by Susan Kuklin
One of my friends from the refugee camp was at the airport too. I hadn’t seen her for a year. We hugged and cried. My friend said, “Why don’t you give him a hug?”
“I don’t know him.” We just left in the car. That was it. I didn’t say anything to him at the airport.
Our sponsors took us to a huge apartment with five bedrooms. We didn’t have big apartments in Africa, we only had the small houses, so this was totally different. The sponsor taught us how to use the stove and things. We were living with regular people, not with other refugees. It was amazing there.
In Africa, everything be outside. In Nashville, Tennessee, everything be inside. The bathroom be inside. The kitchen be inside. The garbage cans be inside. The shower be inside. The shower! The shower was good. In Addis Ababa, we just got some water on your hand and put it on your body. Oh, I liked showers immediately. Yes, yes, yes.
Life in the U.S. was simple but not simple. Little things were big things. I couldn’t drink the water in the refrigerator. It made my teeth feel funny. Yeah, cold. Ice cream was sweet, but too cold. And it melted, so it was messy. No, I didn’t like ice cream.
Soon after we arrived in Tennessee, David’s wife left him and moved to Seattle. I had the feeling that something like that would happen. I told David that I didn’t like her in the first place. I said, “I just didn’t want to hurt your feelings, so couldn’t speak up about her.”
At the orientation meeting back in Addis Ababa, I learned that the United States is a free country, and you can do whatever you want, and you can say whatever you want. So I said to David, “No, I won’t marry this man.”
David was furious. On the one side, he loved me and wanted me to be happy. On the other side, as the firstborn son in the family, it was his job to carry out the commands of our father; it was his job to preserve the traditions of our culture. So when I said I wouldn’t marry this old man, trouble started in our family. David and my brothers wouldn’t talk to me. The man had already paid David six thousand dollars to marry me. I told David that I would pay him back. David was so angry, he made me leave the apartment. Because I was set to be in an arranged marriage with this guy, I had to go to his house. My little brother Zatrak wanted to come with me, and I took him because I felt that he could protect me. We moved to a small city called Gallatin, about thirty miles northeast of Nashville. It wasn’t a happy home, because I didn’t like the guy. We weren’t legally married in an American way; we were married in our culture way. He forced me for sex. It was awful. I was a virgin. I told him I’m unhappy. I told him, “I do not love you. I am never going to love you. We’re never going to happen. I will find a way to leave you, but now, because I have nowhere to go, I’m staying here.”
Sometimes I felt like I wanted to kill myself because I didn’t have nowhere to go. My brother David didn’t want me to live with him. David cared about how I felt, but after our father decided on this marriage, there was nothing he could do. It wasn’t his idea for me to get married with that guy. The other relatives who had already moved to the U.S. didn’t want me either. They couldn’t go against my father’s decision, because arranged marriages are part of our culture. The deal was done and that was the end of that.
My “husband” wanted me to get pregnant. He had sex with me anytime he wanted. I didn’t know nothing about birth control, but it didn’t matter, I didn’t get pregnant. He said that something was wrong with me, that I couldn’t have kids. He took me to a doctor, then another doctor, then another doctor. I didn’t know what the doctor said because I didn’t speak English. My husband told me that the doctor said, “Something’s going on in your stomach or whatever.” I thought, okay, if something’s wrong with me, why can’t they give me medicine to treat that?
“Well, I have my period regularly, every month. I never miss it since my first period. If my period comes, I don’t have problems. I never complain. It’s just regular.” I’d have cramps, but not that bad cramps. “Any girl, any woman, can have a baby,” he said to me. “Something’s wrong.”
To be honest with you, he was not a bad guy. He was a nice guy, but the problem was I wasn’t in love with him. He cared about me, even when I said bad things to him. He never treated me bad, like, hit me or nothing. No, he never did that. He was in love with me. If I didn’t eat, he didn’t eat. But the problem was the sex.
I met a translator who went to the doctor with me while I had my period. The doctor said to the translator, “She’s very active. She can have a kid. There’s nothing wrong with her.” This was when I decided that I must leave. Now that the guy knew I can have kids, he would abuse me, by having sex, a lot more.
Two months later, I told him that I wanted to get a job, I wanted to go to school, and I wanted to learn English. In the camps, I never had the chance to get an education. But the guy didn’t want me to go to school. I think he didn’t want me to learn. He was okay about me getting a job; he would like the extra money, right? He took me to the company where he worked. He helped me fill out the application. Then they called me for an interview. I had the interview and got a job making glass for windows.
There was an older white lady named Elizabeth who worked with me. She knew that something was wrong. One day she asked me. “Nyarout, do you love that guy?” I don’t remember how we communicated, because I still didn’t speak English. I think we used sign language.
I said, “Yeah.”
“No. No, you don’t.”
“Wow. How you know this?”
“Well, because you’re too young for him.”
I was very, very tiny, you know? I didn’t even look eighteen. I looked maybe fifteen because I was skinny.
I said, “I know.” I really don’t remember how I communicated this.
Elizabeth was American. Every time I came to work, she patted my shoulder. Yup, every time she saw me, pat, pat, pat. She was an older lady. I think she was probably maybe fifty or forty-something.
Another one of these ladies, who was African American, lived next door. I told her my problem. I told her what was going on. Again, I didn’t know how she understood me, but I told her that I was not happy, and she understood.
“I will help you.”
“How are you going to help me?”
“I’m going to find you a place to go, I’m going to find a good shelter for you. You don’t speak English. I don’t want you in a public shelter, because I want you to be safe and I want you to be taken care of.”
Two weeks later, she asked me three times, “Nyarout, do you want to get out of here?”
And three times I said, “Yes.”
The guy had all my documents. He had my Social Security [card]. He had my I-94. I searched the house for them. When I found my documents, I told the neighbor that I could go the next morning. I told her that when the guy goes to school, she could come and take me. (I don’t know what kind of school he went to.)
The day before I left, I got my paycheck. I wanted to keep my paycheck because I didn’t know where I was going, and that was all the money I had. Usually, when I got a paycheck, I gave it to him.
This day he didn’t want to go to school. I tried something different to get him out of the house. I dumped the orange juice in the refrigerator into the sink. “Oh, we run out of juice,” I told him. “Go to the store and buy some juice.”
He said, “Okay, but give me your check and I’ll take it to the bank.”
“I don’t want you to take it to the bank. We’ll go to the bank together. I want to buy something.” He told me, no, he wanted the money in the bank. “Okay, here!” I gave him the check just so he would leave.
Right after he left, I knocked on the lady’s door. I left the house empty, with no money. I ran. I later heard that Zatrak stayed in the house for a while. When he realized I wasn’t coming back, he moved back to David’s house.
In my country, if you divorce a husband, the family gets a bad credit [reputation]. My family wanted everything to be perfect. Well, you know, ever
ything is not always perfect. There’s always something that you’re not going to like, and there’s always something you’re going to walk away from. But my people, all they care about is a good credit, a good credit, a good credit. That’s why me and David started disagreeing about things. Probably because he’s older, he holds on to the old ways. When David found out I left this man, he didn’t want to talk to me. He said that I was going against the wishes of my mother and father, against my culture. I was the first person to give our family bad credit.
From 2000 to 2008, David did not talk to me the way we used to talk. He still called to see that I was okay, but he said things like, “Nyarout, how you guys doing? Good?” That’s it. No real talk.
The shelter was in a very nice three-bedroom house. There were two other women staying there, one from India and a Mexican lady with two kids. Kimberly, the head of the shelter, was very, very nice. She bought our clothes, she bought our food, she bought everything that we needed. She was an American, a white lady. We each had our own place in the refrigerator for our food.
The Mexican lady was mean to me. She made up things: “Nyarout did this, Nyarout did that. Nyarout doesn’t do the dishes. Nyarout eats our food.” That was not true. But because I didn’t speak English, I could not defend myself with the truth.
Kimberly talked to me about eating the lady’s food. I didn’t understand; I didn’t understand nothing. I started crying and crying. Kimberly talked to me like I was deaf, loud, and using body language. I was crying so hard. I wished I could just speak English so I could tell her the truth.
The other girl at the shelter, the Indian girl, was pregnant. One day, when she came back from her doctor’s appointment, the owner asked her, “Do you know if Nyarout is eating the other people’s food?” The Indian girl walked to the refrigerator, opened it, and showed Kimberly that we each had our own food. “Why would Nyarout eat our food when she has her own right here?”
Kimberly came to me, hugged me, and tried to comfort me. She took me away to her own house. Her own house!
My first winter in Tennessee was in Kimberly’s house. One day, one of my friends from the camp called and said, “Nyarout, open the window.” I opened the window and asked, “What is that white thing?”
She said, “Open the door and go out.”
I had the phone on my ear. She said, “Don’t put your shoes on — just walk.”
“Oh, my goodness. Is this a sand or something?”
“Just feel it.” I was jumping on it. It felt so cold. “What is this thing?”
“It’s snow.”
“Oh, snow.” I didn’t know what that was. I knew that it was good, but cold, really, cold. Snow was good here in America, but it would not be good in Africa. Here we have jackets and boots and gloves. We have heat in the house. We didn’t have those things in Africa.
After six months, I learned that one of my cousins was living in Jacksonville, Florida. I told Kimberly I was going to live with my cousin. She said, “I don’t know if you’re going to be safe there, because you don’t speak enough English yet.” She worried.
I said, “She’s my cousin, she’s married, she has a kid. I’ll be fine.”
Kimberly bought me a ticket to Florida.
In Florida, I got a dishwashing job in a kitchen at Jacksonville University. Eventually I was able to save enough money to send my husband the six thousand dollars he paid my family to marry me. The warm weather and thick, leafy bushes reminded me of home. Most nights I was having bad dreams about bombs, guns, and burning buildings. Then, the night of July 4, something terrible happened. I heard sounds that sounded like guns. “NO! NO! IT’S NOT HAPPENING AGAIN!” I ran to my cousin. “Let’s go!”
“Where are we going?”
“It is happening again! Here in America!” Her husband thought my fear was funny. But my cousin yelled at him, “No, this is not funny.” Her husband stopped laughing and held my hand and hugged me. He took me outside to see the beautiful colors in the sky. “See? Look at the sky. See the beautiful colors? This is what happens on Independence Day, the day when we became an independent country. You will see this every year.”
Now I’m okay about fireworks. I even go to see them. But I’m still scared of guns. When I see anybody with a gun, that scares me.
In Florida, I met Bol. Bol was from South Sudan too, but from a different village. We spoke the same language. I was attracted to him, but I wasn’t in love with him.
My family still didn’t want me, so I thought, why can’t I have my own family? I can make my own family. Maybe that would make me happy. My ex-husband’s words that I couldn’t have kids stuck in my mind. My ex-husband’s actions made me scared to love. I wanted to have sex with Bol to see if I could get pregnant.
I got pregnant right away. After I found out that I was pregnant, I told Bol, “I’m not going to be with you.” I was happy to be here in the U.S., but I was not happy to live with a man because of what I had experienced, you know? I didn’t believe that Bol cared enough about me, loved me, the way I needed to be loved. I left. Yes, I left. That may seem hard, but I needed to find my own way in the world. I moved to Salt Lake City, Utah, because my uncle, my mom’s brother, invited me to live with them so his wife could help me with the child.
In Salt Lake City, I started ESL [English as a Second Language] courses to learn English. I wasn’t a full-time student, but at least this was a start. Until now, I had had no schooling but for the year before the war. I couldn’t even read my own language.
Bol followed me to Salt Lake City. He wanted to be with me for the birth of our child. “I want to be with you. I want to help you take care of the child. I want to be into your life.” He even talked to my family back in Africa.
By this point, one of my dad’s wives had died, and the rest of the family left the refugee camp and moved to Gambela, in Ethiopia. Bol’s father had left his small town and moved to Gambela too. We Sudanese people, Nuer people, always give a person a place to stay. Even if that person is not a relative, our door is open. Bol’s father had knocked on my parents’ door in Addis Ababa and stayed. Was this a coincidence or was it fate? I’ll never know the answer to that question.
Bol called his dad and said, “I got a girl pregnant and I want to marry her.”
“Who is that?” his father asked.
Bol said my name and my father’s name and my grandfather’s name.
Bol’s father said, “Oh, I’m living in their house.”
Bol talked to my mom. He said, “I want to be with Nyarout. I want to marry her.” Then he said, “Ask Nyarout’s father how many cows he wants, and I will give them to him.” Bol would not actually send a cow; he would send money to buy a cow. In our culture, women cannot talk about a girl’s marriage. Men made those arrangements. But my father was not home.
Then Bol called to me, “Hey, your mamma wants to talk to you. She’s in Gambela.”
“How do you know that my mom is in Gambela?” My mom had stopped talking to me when I left my husband. Right then and there, Bol made peace for me with my mom. When I spoke to her, she told me, “Your boyfriend says he wants to marry you, and all this.” I said, “Well, I am not planning to marry him, because I don’t know if you will approve my marriage. You won’t talk to me. You guys made David throw me out.”
“Nyarout, I didn’t have a choice. You know that whatever your father says, I must go with it, even though I love you very much. When it comes to marriage, I can’t make that choice for you. My only choice was to give life to you.”
“What kind of life did you give me?” I snapped at her. “If I was in Africa, and you made me marry that guy, I would kill myself because I don’t want him at all. So in the end, there would be no life.”
“Well,” she said, “I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know what to do. Your father decides everything.”
Bol sent my mom five hundred dollars. He said, “This is not for marriage; it is a gift for you.”
In Salt
Lake City, I had my first daughter, Nyagoa. The love I felt for her . . . I don’t know how to explain it. It was greater than anything I had imagined. In the days that followed, I couldn’t stop thinking about my own mother. I called her in Gambela to apologize. “I’m sorry for everything I said to you.” She told me that I didn’t have to apologize. She told me that she would always love me. This is the love that mothers share with their children. This is the love that I now had with my own daughter.
Even though I felt so much love for Nyagoa, I knew nothing about being a mother. My uncle’s wife helped me. When my daughter cried at night, she woke up to take care of her. I slept through the night.
Nyarout, Bol, and their daughter, Nyagoa, moved to Denison, Iowa, where Bol found a job in the meatpacking industry.
At age twenty, I finally started going to school through Job Corps. I took more ESL classes and my English got better — not too much better.
Two years later, in 2002, when I was twenty-two years old, maybe twenty-one, my second daughter, Nyabima, was born. Bol and I were living together, but we were not married. Bol worked in the morning, I went to school in the morning, and the girls went to day care. I asked Bol to work a second shift while I was in school. He didn’t want to work a second shift. I got a job just to pay for child care so that I could go to school. I found a job packing bacon at a meat company. I started work at three thirty in the afternoon and did a twelve-hour shift, six days a week. I went to school in the morning. There was no time to sleep.
At the meat company, you worked on probation for ninety days. After the ninety days, you got a permanent job with benefits. When I was close to my ninety days, my supervisor called me into her office and asked for my ID.