An Israeli who leaves Israel is said to be “outside of the land”; an Israeli who moves from Israel to America is said to have “gone down.” According to Israelis, one is either inside or outside of the land. There are no in-betweens.
When I called old friends, longing for the sound of a familiar voice, I heard a tape recording saying they were too busy to pick up the phone. This was my America of 1985, a place I could not touch, let alone feel. The first time I took the train into the city, I felt the McDonald’s wrappers around my feet and the way people avoided each other’s eyes. I did not remember what I had loved about Chicago. My eyes were half-closed. At the Art Institute, when I went to see the Impressionists, culture shock was seated on a bench next to me.
I found myself at the corner of Wilson and Broadway, where, in the words of Studs Terkel, the pulse of Chicago still lives. I walked past the Native Americans drinking out of paper bags, resting against the August cement, or searching in the garbage for their afternoon meals. Asian families were strolling down the street with children trailing after them, and at the entrance to Truman College were students resting between classes. I walked past all of it quickly.
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Ruth Lambach, the coordinator of the refugee program, towered over a desk filled with papers and poems. Her walls were covered with Hmong tapestries and photographs of her 13 brothers and sisters on the farm in Canada where she grew up. Ruth said it had been called the Indochinese program in the 1970s because most of the students were from Cambodia, Laos, or Vietnam. The name was later changed to “refugee,” a more generic term meant to include newer arrivals from Romania, Iran, and Ethiopia. There were nearly 500 students and 17 teachers in the program, which was still dominated by Asians.
The evening classes were filled with people who already held jobs during the day, the go-getters who even after a day of hard work in a gas station, restaurant, or hotel dragged their tired bodies into the classroom each night and were present in both body and soul.
I was relieved to find out that their former teacher had already carved a pumpkin with them, so we walked as a group to Hall A. The room was dark except for a row of jack-o’-lanterns glowing with candles. Ruth told stories about Halloween while writing new words on the board. Many of the teachers were dressed like goblins and witches and ghosts. The Asians did not laugh about the ghosts as we did, but stared fixedly at whoever was talking. To them ghosts were real.
When Van Fuy spoke again, her face was pale and her eyes seemed smaller, with red circles beneath them. Each time she told of this pain, it would lie heavy across the classroom. She would tell it again and again, as if we could bring her children back somehow. I felt responsible, I’m not sure why. I knew that if I said “I’m sorry,” she would know that I could not understand. I knew that if I told her to talk about it more and tell me how she was feeling, she would not be able to. I did not want to continue with our simple lesson for the day. I knew that all of them had a larger lesson to give to each other, but no words with which to do it. Do they reflect? Are they bitter about their losses? Have they grown wise? None of this is clear to me. They ended all of their stories with: Now I am in America. I want to go to school learn English.
