I Don’t Have an iPod, But My Mom Does

A few days ago, on my regular subway commute home, I peered up from Newsweek and noticed a guy across the aisle was reading 1984. Now, 1984 is one of my very favorite books ever. Certainly, I can find no fault with this fellow MTA rider’s literary taste. But, seriously, the New York subway is a pretty tough place to be reading that sort of thing. Surveillance cameras everywhere, cops searching your bag, crowding, the distinct smell of unwashed human bodies, the free reign of enormous, greasy rats. You see where I’m going with this. It isn’t subtle. 

But sometimes with Orwell, it is subtle. You look from the page out into the world, then back to the page, then back at the world. You privately wince a little and say to yourself, “I wish that weren’t quite so true.” 

Right now, I’m in the middle of Burmese Days, a novel he wrote in the Thirties, when he was still a little hungry. At the point I’m up to in the book, the plot is just getting going, but the atmosphere and context are well established. Orwell worked as a policeman in Burma not ten years before, and the Raj he writes of is a saggy one that ceases to know what it is or what it’s for. The main characters are a group of Englishmen who spend most of their waking hours drinking and smoking at the European club (”European,” of course, meaning white-only). They are racist to varying degrees–to one man in particular, the Burmese people are “dirt” and “savages,” while to others, they are considered harmless, and even charming, so long as they remain unblinkingly obedient.

To Orwell fans, our hero, John Flory, is familiar. He is boozy and somewhat hapless, erudite in an unconventional way, and oddly lovable. He isn’t perfect, but you’re rooting for him. Flory is interested in Burmese art and customs and his closest friend is a Burmese doctor, not a fellow British officer. Again and again, both at the club and among the “natives”, he is expected to act a certain way and have certain attitudes because he is British. Even his Burmese friend makes certain to have whiskey available when Flory visits, because that is what Englishmen are supposed to drink.

At the club, Flory is forced to listen to racist, anti-native diatribes and nostalgic memories of the grand old days of the Raj, when brown brothers knew their place, but he lacks the courage to defend his friend. At the doctor’s, he denounces the English character and Britain’s role in India to a degree that the doctor, a heartfelt Anglophile, considers seditious. Watching Flory go between the extremes of these two worlds is fascinating.

I have lived a lot of my life in New York as Flory in miniature. My Latino students continue to be amazed that I like my enchiladas with salsa rojo (the spicier option, at least locally), and even that I would go to a Mexican restaurant in the first place. I love these moments with my students, but negotiating my whiteness, and the set of assumptions that comes with it, among the adults is often not so rosy.

My first year at Is 162, I shared a classroom a few periods a week with Ms. Purcell. I don’t remember her first name, or maybe I never knew it. She was black and from somewhere in the South. From the beginning, it was clear that Ms. Purcell was going to have a hard time in Bushwick. When kids were nasty to her, she was nasty right back, which only made them nastier the next time around. In December, she announced that she was not coming back after Christmas break. She and I were in our shared classroom one afternoon shortly after she gave her resignation, and I guess she decided I had as good an ear as any.

“Fuck this,” she said. “I’m goin’ home, where I can actually teach.”

One thing I know for sure is that a conversation that begins with the word “fuck” is one which you want to be brief. “This isn’t an easy place to work, that’s for sure.”

I was trying to be small talk-y, politely disinterested, but instead my remark encouraged her. “Did you know that this school was going to be nothing but Spanish trash when you got hired? ‘Cuz I sure didn’t. You can’t teach kids like that.

“Um, what? Didn’t she take a walk around the block when she interviewed and notice that everyone she saw was Latino? Did she really just call said Latinos “Spanish,” like it was 1970? And, most curious of all, why is she saying this to me, when she knows I’m an ESL teacher? Despite the questions streaking by in my head, I was too stunned to actually say anything.

She laughed mirthlessly. “Lowlifes. I ain’t wastin’ any more of my time.”The atmosphere in the room seemed to snap and I could feel something in me rushing to the surface. I was inexperienced with just about everything then, but I couldn’t let this woman think that I was sympathetic to her hate.

“Please don’t talk about the kids like that,” I said, and then immediately regretted saying “please.” It was not a rhetorical tsunami, but it was something. She looked up and studied my face, which I tried to keep still.

“What’s your problem?” she spat. “You’re white.”

“That has nothing to do with anything. I chose to work here. If I wanted everyone to look like me, I would have stayed in Maine. These kids are special to me. So just don’t talk about them like that around me,” I said.

I don’t remember what she said after that, so maybe she didn’t say anything. It wasn’t the absolute last time I saw her, but it was certainly our last conversation. I was proud of the way I had handled myself, both because I felt that I had stood up for my students and that I had represented white America well.

Sometime later, I was in the teachers’ room talking with some colleagues, one of whom was Latina. One of them was telling an unrelated Ms. Purcell horror story and we were laughing. Still feeling new and like an outsider, I was pleased that I had a Purcell tale of my own to extend the conversation. They expressed disbelief when I told them what she said. I threw in my line about taking a walk around the block when she interviewed, which got a laugh, then told them what I had said in response. The Latina teacher sort of scrunched up her face and what she said I will never forget:

“Well, thanks Ms. Sampson. But we can stand up for ourselves.”

The paralysis of being so completely misunderstood by people who have no questions has never left me. Finding a mirror image of that feeling in the pages of book is vindicating, but the feeling is still maddening. And something worse, too. It is lonely.

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I don’t know if they are still in vogue, but when I was in elementary school, state reports were an essential part of the social studies curriculum. In second grade, I did one on Oklahoma; third was Idaho; fourth was Alabama; fifth was Alaska. The requirements didn’t change much from year to year. Draw a picture of the flag. Name the capital. Crops. Manufactured goods. Date of statehood.

In general, state reports were not a labor of love. Accordingly, I remember little about the process or product of any of them. Except Alaska.

I remember working on it at the dining room table and my mother coming in to assess progress. It was probably due the next day, and I admit that in those salad days I wanted a bit of watching. Alaska became a state in January of 1959, when my mother was 10. As I sat with the A volume of World Book (remember encyclopedias?) open in front of me, I considered the possibility that she, in 1959, had probably completed state reports. But there would have been no entry for “Alaska” in the encyclopedias she had used.

“So, you couldn’t find ‘Alaska’ in the encyclopedia back then?” I asked, knowing the answer, but somehow needing to ask anyway. She laughed.

“No, it wasn’t a state yet. People weren’t trying to look it up. You know, Grammie’s encyclopedias don’t even have the Kennedy assassination in them. It hadn’t happened yet.”

In the pages of my family’s encyclopedias, history was evolving–truth was evolving–as individuals played out their lives and as the universe of human knowledge became wider and deeper. The world is never still, everyone has history in living memory, and no one knows exactly what kind of encyclopedic articles we will need in the future.

17 years later, this revelation still impresses me. Once in a while, I go back to the World Book shelf, take out volume U-V, and and turn to the entry about the U.S.S.R.

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Though the exact details have yet to be worked out, it is a sure thing that I will be leaving New York in July, and almost as certain that I will never live here again. This move suggests itself, in fact, it has been suggesting itself for some time, but that doesn’t make it easy. I have finished growing up here, and I know this city has done things to me that I don’t even realize.

Living in New York has confirmed a few of my worst fears about the world, namely, that it really is as big and scary as I worried it would be. But New York has also provided its own kind of comfort in the form of insights that have sprung up at unexpected times.

My first year at IS 162, I co-taught a sixth grade ESL class with a girl named Stephanie. She could not look less like me, considering that we are about the same age and both identify as white. She is six inches shorter than I am, and has medium olive skin and very dark, very curly hair. To the eye, I am certainly “whiter.” But one day, quite by accident I discovered that our students didn’t see it that way.

In my coursework for my ESL master’s degree, we talked extensively about African-American and Latino/a identities. In these conversations, White American was always “dominant” and “mainstream.” But within the borders of Bushwick, my school’s Brooklyn neighborhood, whiteness is “other,” it is not the norm. I knew this. What I didn’t know before I worked there is that the factors involved in hanging the “white” tag on someone have absolutely nothing to do with having straight blonde hair and green eyes.

My sixth graders had been working on autobiographies. I was sitting with a group of four of them, checking in on their progress on a section in which they had to provide information about their home countries. Cristela, John, Gustavo, and Joseph were crowded in the back corner, jockeying for screen time on the classroom’s one computer. We began talking about their work, but as is so often the case with kids, my teacherly questions were volleyed right back at me.

“Where you born?” John asked me.

“Maine,” I said, “Up north, next to Canada.” Cristela scrunched up her nose. She wasn’t buying it.

“You were born here? In this country?” I nodded.

“So….what…are…you?” Gustavo asked slowly, like he wasn’t even sure how to pose his question.

I started to explain that I am American, that some of my family came from England in the 17th century and some came from Germany in the 19th century. For a moment, I was pretty impressed with my impromptu lesson. But those four bright, disbelieving faces stopped me.

Cristela squinted her eyes and zeroed in on my face like she had my number. “Talk like a white girl,” she said. Commanded, really. Now it was my turn to be bewildered. “What do you mean?” I asked. “Don’t I sound white all the time?”

Gustavo shook his head vigorously. “No, you talk normal.”

John agreed hastily. “I don’t understand white people. They use weird words.”

I had to know. “What kind of words?”

“White girls say ‘like’ and ‘totally’ all the time,” Cristela explained. The boys nodded emphatically and they all cracked up at the mere mention of such ridiculous sounding language.

Something clicked. I did a brief impersonation of a Valley Girl, a pop culture icon even I am a little too young for. Every other word is ‘like’ or ‘totally’ and the pitch goes up and down constantly, even in the middle of a word. What had been polite chuckling exploded into uninhibited laughter.

“You talk that way with your friends, miss?” Cristela giggled.

“No. I can’t barely understand it when people talk like that,” I said.

“And English is your language!” said John.

“You see?” Gustavo said. “You not white like that. You like us.”

I don’t know what my face may have looked like at that moment or what I said after that. Whatever it was, I hope Gustavo heard, “Thank you. It’s an honor.” Because it has been.

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If you’re like I was five years ago, you’re planning a move to New York from somewhere cleanier, friendlier, and quieter. More predictable, for sure. This isn’t to suggest that you should change your plans. In fact, it’s statistically impossible not to be more interesting after having lived in New York than you were when you packed up the U-Haul. This is good news, but the learning curve is steep and the road is long. And there’s traffic. Okay, I’ve already lost control of the metaphor, but here, in what will likely become a regular feature, are a few insider tips on living here when you’re an outsider.

1. You can’t really live on pizza, bagels, and Chinese dumplings. But, dammit, no one can stop you from trying.

2. People have “parties” which basically amount to a bunch of people meeting at a bar. A lame cop out which requires no cleaning, grocery shopping, or organization of any kind? Absolutely. But just pay the cover and go. You got to have friends.

3. The subway, even with a transfer and a route that takes you all over town, is always faster than the bus. I don’t know why.

4. Have the location, menu, and pricing of at least three restaurants committed to memory. When you’re out with a hungry, indecisive group, you will be the rockstar who says with confidence, “I know this great place three stops away with great tapas…And I think it’s Riesling night….” Party resumed, thanks to you.

5. Some people know which subway exit is most convenient and calculate where on the platform to wait for the train. Don’t be intimidated; follow the signs. Know that you know many things that these people don’t.

6. Bodegas, or delis, are wonderful things. Reliably, they have an ATM (with a fee, of course, but you’ll come off as a hick if you complain), and you can almost always buy the following: phone cards, single doses of most over-the-counter medicines, decent coffee, nearly any Goya product, cold cuts, and herbal supplements that supposedly improve sex drive and performance.

7. Oh, and speaking of delis: when you order a bagel at one, always specify that you want it “cold.” Many before you have learned the hard way that “hot” doesn’t mean toasted, it means “microwaved.” And that’s just wrong.

8. If a parking spot seems too good to be true, it is. That unmarked expanse of curb you find, right across the street from the supermarket, when it’s pouring? There’s simply no way it’s a legit space. And throwing on your hazards to go and do something quickly may work where you come from, but in New York, you might as well have a vanity plate that reads “TIKT ME.” Come to think of it, having a vanity plate of any kind is probably a bad idea.

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