Tales of Two Americas Read online

  But the system was more complicated than I’d even guessed. Figuring out the fine-tuning of who gets what is good preparation for understanding the caste system in India. Delta, the airline we were flying that night, offers five levels of what they call “service”: Basic Economy, Main Cabin, Delta Comfort+, DeltaOne, and First Class. In the Basic Economy class (travel bloggers call it “Minus Economy Class” or “Last Class”) you get the stripped-down service, no assigned seating, no free carry-on, additional charges for everything from a can of soda to the canned entertainment on your monitor (if you even have a monitor and it isn’t pressed against your forehead, as the seats are so crammed). One day soon (and you heard it here first) Last Class folks will have to swipe their credit cards to get into the toilets at the back of the airbus.

  The airline CEOs on the program kept defending their policies as just wanting to provide their customers with more choice. But the pundits dismissed the flimsy PR. Airlines are responding to Wall Street investors who want them to pack more of us into tighter seats so they can charge more and higher fees. As Bernie might have told you, airlines are increasingly mirroring some of the worst inequalities found elsewhere.

  If you think there isn’t a class system firmly in place in the most mobile of worlds, try getting stuck at a busy international airport on a dark and stormy night.

  By now the Maundy Thursday influence had worn thin.

  ■ ■

  A girl with a tiny red carry-on came running to our gate, breathless.

  “Anyone here speak Spanish?” one of our reduced group of stranded travelers called out. Our airline rep had left for the night.

  I popped right up to the counter. “Sí, sí, yo hablo español!” Maybe it just made me feel good to think I could fix anything at this point.

  The girl turned out to be older than I’d guessed from a distance, mid- to late twenties, heavily made up with bright red lipstick that gave her a retro look. She was overdressed in spike heels, a short black velour skirt with a patent leather belt, and a blouse with a ruffled collar. Someone who hadn’t traveled much and wears her very best to mark the occasion.

  Her name was Estela and she was on her way from Mexico City to Oklahoma. Her ticket said her connecting flight would be at this gate. Had she checked the monitors to be sure? Except I couldn’t remember the word for monitor so I used television instead. (Not many occasions to practice my Spanish in Vermont.) She looked confused. I walked her over to the monitor. Sure enough, her flight had also been canceled. I offered to go with her to the HELP desk and get her on the next flight. From then on, Estela was like the chick that imprints on the first moving/maternal object it sees.

  We inched forward on the line. Time for a long chat. I’d guessed right. This was her first time ever on an airplane. She was en route to her boyfriend in Tulsa, and—she hesitated, as if afraid to be asking for more help than I was already giving—she needed to buy a phone card to call him as he’d be waiting at the airport, worried when she didn’t arrive. She had pulled out a cell phone, an inexpensive brand in a rhinestone cover, the kind I recognized from my trips home to the Dominican Republic, sold by hawkers at street corners. Twenty bucks—five more for the cover—and you could talk to your gente in the Bronx or Boston.

  “You can use mine,” I offered. But my iPhone turned out to have too many bells and whistles for her to manipulate. I might as well have asked her to fly one of the 747s stranded on the runway. I dialed the number and a wary male voice answered. “Un momento.” I put Estela on and her face filled with relief and happiness.

  We’d been on the line at least a half hour when a call came through on my phone. It was Bill, exasperated. “Where are you?”

  “The line is endless,” I explained. “Just go to sleep, okay?”

  “Fat chance of that!”

  “I’ll see if I can get us some blankets.” I had seen reps wheeling carts with pillows and blankets and little bags with overnight supplies to the different gates. Ours at the end of the line seemed to have been overlooked. “Can I bring you back anything else? Another tuna wrap or something?”

  For the first time that night, I thought I could hear him smiling. “Just you,” he said endearingly.

  Finally we reached one of a handful of representatives at the HELP counter, all African American, all women. In fact, as the night had worn on, and the shift changed to graveyard, the workforce had become increasingly darker, including the cleaning crew of dark-skinned immigrant women chattering in foreign languages I couldn’t place as they wiped down counters, emptied trash, cleaned the floor with big industrial vacuums they turned off periodically to talk some more.

  Our representative, a large woman with the I-suffer-no-fools attitude of a Sunday school teacher, listened as I translated Estela’s story. And that was that. She was transformed into a lioness with her cub. I was just the imprint surrogate until she arrived on the scene.

  She was determined to get this poor child into the hands of her boyfriend ASAP. Somehow she managed to reroute Estela on the very first flight to Tulsa the next morning—though we’d been told the flight was full by someone ahead of us on the line. Bill and I had less luck. We would have to wait a full twenty-four hours if we wanted a direct flight, or we could fly to Albany, rent a car, drive to the Burlington airport to pick up our own car, and, no, the airline could not pay for the rental car if we changed our destination. I decided then and there, I’d break the news to Bill in the morning or neither of us would get much sleep.

  ■ ■

  Back at our gate, a cheerful man with the delicate bones of a bird and mahogany skin had arrived, pushing a cart of complimentary supplies: blankets and pillows, overnight packs with doll-size toothbrushes, sodas, power bars. We divvied them out, making sure everyone got what they needed. In the bathroom Estela and I joined a lineup of women at the mirrors, washing our faces, brushing our teeth, getting ready for whatever bit of sleep we were going to get. “What a pajama party!” one of the women quipped. We all burst out laughing, even Estela, who I’m pretty sure didn’t get the joke. We all needed the release of a good laugh after the tensions of the night.

  As we walked back to our gate area, we passed small encampments of stranded travelers, people who had not known one another before this night, now banded together, taking care of one another. Estela set up her bedding next to ours; another single woman asked if she could join us. She was afraid of burglars coming by as she slept and yanking her backpack away.

  “I think we’ll be all right,” I assured her.

  For a while, I was unable to sleep. But I must have dozed off, because I woke up startled. A woman was pushing a broom around us. “I just clean. Sorry. Go sleep.”

  I thought I’d feel aggrieved, lying on that hard floor, rehearsing grievances about what those with the savvy, luck, and twenty-four-hour corporate travel agents outsourced to the subcontinents got that we had not.

  But we got something better, a significant resource there for the tapping—a kindred care and kindness, apparent in a dozen encounters: the equanimity of our beleaguered representative, her humane response to the anxious mother; the cheerful service of the small, happy man wheeling in our rescue supplies; the determined African American woman at the HELP desk who got Estela on the overbooked flight and into her boyfriend’s arms; the late-night shift turning off their vacuum cleaners, rolling them away in silence, so as not to wake the sleepers from our light, restless three-hour doze; the ways we made sure everyone got a blanket, power bars for breakfast, which actually tasted better when halved and shared (note to Bill: this might apply to tuna wraps); even our The Waltons moment when we called out to one another, “Good night,” and, “Buenas noches.”

  Even though Easter was two days away, I felt a resurrection of hope.

  Please don’t tell the airlines, but I was glad for what had happened.

  YOUTH FROM EVERY QUARTER


  Kirstin Valdez Quade

  WHEN I WAS TWENTY-FOUR, my then-boyfriend and I taught at a high school summer program at an elite New England boarding school, which I will call Elliot Academy. The summer school was a kind of cash cow, trading on the Elliot reputation, catering to a wealthy and not very diverse student body. Students were promised rigorous classes, stimulating friendships, field trips to area colleges and idyllic swimming ponds: a glorious New England summer.

  One of the students in my boyfriend’s English class was a rising sophomore, whom I’ll call Ana. Ana was from rural Oregon. Her parents, farmworkers, were Mexican—and, though Ana did not say, I suspect undocumented—who traveled around the state following the crops: cherries, plums, pears. Ana was shy and serious, with frizzy black hair escaping her ponytail, off-brand sneakers, and modest, too-long khaki shorts. At home, she translated for her parents; she took care of her younger siblings; she excelled in school. When she and another girl from her town were granted one of the few scholarships to Elliot Academy’s summer school, their conservative Christian church raised funds to cover the rest.

  Ana had never been out of Oregon, had certainly never been exposed to the level of privilege on display at Elliot, with its columns and cupolas and manicured grounds. The other students were used to jetting off to this or that summer enrichment program, and arrived equipped with iPods and Tiffany necklaces, sleek new laptop computers and spending money for shopping trips to Boston.

  “She’s having a hard time,” my boyfriend told me. “She feels isolated. Maybe you can talk to her.” He meant because I was also Latina, because I’d also been a bookish kid, because I’d also moved around a lot as a child, and money had always been tight.

  And I’d also found myself an outsider in this prep school world. A decade earlier, when I was thirteen, a recruiter from another elite boarding school, in an effort to seek “youth from every quarter,” had visited my rough public middle school on Tucson’s southwest side. I took a pamphlet, and, despite my parents’ bafflement and skepticism (boarding schools existed outside of Victorian England?), submitted an application. I was awarded a nearly full ride. I bought six mock turtlenecks in jewel tones from the Fashion Bug, and set off across the continent to New Hampshire.

  Those mock turtlenecks were only the beginning of what was wrong with me. I was one of a handful of Latino students, the only one, to my knowledge, not from either New York City or from wealthy families in Venezuela or Mexico City. I’d attended nine schools, mostly in the Southwest, but had never heard of field hockey or crew or many of the universities in the Ivy League. Social signifiers that were tossed around—North Face, Nantucket, Greenwich, Guerlain, Majorca—meant nothing to me, and I was sharply aware that I did not speak an essential language. Who knew that the category “middle class” was capacious enough to fit any number of summer homes?

  My time in boarding school was, on the whole, pretty good. I made friends. I took classes and read books that changed my life. But I was desperately shy, skittish around teachers and peers alike, vaguely ashamed of my family and background: of sharing a bed with my sister, of having once lived in a trailer, of growing up without a television, of having a violent, alcoholic biological father. And I felt guilty, too, because even with the generous financial aid, the plane tickets were a burden on my parents. The distance between my experience and others’ felt impossible to bridge, so I didn’t even try to explain myself. For four years I revealed remarkably little about my life beyond the school grounds.

  My time in boarding school was a tremendous, astonishing gift, and it did, as the pamphlet promised, open doors—yet I always felt that my presence there was provisional. Certainly I never felt it was my school. I always had the sense of my inferiority, that my role was to be invisible and studious and grateful, to write tidy and effusive thank-you notes to the donors who’d funded my spot.

  Which was all part of why I’d come to teach at Elliot Academy. That summer was my opportunity to return to boarding school, but to return as the person I wish I’d been in high school: poised, articulate, worldly, and with a clearer idea of how my jeans should fit.

  ■ ■

  Ana’s difficulties had started early in the session. Her roommate, a moneyed and well-traveled French girl, with a healthy sense of what summer school should be, was having a great time. This roommate and her new Elliot friends stayed up laughing late into the night, talking about parties and hookups and drinking. They compared notes on their SAT coaches and college application consultants. They whispered and rolled their eyes at Ana, who, on the other side of the room, tried to do homework or fake sleep.

  In the second week, Ana and her friend from home had asked if they could switch rooms to live together. No, she was told. Roommate assignments were firm, and the girls needed to extend themselves, meet other people.

  When my boyfriend introduced me to Ana, I realized I’d half-seen her on campus, standing apart from the happy clumps of students, either with her friend from home or, increasingly, alone. Her expression was strained and wary.

  In addition to her English class, Ana had signed up for a precalculus class that she wasn’t prepared for, and by the end of the second week it was apparent that she was failing it. She told me this as we sat on a curb in a campus parking lot, the wide, sweeping lawn behind us. Far above, the leaves of a massive, ancient tree tossed the sunlight.

  Ana didn’t seem particularly surprised at my interest in her situation, but she also didn’t seem especially eager for my mentorship.

  “I have to go home,” she said, resigned. “I can’t do Elliot.”

  “But surely the teacher can give you extra help?” I asked.

  “He said I’m too far behind.” She paused, then explained that she’d always gotten As at her Oregon public school and had registered for the class so she could graduate early. “I need to help my family.”

  “You’re just in the wrong class,” I said briskly, cheerfully. “You just need to be in a more appropriate level. We’ll get you switched.”

  I was jollying her along, optimistic, but Ana’s fatalism seemed impervious. “They won’t let me switch,” she said.

  “Nonsense. We’ll figure it out,” I promised. “Another math class. Or maybe creative writing! I’ll talk to the dean. This summer should be fun for you.”

  “Okay,” she said, and though she didn’t smile, I thought I detected a glimmer of hope.

  That summer I’d seen plenty of rules bent; I’d been in the office making copies when parents called, demanding this or that for their kid. Some students had switched roommates or been given singles. When a student hadn’t signed up in time for a college tour or field trip, a parent called, and a space was found on the bus.

  So my hopes were high when I spoke with the dean about Ana. I understood, of course, that these other, wealthier kids belonged to a world where their needs were accommodated, and that Ana did not, but with my advocacy, surely, everything would be sorted out.

  When I explained Ana’s predicament, the dean shook her head regretfully. The other math classes were full, she said. I looked at her in disbelief. I liked the dean—or had. She had a kindly pink face and a soft white bob. In her shapeless linen dress, she resembled a liberal children’s librarian. She was a grandmother. Surely it mattered to her that Ana succeed.

  “Okay, then,” I said. “What about my etymology class? Or the fiction workshop?” My boyfriend had already offered to let her join his fiction class, I told her. I spoke in the sweet, reasonable, good-girl voice I used around people in authority.

  The dean told me that she would not allow Ana to switch classes. “The session is already under way and I can’t set a precedent.” She looked back at her computer, where, doubtless, many demands awaited her.

  I shifted my weight uncertainly. “Well, then, what about getting her tutoring?”

  There wasn’t time for that, the dean told m
e; summer school was only six weeks long, and they didn’t have the resources.

  “But the class is just too advanced for her,” I said. “That’s not her fault. She feels like she’s failing Elliot. She actually thinks she needs to leave.”

  The dean held my gaze and nodded. “It would be a shame if Ana left,” she said, her voice even. “And you’re nice to show concern. But not everyone belongs at Elliot.”

  I was stunned. But then again, not. I remembered my friend from high school, who, when she was deeply depressed, suicidal, and sleeping through her classes, was never offered mental health support, but was instead punished and put on academic probation. I thought of my own isolation and depression and the indifference of my dorm faculty.

  I ought to have argued with the dean. I ought to have told her that Ana did belong; Elliot itself had made that call when she was accepted to the program. I ought to have said that if Elliot was, as it claimed, committed to diversity, then it had a moral obligation to support the students it accepted. I should have pointed out that the rules needed to be in service of students’ learning; or that if rules were going to be bent right and left, then they should be bent for Ana, too. I should have made her see that Ana’s leaving would be a loss for the whole Elliot community as well as for Ana.

  “It’s just summer school,” the dean told me kindly. “It’s not the end of the world.”

  But it wasn’t just summer school; it was Elliot Academy. I understood what that scholarship represented to Ana, because a similar scholarship had represented the same thing to me: escape, welcome, possibility.

  ■ ■

  Even a decade later, my anger at the dean and at Elliot Academy is raw and personal. I have to guard against overidentification with Ana, whom, let’s face it, I knew only fleetingly. I had so many privileges that Ana didn’t have: both my parents went to college, and I always believed I would, too; my dad, who is technically my stepfather, and who has always been extraordinarily loving and supportive of me, became a college professor when I was twelve; my family became middle class; I was never in the position of having to translate and navigate the adult world for my parents. Over and over I’ve benefited from institutional largesse, and have been the first in my family to have the option of pursuing an uncertain career as a writer.