Disturbed in Their Nests

by Alephonsion Deng

  “I am fine.”

  Fine, of course. It had been a cold, foggy winter day. Nighttime would be worse. He had to walk a mile up Euclid to the bus stop on University Avenue. Hopefully he was moving more easily than he had the day before. If only I didn’t live thirty miles away and he hadn’t switched to graveyard. Why did he do that? Would he ever switch back? It just seemed so lonely and depressing.

  Diane, a friend and writer, called. “We’re worried about you.”

  “Worried about me? Why? I’m fine.”

  “We haven’t seen you in four months.”

  “Well, I’ve just been really busy. Things will slow down soon.”

  “Are you writing?”

  Sneaky question. Another writer would know that question was the test of how smoothly one’s life was going. She was asking about my novel, so I wasn’t strictly lying when I replied, “Yes, I’m writing.” I didn’t say on something new.

  “You should call Susan.”

  “Why? Is something wrong?”

  “Nothing serious. I think she’s just a little hurt that you forgot her birthday.”

  Damn, I totally spaced. So bad. “Oh God, that’s right. That’s why she wanted to go riding last Saturday. Then I canceled on her again. I feel terrible. I’ll call her and set up something else.”

  When? I didn’t want to end up canceling again. My scheduled activities were clashing with crises out of my control. A two-­day excursion for Cliff to experience people from another life had snowballed into taking over my life.

  That night I told Paul that Alepho’s stomach pain seemed worse, not better, and it worried me to ignore it.

  “Could be,” Paul said, “that he didn’t have fat in his diet for so many years. Might be spasms in the bile ducts coming from the gallbladder. The ducts atrophied and our fatty diet is suddenly stressing them. If he doesn’t have a temperature, I’d give it a few more days. But if it gets worse, let me talk to Stony and some other docs to see what’s going on.”

  THREE GRAY BULLIES

  Alepho

  “We must go,” Daniel said. “Hurry.”

  I was taking a little longer to gather myself together after the day in the hospital. James and Lino had just been fired. Daniel was nervous about being late.

  “Go,” I said. “I will catch you on the way.”

  The night was foggy. My paining stomach kept me from moving fast. I didn’t catch Daniel.

  When I reached the corner and waited for the light, I saw the bus slithering off on that smooth road toward downtown. I crossed the street and sat on the bench to wait for the next bus. The chilling cold made me shiver. I covered my cold head with my hood.

  Three gentlemen came to the bus stop. Two walked in front of where I sat. I pulled my feet back when one almost stepped on my toes. I thought they came to take the bus to their places or their jobs.

  I looked to my left to see if a bus was approaching. A hard smack on my right jaw sent me plunging forward into the street. What was that? My face hit the pavement. Crack. Pain shot into my brain. Oh no, my front tooth!

  I jumped up. A foot came out of the dark and thudded into my stomach. I spiraled farther into the street and went down. A car screeched and went sideways. It had almost run over me. I quickly rolled toward my three assailants. Why were they doing this? I didn’t know them. Did they want money?

  I stood up clumsily. They came at me. One guy grabbed my hood and pulled it down over my face. I couldn’t see. They kicked and punched me from all sides.

  I screamed and screamed for someone to help. Cars slowed down and then drove off. But this was America. Why was no one coming to my aid? I stopped screaming.

  Fend for yourself!

  I rolled my fist and threw my right hand into the face of one guy. He crashed down like a landslide.

  The shortest guy threw a bottle at me. I ducked and it missed and broke on the ground. He came at me with his fists raised. In the light I saw he had a dark mustache. I raised my leg and swung it at him. It knocked him to the ground. That opened some space for me. The third guy said, “Hey, you are good fighter.” His hand came up. He had a knife.

  I dashed off. Thankfully, my legs were okay. They saved me, I was able to get myself out of there.

  I ran to the apartment, my body bruised and my face bloodied from the broken tooth. I didn’t feel the excruciating pain of the tooth until my brother opened the door. “What happened?”

  “Strangers attacked me.”

  He rushed to the kitchen for warm water and salt to ease my pain.

  He first tried to call 911 but did not reach them.

  I called Ralphs. “I can’t come to work tonight.” My tooth made it painful to talk. “Something happened.” That was the first time I called in. I never wanted to call in. I felt terrible to miss work.

  Benson tried his best to call who he thought would help me. We didn’t know how to call the ambulance. The only thing we knew was to call 911 if any problem happened. He called again. They said the police would come.

  While I waited for the police, I did what I used to do. I grew up in a war zone. There were no ambulances or emergency rooms there. I nursed the pain in my head by sleeping on it. If you got hurt, you coped with it until it healed itself. That was how you survived.

  The police came four hours later.

  PART THREE

  FEBRUARY 7, 2002–JUNE 2002

  BEAT UP

  Judy

  Before sunrise I sat down with that precious first cup of coffee and opened my email. Benson had sent one during the night.

  Dear Judy,

  I’m writing by this very late time at night because of Alepho. He was going to work but as you know that he is sick he could not run to the bus. He is attacked by three men at the bus stop.

  What? Oh my God, was he all right? I read on.

  They kicked him in the stomach and broke his upper tooth and his hand is sprained. He fought back and only run away when the men brought out their knives. He just lay on the floor and hold his stomach when he reach the house, and I think he is fainting. I don’t know if to call 911. I try to call you but you might have sleep because no one answered the phone.

  Thank you, Benson

  My heart slammed inside my chest. Three men. Knives. Kicked in the stomach. That was six hours ago. Where was he now? I checked the “new mail” list again. No more emails from Benson. He wouldn’t have been able to call our home phone because of the long-distance call limit on theirs. I unplugged my cell phone from the charger down in the kitchen and turned it on. There was a message from James at about the same time as the email from Benson and with the same information. I called their house.

  Alepho answered on the first ring. Relief flooded through me at the sound of his voice.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I was beaten.”

  “I’m so sorry. Where are you hurt?”

  “They kicked me in the stomach.” He spoke slowly, clearly an effort to get the words out.

  “Have you been to the hospital?”

  “No.”

  “I’ll come down and take you to the doctor.”

  “No. I want to go to the dentist. My front tooth, it is broken.”

  Oh damn, not his front tooth. He was already self-­conscious and hesitant to smile just because of the gap between them and the discolored one. Now one was broken. “What about your stomach? Benson said they kicked you. Shouldn’t you see a doctor first?”

  “No. I need dentist. It pain very badly.”

  “The dentist probably doesn’t open until nine. I’ll be there right after I drop Cliff at school. Can you wait until then?”

  “I will wait.”

  Alepho was standing on the balcony when I arrived. He pointed to the dangling front tooth with bloody knuckles.

  “You fought
back, didn’t you?”

  “They wouldn’t let me go. I fought a long time. They were three grown men. I almost beat them. I knock one man down. The short man with mustache threw his bottle at me. I moved and it missed me. He said, ‘Hey, you are good fighter.’ He pulled out his knife. That is when I run home.”

  “Thank God you did. Did they ask for money? Were they trying to steal your wallet or something?”

  “No.”

  Not a theft. Hmm. Just drunks? Sport fighters? Three on one. How sporting. What assholes! Or was the attack due to a worse motivation?

  “How is your stomach? You sure you don’t want to have a doctor look at it?”

  “No. The dentist, please.”

  The dentist said he needed a root canal and that she could do it immediately. I wasted the first hour running unnecessary errands and spent the next one in the dentist’s parking lot, unable to concentrate enough to read the magazine in my lap. My panic over his physical wounds was subsiding. A buzzing rage and sickening ache of profound shame that this unprovoked attack had happened to him here, in our country, remained. How did he see it? What was he feeling? It had to be some horrendous mix of humiliation and hopelessness.

  When he emerged from the dentist, the broken tooth had been splinted to the teeth on either side in hopes that it would grow back into the bone. On the ride home he didn’t say anything and stared straight ahead. What words would be soothing? Did the whole world feel chaotic and violent? Was America no different from the war zone where he’d been except that it had more food, which he didn’t like anyway? He must have wondered if his life would ever be different. Would he be welcome anywhere?

  Everything I thought of to say sounded like false assurances.

  “I’m really sorry,” I told him.

  He said softly, “You have no reason to be sorry.”

  “I am sorry. Things like this shouldn’t happen. I’ve lived here my whole life, and I’ve never been beaten up.”

  He looked at me out of the corner of his eye. “Why would they beat you?”

  No answer was needed for that question. He understood more than I’d hoped he ever would about life here.

  As I was preparing to turn left onto Euclid, he pointed down University Avenue and yelled, “That look like the man. There. There.”

  A stocky, dark-­haired man went into the taco place near the corner, about thirty feet from the bus stop where Alepho had been attacked. I aborted my left turn and drove slowly past the restaurant. No one was visible inside. The man must have gone back toward the kitchen. I pulled around the corner and waited where we could watch the shop from the car.

  A DOG AND A CAMEL

  Alepho

  My broken front tooth pained like a spear in my head. I went outside the apartment and waited for Judy at the stairs.

  When we’d first arrived in America, Diar from IRC had taken us to see a dentist even though we told him our teeth were good because in the camp we’d always cleaned them with sticks. Still, Diar insisted we go. That dentist drilled holes in four of my teeth and filled them with metal. This happened to all the boys. “They are making money from the government,” we said to each other.

  I didn’t want to go to the dentist for my broken tooth, but it hurt so much that I didn’t know another solution. Judy arrived and said she would take me to a dentist that I could trust.

  The woman dentist from Asia gave me a shot. The pain went away. She connected my broken tooth to the other teeth until it could become strong again. She didn’t drill anything.

  On our way back to the apartment in Judy’s car, I saw a man walking at the corner where I’d been attacked. He looked like one of the men who had beaten me the night before. “That look like the man,” I told her.

  The man went into a restaurant. Judy put the car where we could wait and watch the door to see if he came back out.

  I had not expected such a violent physical attack in this land, America, that I held in highest esteem. On my outings, I’d never seen anyone look at me with disdain. People looked at me, but I assumed that was curiosity written on their faces. As children in Africa, when white people came, we swarmed around those creatures who looked like us except that they were white. My mind couldn’t conceive of what to make of them. I admired them innocently.

  Now I lived in their land. I thought that to Americans I must be a black version of the white person who visited Africa.

  My survival-­self hadn’t adjusted completely to this place with tall buildings, smooth paved streets, and everyone driving new cars. Everything looked so fresh and smelled perfumed. My senses were seduced. I’d been the newcomer enticed to believe all was flowers. Everything seemed safe. After being beaten up, the concept in my mind of my new home changed from sweet to reality.

  When a problem comes to visit you, it doesn’t warn you that it is coming your way. The reality was that there were good people and bad people everywhere. At first in America, I hadn’t thought that. I thought if there were bad people here, there weren’t many because there was law and order. Everything was under control. I didn’t know people would come out at night and attack for no reason.

  Those three gray bullies who beat me were my awakening welcome to the new land. I would be alert in the future. It was a matter of always being careful, just like where I’d come from.

  I’d had many experiences with bullies. But the one that taught me the greatest lesson was when I was the bully.

  In Palataka camp they had made us boys work hard for the soldiers. All day we built their houses, grew their food, and dug their toilets. We had to find our own food. Lizards, leaves, roots, and rats.

  One boy, who didn’t hear well, never accompanied us boys who went out and worked all day. He stayed back and gathered dirt into a pile and sifted through it, collecting discarded grains into another pile. This bothered me. Why didn’t he have to work hard like the rest of us? We all had some sort of wound or injury. What was special about him? People called me deaf too, because pus and blood dripped from my left ear and I couldn’t hear out of it. I’d been bullied for so long, I thought I’d bully someone else, someone who I thought couldn’t fight back. Hunger had made me angry.

  At the end of one hot day of work, I went up to the half-­deaf boy. “Why don’t you work with the rest of us?” I demanded and kicked down his grain pile.

  His eyes were on my face. I knew he understood even if he couldn’t hear me well.

  “Imoosaba,” he said. Be careful.

  The next day, he didn’t join us in work again. I kicked down his grain pile.

  “Imoosaba.”

  “You don’t scare me,” I said, mouthing the words. He was skinny except for a big head.

  The third day, before I could knock down his pile, his arm came from behind and swooped me off my feet. I landed on my back. My head slammed against the earth. Air whooshed out of my chest. My breath wouldn’t come back in. I tried to get up and fell right back down. The ground spun under me. I tried to raise up again and fell back.

  Staring at the trees swirling against the sky, I realized that skinny boy could have beat me more, but he just continued his business. When he’d separated out all the grain, he washed out the last of the dirt in the river, and a small child joined him. Together they cooked those grains and shared them.

  Sprawled in the dirt, watching the two of them, I recalled a saying from my culture. A dog barks loudly at a camel, but the camel gracefully walks on. A camel didn’t care what a dog said. He didn’t pay attention to small annoying things that didn’t matter. He continued his walk, carrying his dignity with him.

  I’d been nothing but a barking dog when the skinny boy just wanted to go about his business of surviving and helping a small child. He’d warned me twice. I hadn’t listened. That skinny, deaf boy was wise and clever and kind to a small child. He didn’t allow an annoyance like me to change
his course.

  Bullying was senseless and cowardly. Dangerous, too.

  Those three gray bullies who had attacked me at the bus stop were annoying dogs. It was better to walk on with my dignity like the camel.

  I asked Judy, “Can we go now?”

  WHERE THEY FROM?

  Judy

  No one had come back out of the restaurant. Alepho sat in silence, like he so often did lately, his brow a fixed wrinkle. He’d only been here four months and he’d been beaten. Perhaps he was thinking life was better in the camp where he knew what to expect.

  It could even be seething anger on his face. I’d assumed we would call the police if he identified the guy. That’s what I would do, but what if he leapt out of the car to confront him? I’d begun to think waiting was a really bad idea when he asked, “Can we go now?”

  What a relief. “Of course, yes, let’s get you home. You can file a report with the police.”

  “Maybe.”

  His maybe was as close to a no as it could have been. “I also think we should look for a new apartment.”

  “Okay.”

  It wasn’t much, but there was more enthusiasm in that response than I’d heard from him in a month. “Until then, please never walk alone to the bus at night. Even if it means two of you walk with whoever is going to work. Just make sure no one walks that street alone to the bus stop or back.”

  I dropped Alepho at his apartment and headed for home, ruminating on all that had happened, when a reality dawned on me. I’d been thinking that since it appeared to have been a senseless random beating, three drunks sport fighting, or perhaps even a hate crime, it probably wouldn’t happen again. That was naive. Alepho had knocked down two of the attackers. They could be out for revenge. No matter how many roommates Alepho walked with, they might be ambushed by even more guys. Being in a group might be their best defensive strategy, but to someone else it could look like a Sudanese gang, albeit in button-­down shirts and belted khakis, moving in on someone’s territory. Worse, if fighting broke out, they might be blamed and arrested. For a refugee, a felony arrest meant deportation back to Sudan.