The Class

She said her name was Desislava or Desi. She knew Americans always tripped and fell over her name, “Or you can call me Daisy”, she said, with a friendly smile “it sounds like that. I am from Bulgaria, not Russia.” Apparently, every American she met assumed she was Russian. Her accent was very strong eastern European like you’d hear in an old spy movie. She was pretty in a wide cheekboned, Slavic way. She wore a long black leather coat and her hair was braided in an unfamiliar style. She wore big showy rings on several fingers.

I was one of her teachers in a hybrid ELS and computer skills class. That class was possibly the most fun I’ve ever had as a teacher, we never stopped laughing together. Mistakes made while learning a new language are often funny, and we had an endless supply. As different as they were from each other, the students were all dealing with essentially the same intense situation and they naturally formed a friendly bond. In most classes I teach, the students start as strangers and finish that way too. On the last day of class, as they leave forever, most walk out without glancing at me. (It deserves to be said, though, that there are very few classes without at least one or two warm-hearted students who thank me for the class.)

Over this quarter there might be as many as 9 students in class at a time, but there were only four who finished.

There was Desi of course, from Bulgaria. She spoke of her country the way a new mother talks about her baby, or a lover speaks of his true love. The bond between Bulgarians and their country is stronger than patriotism and deeper too. It’s mystical…and slightly insane: Crazy blood and soil magic. She would light up as she described places she loved and I sensed that she lived every day with a pain in her gut being so far from home.

There was Ricardo, a dapper young gay man from Chile. He dressed impeccably and was always ready to laugh but there something cautious and reserved watching from inside him.

From Algeria came Mustafa, who wanted to become an accountant, and gave the impression that he was born as one. He always appeared somber and sad, in an almost mask-like way. He spoke in a high hoarse whisper with the halting cadence of walking on ice.

Maya came from Costa Rica. She was young and pretty, and she was a stripper. She dressed in a style I’ll call “Sex toy”. Imagine hot-pink stretchy fabric showcasing (augmented) boobs and butt. Add a huge puffy white coat trimmed with white fur, then decorate with dangly shiny jewelry here and there. Her face was pretty-mestizo, but it had to be at least 30% makeup and 10% pout. She beamed sexuality directly at any male heterosexual, enjoying her power to make men believe that she wanted them. When she saw that she had brought them to the very edge of poor decision making, she released them back into their ordinary lives. Inside this spectacle of a person was a self-involved ordinary girl trailing a personal history like a poisonous snake attached to her leg. She was a stripper at age 14 in Costa Rica, where she met her future husband, a wealthy and shady American 30 years older than her. When she was of age, he imported her like a product, gave her a boob job, and put her to work. Rumor had it that she had survived sexual abuse from early childhood till arrival in the states. No wonder she generated an atmosphere of overheated sexuality everywhere she went, for one thing, it was all she knew, for another, that was the only atmosphere that made her powerful.

Finally, attending chaotically now and then, was Abdi from Sudan. He was a very dark, large-boned man, restless and full of laughter despite the things he had witnessed. He didn’t finish the quarter but accompanied us most of the way.

Teaching half the course along with me was Stan Lewis, who is no question one of the sweetest people I have ever known. He looked like a kind-hearted high school track coach. Obviously gay, and obviously Catholic, Stan had taken all those Catholic school lessons about saints and angels very much to heart. He was consistently gentle and patient with everyone. The word Trustworthy could have floated over his head in bright magical letters, and most people would have said: “Well, obviously!”. The only break in this demeanor came when he was flustered when he would suddenly embody a kind of pretend shocked southern lady with an invisible feather duster to shake at miscreants. This subpersonality only ever appeared briefly, and goodnaturedly before Stan claimed the steering wheel again. In some ways, Stan was a walking stereotype but a thoroughly lovable and genuine one.

Our little crew of students shared a passionate commitment to make their new life work, to overcome obstacles, to learn English and thrive. Their days were FUCKING busy. They all worked from the early morning, except Maya who went to work at 9 or 10 pm. Then they’d assemble mid-afternoon and begin lessons that frequently lasted until after dark. They filled the classroom with warmth. Their laughing comradery and sympathy for each other was beautiful and, I suddenly thought one day, rather unAmerican. Not anti, just UN. In so many ways they were better than us at enjoying life. They still had the gift of delighting in the company of people that we lost or threw away, maybe on the early internet or even a long time before that. It felt heady and extra-alive to stand among them and savor it. From Costa Rica, Algeria, Chile, and Bulgaria they had all brought the same basic gift of easily being happy with people and having fun. I mean without secretly wishing that they were home browsing the web, or silently hanging out in the corner awkwardly wishing there was a cat. Americans are shit at this pleasure and we’re just making up more excuses not to go all the time. I’m shit at it too, but they made it easy to join. I think in a weird way we Americans take everything that should be light, too seriously, we do not know how to take ourselves lightly. Socializing, like almost every other thing we do, feels like work. American life was created in the image of work. Time off the job often feels more like a break than it does like being Home, or maybe the way to say that is… being home all too often feels like the Boxer’s corner between rounds, where we spit out our bloody mouthguard and try to clear our heads before wading back into the fight.

I got to know Desi the best of the group and I learned a few things from her:

Desi and her husband drove town cars and vans for a living, carting tourists and executives. This was one of the few decent-paying jobs that immigrants could jump into if they arrived here with enough money for a Towncar. It’s getting harder and more expensive all the time to start one of these businesses or even just keep one going. Now Uber is separating immigrants from their own businesses, demoting owners of small companies to mere drivers, and pocketing the change.

If you could stop time and fly low and fast around the city counting limousines and glancing inside, you’d quickly notice that ALL of them are driven by immigrants. And if you think Trump voters hate immigrants you should hear immigrants talk about other immigrants. Let me tell you about it!

We need to stop for a moment to discuss what’s up ahead because it’s pretty bad.

I’m not sure how soon it will appear but first, there will be profanity, I guess there ‘s been a little already and you seem cool with it. But it’s going to get worse. There’s going to be some racist speech in here somewhere because as near as possible, I’m going to quote these folks and their talk might be seen as “A little much” at a Klan rally. The first time I heard such talk my head just about fell off. I felt horror, Shame, and more horror, also Shock and disbelief.

“Don’t talk that way!”I yelled, louder than I generally yell things “What’s wrong with you?” The speaker looked at me, unruffled. “You tink you know,” she said, “you dunt know”. Actually I’m not sure how I’m going to handle this, after all. I feel in danger of releasing literary poison gas and lighting a beacon for SJWs who will rush to this spot, take this in the wrong spirit, and have me fired. They are getting super efficient at it and the whole process only takes a couple of hours now, I’m told. Let’s just stipulate that immigrants speak of each other in terms that are way worse than the ones used by your unfixable Uncle on Thanksgiving.

Taxi and limo companies are all ethnically owned and organized. People come to the states, then bring countrymen over, they work together, and so on. Rinse and repeat. It happens naturally. The emigres’ group-up because without talk that sounds like home, and food that smells like home, they might as well be on the surface of the goddamn moon over here. This is as true for the Ethiopians as the Bulgarians, but although they are living parallel lives they absolutely detest each other with a loathing that could heat soup. There’s a country directly behind every company and some countries that are comfortable together in general, will form a loose affiliation, and share the task of hating the all the rest. Bulgaria bumps against Greece in the south and Russia in the north and the limo companies built by these native sons of each get along pretty well in the far northwest of America.

There’s a cheerful undercurrent of mild lawlessness and civic irresponsibility in these circles. Corners are cut routinely. The system is played by all of them. All these ethnic groups daily squishing together for reassurance… and all of them feeling like the only normal, sane people in town.

Fun Facts About Bulgaria!: Yelling 

Bulgarians are volatile, to say the least. They blow up now and then, actually a LOT more frequently than that. They blow up constantly.

  1. They have many small arguments over little things, punctuated by a few simple shouts of “Fuck your Mother!”.
  2. They have arguments over the phone that make Americans look for solid objects to hide behind.
  3. But when they have a real argument, it sounds like several Rottweilers attacking a bear. You flinch at the sound and wonder what even COULD make a person that angry.

Learning About Cultures!

  • The earliest advanced human societies ever were in Bulgaria, many thousands of years ago.
  • Bulgarians are not even a little bit enlightened about Mental Health, and depressed people don’t seek help
  • A Bulgarian scientist built the first computer!
  • Bulgaria has scary antiquated attitudes toward gays and lesbians
  • Bulgarians think about Feta Cheese ALL THE TIME!

Desi was married to a Bulgarian man about 13 or 14 years older than her. It was not a love match but originally intended to become one in time. In her home town in Bulgaria, Desi was mid-20s, sexy and slim, and a force to be reckoned with. Her boyfriend, who she really cared about, was blatantly cheating on her after years together. This is not the sort of moment when you want to interrupt her.

Do you know how scary an angry goose is? Those crazy fuckers make everything run. That day, Desi was a human-sized angry goose. Her future husband, who is a complete stranger to her at this moment, is back in town from America where he’s gotten his business rolling. He greets her, asking if she would like to marry him and move to America. On any other day, when she wasn’t consumed by hate, she would have laughed and walked on. But today, seeking revenge and looking for a big enough plan to be worthy of it she sat with him. After asking him a lot of serious questions, she said: “Sure, let’s do it”.  and they were wed.

She took him home to her family’s apartment and dropped this bomb on her beloved Mom and Dad. Stranger> Married> USA>Soon. There were sharp words, suspicious, worried and careful questions, mainly to him. There were words of anger, love, and sadness that she’d married without them present. Desi would feel guilty and sad about that ever after.

Within days she was in America. She had no friends or local language or knowledge of this town. Welcome to the moon, Hon. Her husband tried to help where he could but he was out working most hours of the day and she mostly had to find her own way around. He would drive her around at night, pointing things out and introducing American things that needed explaining.

Her husband had seemed nice enough at first and they got along as people do. She took some beginning English classes and became a bit more confident in exploring this world. As time passed though, her husband revealed a mean streak. Years ago as a younger man, he was in the Bulgarian Mafia. The two of them clashed over more and more subjects. They had level 2 and level 3 arguments all the time and it became normal behavior for him to be violent. Hits and kicks, maybe a belt, it was ugly and getting uglier.

Hope for the marriage was gone. Work was pleasant enough but a dead end. No matter what, she needed to improve her language skills. She set out for the small urban college with a respected ELS, language arts program and registered. She moved steadily through the many classes and levels and eventually she stood in front of me, saying:
“My name is Desislava or Desi but you can call me Daisy”.

 

 

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