried, weak people cried, but everyone got headaches.
A scratching from under the kitchen cabinets broke the silence. “Is that a mouse?” I went to investigate. I didn’t hear Alicia move, but when I turned back I saw that she’d teleported onto the farthest piece of furniture from the kitchen. (Love for ugly animals had its limits.) “It’s probably just the stove,” I lied, and walked over to the chair she was standing on. She was looking down at me from the chair, an embarrassed smile showing through the tears. It seemed like an hour had passed as I stood there aching to help her down, but reflexes kept my arms pinned to my sides. After a few awkward moments, she stepped down herself.