Benson waved his arms in a halting motion. “You must lie down. The people who run away, they die. Metal cuts off their arms and their legs. Sometimes it cuts off their head. They run anyway because they are scared. Lie down. That is how you survive.”
“Metal. What metal?” I had no idea what a bomb was made of or how exactly it killed people.
“All kinds of metal. It is a big can they fill with trash metal. When the bomb explodes, it shoots out pieces everywhere. You must lie down. If you are running that is not good.”
“Is there any warning? Can you hear them falling?”
“The little planes go very, very fast, and when you hear them they have already gone by and dropped the bombs. The big ones are the Russian Antonov. You can hear a very big roar but the bombs are falling. You cannot run.”
As we glanced through more photos of them swimming in our pool and playing on our lawn, I could only shake my head in disgust at the image of giant cans falling from the sky and shooting out scrap metal that planted itself in torsos, severed limbs and cut off heads. That young boys were as familiar with how to deal with that as Cliff was with using a crosswalk ran chills up my spine.
“Benjamin is coming now,” Lino announced.
“Now? You mean here?”
“He come now.”
I didn’t understand if Benjamin was landing at the airport or about to walk in the door, but it was a relief he’d arrived somewhere. “Do you mean his plane is landing today?”
“He is here. He come now.”
Lino was so accustomed to being misunderstood he just repeated the same thing when asked again. I felt pushy asking too many times for clarification and let it rest. We looked through the rest of the pictures until I saw how late it was. I needed to stop by the grocery store before picking up Cliff at school. “I’d better be going.”
“You don’t want to see Benjamin?”
“Well, I do, of course, but when exactly is he coming?” Please don’t tell me now. We really have a different concept of the preciseness of that term. I’m beginning to think it could mean anytime today. Or this week.
“He walking from IRC.”
That was five miles away. I decided to skip the groceries and lingered a bit longer, until I couldn’t stay anymore without keeping Cliff waiting on the curb. “I’m sorry I am going to miss him, but I have to go pick up Cliff.” As I pulled out of the parking lot, two unmistakably Sudanese young men, one very tall, were walking down the other side of the street. I pulled to the side of the road and rolled down my window.
“Hello,” I yelled.
They stopped and eyed me warily.
“Are either of you Benjamin?”
The taller one cocked his head, but was still cautious, like a child offered candy from a stranger. He said nothing. I recalled what Benson had relayed to me. They’d been warned while still in Africa that because American men marry only a single wife, there were many women here who were not married and looking for husbands. They could have guns or knives and kidnap men. No wonder they were so cautious. I shouted, “I know your cousins, Benson, Alepho, and Lino.”
The taller one raised his arms into the air. “Oh. Yes.” He took sweeping strides across the street with the shorter man trailing behind and came around to my passenger window. “I am Ben-ja-meen.” His face lit up with a huge smile that unveiled a dazzling set of perfect white teeth.
“Hi, welcome.” I extended my hand to his outstretched one. “I’m a friend, well, mentor, of your cousins.”
“Ah, yes, Ju … dee!” He exuberantly pumped my hand. They’d told me that Benjamin was the tallest and the blackest, but they hadn’t told me their cousin was probably one of the most striking human beings I’d ever seen. Maybe he wasn’t to them, but a photographer wouldn’t have been able to find a bad angle on that face.
He smiled. “You are my mentor, yes?”
“Yes.” I smiled. “So, you just got here, now, to San Diego?”
“I come right now. You go?”
He still held my hand.
“Yes, sorry, but I must leave and pick up my son from school. I will see you soon, okay? You can tell me about your trip.”
He let go of my hand. “Okay. I see you later. Bye, bye, Ju … dee.”
ESCAPE
Alepho
I’d been in Palataka camp for two years, and I hated it. Never enough food. Chiggers burrowed in our swollen, infected hands and feet. Boys were sick and dying. Now that school was not for me, Palataka became the worst place I’d been.
One night Joseph came to me. “We have to escape.”
My heart pounded. Yes, I wanted out, but if a soldier on guard saw a group of boys just sitting and talking together, he accused them of making a plan to escape and punished them. Every week boys were caught and whipped. Could Joseph be serious? I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want him to think I was a chicken, but the beatings gave me bad dreams.
“Alepho, listen to me. Older boys, like me and maybe you, will soon be taken to a camp called Gromlee to be trained as soldiers. After that, it’s to the front lines for fighting.”
My stomach twisted into a knot. Some boys were eager for this. They wanted to have guns, and they wanted to kill. I hated guns and I hated fighting. The boys on the front lines were the ones doing the most dying.
“How do we get past the soldiers?”
“We can do it,” Joseph said. “Don’t worry. I have a plan.”
“Okay, but even if we get out, what about the locals? They’ll shoot us.”
“That’s what the soldiers tell us to scare us. We’ll stay away from their areas. We’re just boys. I don’t think they’ll hurt us if we don’t bother them.”
“Where will we go?”
“We’ll go back to Torit,” Joseph said.
Back to Torit? I couldn’t wait to leave there. But Joseph was right. We had to escape Palataka or we would surely die on the front lines.
PAPER OR PLASTIC
Judy
I stopped by my local grocery store on the way home. Benjamin had finally arrived, what a relief, but that meant another nonexistent job to find.
“Paper or plastic?” the box boy asked.
Oh, my God. They could do this job. Why hadn’t I thought of it sooner? Hi, how are you? Would you like paper or plastic? May I help you out to the car?
“Uh … paper,” I told the young man.
A job like this would keep them in contact with people instead of burying them on some graveyard shift in a factory. Those jobs didn’t exist, anyway. Precise English was not required, just politeness. They had plenty of that. I rushed home, excited to make some calls.
I debated the best approach. Classified ads had gotten me nowhere. Pounding the street and asking for applications had been unproductive and sometimes humiliating. Time to circumvent the conventional routes. I called a Ralphs grocery store in their area and asked for the manager.
“I’m Bob Sullivan, the assistant manager. May I help you?”
“Yes, great, thank you. I was wondering if you need box boys.”
“We call them wrappers now,” he said. “We haven’t used boxes in quite a while.”
“Oh, dating myself.”
“We do need them, though. Holiday season coming up.”
Bingo. Bob sounded nice.
“Is he over eighteen?” Bob asked.
“Yes.”
“Is he in school?”
Dare I mention there are three? No. He probably thought I was calling for my son. This was my opening. I let out my spiel. “I work with the IRC and mentor refugees. He’s nineteen now, but as a boy he walked a thousand miles across Sudan and grew up in a refugee camp in Kenya. He speaks English. He’ll make a wonderful employee. He’s so eager to work if only given a chance.”
“I can’t promise
anything,” Bob said.
Did I detect a change in tone? Or was it all in my head?
“Come in and pick up an application. I’d like to meet him.”
Hallelujah! A meeting was nearly an interview. But who would him be? I couldn’t choose between the three of them, or more accurately the five or six.
The only fair option would be whoever answered the phone.
THE TREES DANCED
Alepho
Joseph shook me awake. “Shhh. Be quiet.”
I bundled my few things in my blanket, trying not to wake anyone else. The walk from Torit to Palataka with a thousand boys had been terrible. The walk back would be worse with no one to help us.
We snuck out of the building and into the night. I’d never been so scared. The last escapees received forty lashes. I didn’t want to consider the consequences of being caught, but I couldn’t stop thinking about them either.
We went to the end of the building and waited in the dark.
“Where’s the guard?”
“Wait here,” Joseph said.
He returned in less than a minute. “He’s sleeping.”
Holding our breath, we crept past the sleeping guard to an area outside the camp where we met eight other boys. Ten of us altogether. I was the youngest.
We headed north on the same trail we had come on from Torit and soon came to a split in the path. Nothing looked familiar. On our way to Palataka, we’d been an excited horde that wouldn’t have noticed a fork in the trail from another direction.
Half the boys pointed to the right. “This path goes to Torit.”
Some trees on the left looked familiar to me and it felt like the left fork was the way we’d come. When we had come to Palataka, I had tried to remember the path, in case I needed to find my way back.
I pointed left. “That is the way we came.”
No one listened to the youngest boy. We followed the path on the right until dawn. The sun rose and caught the sharp edges of roofs.
“What?”
“That’s Palataka.”
“No, it’s another town.”
“No, it’s Palataka. See? Those are the school buildings.”
“Shhhh,” Joseph said. “The guards will hear us.”
We’d gone in a big circle and were right back where we’d started. We headed out again, taking the trail I’d suggested the night before. I couldn’t say anything, but inside I felt angry. Proud, too, that I’d been right in the first place.
Close to noon we encountered a local man. “I think he’s Acholi,” Joseph said. “I will speak with him just to be sure we are on the right path.”
Joseph went up to the man. “Is this the way to Torit?” Joseph pointed. “Torit?”
The Acholi man shook his head and pointed in another direction.
We set off again. After a while, Joseph stopped. “This man didn’t direct us well. Follow me, I know where to go.”
That started arguments. Two boys went the way the Acholi man recommended. Eight of us followed Joseph’s way up over a hill.
We came to a long valley. The trail disappeared at times. Sharp grass stalks sliced my feet like knives. With no trees to escape the summer sun, my shoulders and back cooked. In the afternoon, we reached a small stream and drank and soaked our heads but I had nothing to carry water.
A steep hill rose out of the valley. We walked without water. My eyes became red and itchy. They burned and drained yellow pus. I couldn’t see well. By the time we reached the top of the steep hill, my tongue had dried out like bark. Each breath was a chore. Talking was impossible.
We started down the other side and reached a grove of papaya, banana, and guava trees. The others picked fruit and ate it.
Joseph said, “The elders say don’t eat if you don’t expect to get water, especially sweet fruits.”
Joseph and I didn’t eat the fruit even though it would have wet our shriveled mouths and filled our bellies.
We started out again. The boys who had eaten the fruit became dizzy and weak. Some couldn’t see. One boy wandered away, refusing to follow us. The rest of us were too exhausted to argue. We needed water soon or we would perish. Dizziness overtook me. I knew in my head that if I sat down to rest, I might not get up again. My body was fighting me. I walked slower and slower, falling behind the others until I could no longer see them. I came to an area with trees. The trees danced and laughed and sparkled their leaves, inviting me to their shade. I leaned against a trunk. My legs quivered. I slid to the ground and the world disappeared.
“Why are you on the ground?”
Who was speaking to me?
“Come on, let’s go.”
I came to with a jolt. How long had I been there? My eyes wouldn’t open. Pus stuck them shut. I had to get up or I’d die. I pried open my eyes enough to see, but they burned like fire. I got to my knees. No one was around. “Hello?” I tried to speak but the words stuck on my dried tongue like in a bad dream. “Hello?”
I crawled to the path. Footprints. I rose and followed them down the trail, stumbling along in full sun. I had to find Joseph and the others. I didn’t know how to get to Torit. Nothing looked familiar through my blurry eyes. Was this my day to die and join the boys who had dropped on the road and were now just all those skeletons I’d passed on my journey?
Up ahead, beyond the next hill, I made out a dark area. More trees. If I could just make it to that shade, I could rest again. I pushed on from this tree to that tree, from this hill to that hill, step by step, the only way to survive.
I reached the trees and stopped. Shade cooled my hot body.
“Alepho.”
Joseph? I could be hearing things again. I moved farther into the trees.
“Alepho, over here.”
Joseph and the rest of the group rested in the shade. “We lost you. I couldn’t find you anywhere.”
I sank to the ground with relief. We weren’t out of trouble, but at least I wasn’t in it alone.
“We’ll rest a few more minutes,” Joseph said. “Then we must go.”
Some strength returned. I had to stay with the group no matter what.
We moved on together, weaving and confused as a bunch of drunks.
Down the trail a familiar scent came to me. “Do you smell it?” I mumbled.
“What?” Joseph asked.
“Water. I smell water.”
No one argued with me this time. At my direction, we cut across a flat area. The smell of water became stronger. An hour later we reached a wide stream. I crawled into the shallows on my hands and knees. The water washed over my body. I drank like a cow. I’d never been so close to dying.
OH NO. FOUR?
Judy
Benson answered the phone when I called. “Get your best clothes ready. You have your first job interview tomorrow.”
The next morning, I awoke at four and wasted an hour trying to go back to sleep. Why couldn’t I stop worrying? If I was going to keep mentoring, I better get a grip on my emotional involvement. Benson had an interview. A glimmer of hope. Four more to go.
What happened if they didn’t get a job? Or worse, couldn’t keep one? I couldn’t stop thinking about that. What would they live on? And what about health insurance? They’d been checked for the communicable things, like HIV and TB, but they’d never been to doctors in their lives. They could have other things. Or, they could have caught things here they didn’t have immunity against. They needed medical benefits, that was certain. If they didn’t feel well, they couldn’t work.
Be calm.
I got up anyway, made coffee, and turned on the news. There’d been predictions of a second wave of attacks. The whole country was on pins and needles and rallied behind New York. Fortunately, nothing new. All those dire forecasts had been so discouraging, I’d lost hope the job market would ever imp
rove. Now Benson had an almost-interview.
Relax.
My own first job had been in a grocery store, in the deli department. I’d pitched in as a “wrapper” occasionally, too. Paid my dues to the Culinary and Bartenders Union without complaint. I made $1.75 an hour, three times as much as babysitting.
Wrappers did more than bag groceries. They directed customers in search of an item. Just about any American teen could find Oreos, Formula 409, or SpaghettiOs. But what logic was in those names for people new to this culture? Froot Loops, for goodness sakes. Would they search produce? There were sixty thousand items in the average grocery store. With the exception of meat, fresh fruit, and vegetables, most had brand names familiar to Americans from advertising. Would customers be patient with some dark-skinned foreigner who hadn’t the slightest clue where to find Ragú?
Be calm.
I dropped Cliff at school and headed straight for the Mission Valley Ralphs grocery store.
The store was newly remodeled, large, and quiet. I requested three applications from a woman at the customer-service desk. One Benson could fill out ahead of time at their apartment and two extra copies in case of mistakes. That would leave time to practice for the interview and the job, too, just in case he needed to start right away. I grabbed a few grocery bags. I hoped there were enough food items in their kitchen to practice with. More importantly, I wanted to share tips on customer relations. Lack of knowledge could be compensated for with manners and friendliness. That came naturally for him. Smile. Ask politely, “Excuse me, would you like paper or plastic?” Smile. Work quickly. Smile. His smiles were irresistible.
I waited around to watch the wrappers in action. None appeared, few customers to help this time of day. I asked a checker if I could speak to Bob Sullivan.
Instead, a Mr. Murphy, the store manager, came to the front. Oh no. Bob had been interested. I might get the “job was filled yesterday” line from this guy.
“Bob said you need a wrapper,” I said and added a little about Benson.
Disturbed in Their Nests Page 20