It was the Saturday morning before the new term. The university campus that was uninhabited a week ago now breathed life with the arrival of new students. They came with their mums and dads ferrying duvets, pillows, lamps, teddy bears, clothes, books and potted plants from car to room. I longed for the comfort and softness of home that surrounded these American students, a luxury that I, an international student, could not afford.
Two weeks earlier I had flown from Malaysia to further my postgraduate studies at California State University, Fresno. I had been a secondary school teacher in Malaysia, in a small town surrounded by palm oil and rubber estates. Although I was twenty-seven, I had never flown abroad before. So, I was both excited and overwhelmed at the idea of flying all by myself on a nineteen-hour flight to the United States – to the land that I had only seen on television and Hollywood films. On route to Los Angeles, the plane had to transit at Tokyo. In Tokyo two Japanese brothers about ten and thirteen sat next to me for the rest of the journey to the United States. The boys had the casual air of well-seasoned travellers, spoke with an American accent, and looked relaxed. I envied their independence, and their confidence as I was still practising how to buckle and unbuckle my seatbelt and to open the small pot of yoghurt on my food tray without getting it all over me. When the plane landed at Los Angeles all the passengers scurried as if they knew where they were going. I stopped to read the information screen several times, checking and re-checking how to get to arrivals. When I finally found my way to baggage reclaim, my two large bags were the only ones going round and round the conveyor belt. A tall black security guard looked at me and said, ‘Are those yours? Wait here.’
He lifted the bags and brought them to me and said, ‘Here you go,’ as if wanting to protect me. I was taken aback by his simple gesture of kindness. Bags collected, I arrived at the gate for my connecting flight to Fresno. The plane was a small six-seater light aircraft. There were five of us flying to Fresno that afternoon - a man in a cowboy hat, a couple with back-packs and a woman with dangly earrings in a long loose dress. We had to carry our own bags to the luggage compartment but the baggage handler, who looked Asian, signalled to me to not lift my bags. He then took the bags from me and put them in the plane. I was beginning to wonder at this preferential treatment, I either looked small and helpless or perhaps foreigners have a way of looking out for each other.
As the plane approached Fresno airport, I looked out at a view that contrasted sharply with home. Instead of the lush green scenery of tall trees, jungles and palm oil estates, here the earth had a brick red colour and looked parched, with rows and rows of grape vines basking in the glorious summer sun. Stepping out of the aeroplane, the heat hit me. This was August 1990, and no one had warned me about the scorching Californian heat. In my naivety, I had assumed that as I was heading west, it would be several degrees cooler than the tropical heat of Malaysia. At Fresno airport I noticed that most people were wearing shorts and t-shirt. There I was, at arrivals with my two large suitcases dressed in jeans and a thick pink jumper! I must have looked like a right old foreigner! Harold, my host parent who came to pick me at the airport, smiled warmly and said, ‘My, you must be hot!’
Harold drove me to his home where I was welcomed warmly by his wife Marianna. There were already three other international students from Japan and Germany. After a week with Harold and Marianna, all of us internationals moved into the empty campus accommodation for our week-long orientation programme. The student leaders running the orientation workshops were also internationals. We were yet to meet any American students, but now, they were streaming in. I was excited, longing to make new friends and to get to know the Americans, so I decided to make my way to the TV lounge where I could meet people without appearing too eager. Much to my annoyance there was already a lady sitting very comfortably on one of the sofas, painting her nails bright pink. The lady looked about mid-fifties with short blonde hair, cut in a sophisticated style, and wore bright dangly earrings. She must have been about my mother’s age and had an air of glamour about her. She seemed quite absorbed in her nails but stopped and looked up. Taking this as an invitation, I asked, ‘Have you come to see your child off at university?’
‘No,’ she replied looking a little miffed. ‘I’m here to study.’ She said it as if I was stupid.
‘Oh, ok,’ I gulped and quickly left realising that I had offended her.
A FEW DAYS LATER, I met Kristina again as her room was only a few doors away from mine. ‘Are you heading for breakfast?’ she asked.
‘Yes, I am,’ I said feeling a little unsure whether Kristina liked me or not.
‘Do you mind if I joined you?’ she asked.
‘No, of course not,’ I said.
At breakfast, Kristina explained that she was a mature student from Houston, Texas and had come as an exchange student to study Russian. She explained that she was a second-year student and had another two years to go before she graduated. Kristina did not seem annoyed with me anymore and seemed to have forgiven me for my faux pau.
The TV lounge became a focal point to meet other students in the dorm, but I soon discovered that the girls who came along were only there to watch the soaps which came on every afternoon at a set time. I had very little in common with them but longed to connect with someone I could walk with to the dining hall, which I found daunting. Quite by accident Kristina and I kept bumping into each other in the hallway and soon it became a regular pattern for Kristina and me to meet daily for either breakfast or dinner. One day over lunch, Kristina said, ‘Would you like to come clothes shopping with me this Friday evening?’
‘I can’t afford to shop,’ I said. ‘I don’t have any money.’
‘You’re a beautiful young lady,’ she said. ‘Don’t hide your beauty underneath all those baggy clothes.’
‘But I really don’t have the money,’ I said which was true. I also knew that the clothes I had brought with me did not look flattering – they were okay for home where I blended in with everyone else, but here in California, the loud gaudy colours, made me stand out for the wrong reasons. I knew that I could be spotted miles away for all the wrong reasons.
‘Just come and have a look,’ Kristina persuaded.
So, on Friday evening, I found myself at Macy’s and JC Penny with Kristina. She quickly picked out several pairs of trousers with matching tops and a couple of cardigans. ‘Look at this darling cardigan. It’s just screaming you,’ she said.
As if clothes were not sufficient, Kristina insisted that we stopped for accessories as well. To keep her happy, I gave in but when she picked out two pairs of earrings, I simply knew I had to say ‘No.’ Unlike most other international students who were being supported by their parents, I had to fund my own studies and so had to watch what I spent. To buy two pairs of earrings was frivolous and a luxury which I could not afford. ‘Sorry, but I really can’t afford them.’
‘Well, I’m getting them as a gift for you,’ Kristina said and walked up to the cashier and paid.
I was speechless. No one had ever been that generous or interested in me. That week, I started turning up for lectures in my newly purchased outfits. Whenever Kristina spotted me in the hallway, she smiled approvingly, ‘My, don’t you look lovely!’
Something began to shift. I no longer felt invisible or an outsider on campus. People began to engage with me as if I was normal, as if I was like them. I blended in. In class, a young lady who belonged to a sorority invited me to her sorority house. A young man stopped and asked, ‘Hi, have you got a boyfriend?’ and in my writing class, a group of Mexican boys invited me to their community festival. I was no longer the foreign student with funny clothes, and I felt accepted. Kristina, and I began spending more time with each other going to art exhibitions and amateur dramas. I found out that she had recently been widowed and had two grown up children and a grandson. Kristina told me that she had always wanted to further her studies but had married the love of her life very young and had not had the opportunity to study till Bill, her husband, died of cancer.
‘I have no regrets,’ Kristina said. ‘We had thirty wonderful years together. I wouldn’t swap it for the world.’
But why study Russian I wondered but did not bother to ask. The following week we both spotted a large poster on campus advertising a coach trip for students to Les Misérables in Los Angeles. ‘We’ve got to go!’ Kristina said excitedly.
The next weekend we went clothes shopping again to pick out an elegant red dress for my culture trip to Los Angeles. ‘You look absolutely gorgeous,’ Kristina said looking at me proudly as if I were her daughter. I felt humbled receiving so much generosity from someone I had only known for about four months.
As it was an all-day bus trip to Los Angeles, we bought snacks and drinks and looked forward to our trip. We had decided that we would sit together on the journey but the morning of the trip as we waited for the bus, we met Anna, a sixty something English lady also going to the show. Anna was travelling alone so, Kristina invited her to sit across the aisle to us. This, I thought was most inconvenient as Kristina kept turning away from me to chat to Anna. It turned out that Anna, used to be a professor of Sociology at Fresno university and was extremely interested in Kristina’s life. She seemed very curious about Kristina and took no notice of me. In fact, her whole conversation excluded me. I was a little miffed at first but soon began to eavesdrop as Kristina talked about her childhood. Kristina told Anna that she was originally from Ukraine, which surprised me as I had always assumed Kristina was born in America. She explained to Anna that when she was about eight years old, she was sent to a concentration camp during World War Two. This elegant, graceful woman was once a Ukrainian refugee and I had not even bothered to ask about her fascinating life. Finally, it dawned on me. Learning Russian at the age of fifty-five - it all made sense, but I also felt a little hurt. I had known Kristina for four months and not once had she told me that she was born in Kyiv. Anna, whom she had just met for a couple of minutes, managed to get more information from her than I ever did. The next day, I asked Kristina, ‘Why did you not tell me? Why had you not told me that you were in a concentration camp?’
Kristina looked at me. ‘You did not ask and besides it’s hard to talk about it. It’s something I find difficult.’
‘But you told Anna.’
‘She knew how to ask.’
That hurt me but I persisted. ‘What was it like?’ I asked searching her face.
‘Despair,’ she said. ‘We had to survive but the worst thing was the nights. We couldn’t sleep. We could hear babies’ everywhere, babies crying of hunger and dying.’
Kristina looked pained as if the very mention of the war had ignited a deep pain buried within her. I had assumed her life had been easy. Her home, with wide expanse of land, her horses and nice life in America, had hidden her past. ‘How did you end up in America?’
‘It was after the war. The Red Cross re-located us from Ukraine to the USA. I was adopted by Barbara, a single Christian woman.’
‘Were you happy?’
‘Yes, she was good to me, but I was a teenager by the time I arrived in America, and I had to start school.’
‘What was it like?’
‘Awful. I was terrified on the first day at school. I couldn’t speak a word of English and I felt so awkward and self-conscious. I was put in a lower class. Everyone else had friends and I was so shy.’
KRISTINA DID NOT WANT to talk anymore – something about too many bad memories but I learnt to be patient, to listen and to ask questions at the right time. ‘What happened to your parents?’ I asked one day.
‘My father was executed by the Communist Party just a few years before the war.’
‘But how did you end up in a concentration camp?’
‘It just happened. One morning during the war, my mother and I were at the market in Kyiv when Nazi soldiers rounded up some of us and marched us to the station.’
‘Were you scared?’
‘Yes, especially when we did not know what we had done or where we were going?’
‘What was it like?’ I asked prodding her gently.
‘I remember very clearly being hungry and exhausted. We were on a cattle transporting train. It was dirty, crowded and smelt. There was hardly anything to eat. I was hungry all the time and became very ill.’
‘What happened at the camp?’
Kristina looked at me as if to say, this was a no-go area. ‘It was awful,’ was all she could say.
DESPITE THE TRAUMA OF war, Kristina was always hopeful and thankful for life. Over and over again, she would knock on my door and invite me, who was an introvert, to an art exhibition or to a poetry reading. ‘You must not spend too much time in your room,’ she told me off gently. ‘It’s not all about grades. You must live life too.’
I had a long list of questions for Kristina but knew that at times it was too painful for her to go back to the past. It was as if it still haunted her. ‘What happened after the war?’ I asked during one of our outings.
‘We were in a displaced persons’ camp for a while. Somehow, my mother and I got separated but later I found out that my mother was also rescued by the Red Cross and came to America. Barbara my adopted mum did some research and found that my mother only lived about hundred miles away. She arranged for me to meet her.’
‘So, did you get to meet your mum?’ I asked because I so longed for a happy ending.
‘Yes, I did, but it was painful.’
‘Were you not happy to see your mother?’
‘Things had changed between us. Seeing, each other only opened the scars of the war. My mother looked at me as if I were no longer her daughter. Wars do strange things to people. I never saw her again. Seeing each other just triggered so many nightmares. I had learnt to leave them behind, but I knew this meant choosing to live with Barbara and not with my own family.’
Kristina did not want to talk about the war anymore and I knew when to stop. Instead, I began to take an interest in Russian language and culture. Kristina explained how lost words from the Russian language suddenly returned to her, words from her childhood that had been forgotten. ‘I think you never really forget the language you grew up with,’ she said. ‘But maybe words are returning because I’m ready to move on from my past.’
One Sunday Kristina asked me to accompany her to a Russian Orthodox church in the middle of Fresno city, which she had been invited to by a Russian student for a harvest service. We were welcomed warmly by Daniel, who had saved us the most privileged seats right at the front of the church. The air was warm and stifling inside the humble looking building, but the women wore long dresses with head scarves and the children sat quietly without squirming as they waited for the service to end. We sat listening to the whole service conducted in Russian for almost two hours. After the service, we were treated as guests of honour at the lunch prepared lovingly by the women. I was starving by this time. There were rice dishes, cabbage rolls, dumplings filled with meat, boiled eggs, chicken and bread. The women had prepared a feast! It was almost two before we ate. Food never tasted so good.
SUMMER HOLIDAYS WAS soon approaching, and I knew that I couldn’t afford staying on campus. Once again, Kristina who was good at networking, came to my rescue. She managed to convince Anna to have me as her house-sitter when Anna and her husband went away as park rangers up in the mountains. No matter how busy Kristina was, she always made time for me. But our friendship was not always smooth sailing. A crack began to appear as our conversations led us to fragile questions about America’s role in the world. It was the time of the Gulf War and I had made a remark that America likes to meddle everywhere. Kristina seemed hurt. ‘Internationals do not appreciate this country and what good it has done.’
Our conversations became awkward and tensed and we began to avoid each other. But after a couple of weeks, we missed the banter, the deep conversations about life and the warmth of each other’s company. So, we made up. Soon, it was time for Kristina to return to Houston to finish her studies and I was going to graduate and return home. Not having family nearby, I felt uncertain about attending the graduation ceremony. A week before graduation, Anna invited me for dinner at Marie Callender’s in town. ‘I’ll pick you up at six,’ she said.
We arrived at the restaurant. Who should I see sitting at a table beaming at me was none other than Kristina! ‘You did not think I was going to miss your graduation, did you?’ she laughed her eyes twinkling at me.
‘You’ve come,’ I said not quite believing it.
‘And look what I got for you?’ Kristina said handing me a carrier bag.
Inside, was a short pink skirt, a white blouse and matching earrings. She knew I had no money to buy new clothes for the graduation ceremony.
‘Your graduation outfit,’ she smiled. ‘It’s a gift for you.’
I wept. I had nothing to give in return except to love her. In many ways, Kristina who had been rescued by the Red Cross had rescued me too. During my time in America I lived through the Gulf War and the Rodney King riots. I had seen the best and worst of America, but Kristina showed me the generosity of the American people.
I RETURNED HOME IN May 1992. Most of my peers were either married with children or had bought a house and were moving up in their career. I on the other hand was single, penniless and had a degree in Creative Writing which most people thought was useless. I did not own a thing, but I knew I had grown. Several years later, I received a letter from Kristina. I smiled when I read her letter. At the age of fifty-nine, she had learnt a new language and joined the Peace Corp as a volunteer to teach English to children in Hungary. The last I heard from Kristina was a couple of years ago and although we have lost touch with each other, I know something of her resilience and spirit of adventure will always stay with me.
He lifted the bags and brought them to me and said, ‘Here you go,’ as if wanting to protect me. I was taken aback by his simple gesture of kindness. Bags collected, I arrived at the gate for my connecting flight to Fresno. The plane was a small six-seater light aircraft. There were five of us flying to Fresno that afternoon - a man in a cowboy hat, a couple with back-packs and a woman with dangly earrings in a long loose dress. We had to carry our own bags to the luggage compartment but the baggage handler, who looked Asian, signalled to me to not lift my bags. He then took the bags from me and put them in the plane. I was beginning to wonder at this preferential treatment, I either looked small and helpless or perhaps foreigners have a way of looking out for each other.
As the plane approached Fresno airport, I looked out at a view that contrasted sharply with home. Instead of the lush green scenery of tall trees, jungles and palm oil estates, here the earth had a brick red colour and looked parched, with rows and rows of grape vines basking in the glorious summer sun. Stepping out of the aeroplane, the heat hit me. This was August 1990, and no one had warned me about the scorching Californian heat. In my naivety, I had assumed that as I was heading west, it would be several degrees cooler than the tropical heat of Malaysia. At Fresno airport I noticed that most people were wearing shorts and t-shirt. There I was, at arrivals with my two large suitcases dressed in jeans and a thick pink jumper! I must have looked like a right old foreigner! Harold, my host parent who came to pick me at the airport, smiled warmly and said, ‘My, you must be hot!’
Harold drove me to his home where I was welcomed warmly by his wife Marianna. There were already three other international students from Japan and Germany. After a week with Harold and Marianna, all of us internationals moved into the empty campus accommodation for our week-long orientation programme. The student leaders running the orientation workshops were also internationals. We were yet to meet any American students, but now, they were streaming in. I was excited, longing to make new friends and to get to know the Americans, so I decided to make my way to the TV lounge where I could meet people without appearing too eager. Much to my annoyance there was already a lady sitting very comfortably on one of the sofas, painting her nails bright pink. The lady looked about mid-fifties with short blonde hair, cut in a sophisticated style, and wore bright dangly earrings. She must have been about my mother’s age and had an air of glamour about her. She seemed quite absorbed in her nails but stopped and looked up. Taking this as an invitation, I asked, ‘Have you come to see your child off at university?’
‘No,’ she replied looking a little miffed. ‘I’m here to study.’ She said it as if I was stupid.
‘Oh, ok,’ I gulped and quickly left realising that I had offended her.
A FEW DAYS LATER, I met Kristina again as her room was only a few doors away from mine. ‘Are you heading for breakfast?’ she asked.
‘Yes, I am,’ I said feeling a little unsure whether Kristina liked me or not.
‘Do you mind if I joined you?’ she asked.
‘No, of course not,’ I said.
At breakfast, Kristina explained that she was a mature student from Houston, Texas and had come as an exchange student to study Russian. She explained that she was a second-year student and had another two years to go before she graduated. Kristina did not seem annoyed with me anymore and seemed to have forgiven me for my faux pau.
The TV lounge became a focal point to meet other students in the dorm, but I soon discovered that the girls who came along were only there to watch the soaps which came on every afternoon at a set time. I had very little in common with them but longed to connect with someone I could walk with to the dining hall, which I found daunting. Quite by accident Kristina and I kept bumping into each other in the hallway and soon it became a regular pattern for Kristina and me to meet daily for either breakfast or dinner. One day over lunch, Kristina said, ‘Would you like to come clothes shopping with me this Friday evening?’
‘I can’t afford to shop,’ I said. ‘I don’t have any money.’
‘You’re a beautiful young lady,’ she said. ‘Don’t hide your beauty underneath all those baggy clothes.’
‘But I really don’t have the money,’ I said which was true. I also knew that the clothes I had brought with me did not look flattering – they were okay for home where I blended in with everyone else, but here in California, the loud gaudy colours, made me stand out for the wrong reasons. I knew that I could be spotted miles away for all the wrong reasons.
‘Just come and have a look,’ Kristina persuaded.
So, on Friday evening, I found myself at Macy’s and JC Penny with Kristina. She quickly picked out several pairs of trousers with matching tops and a couple of cardigans. ‘Look at this darling cardigan. It’s just screaming you,’ she said.
As if clothes were not sufficient, Kristina insisted that we stopped for accessories as well. To keep her happy, I gave in but when she picked out two pairs of earrings, I simply knew I had to say ‘No.’ Unlike most other international students who were being supported by their parents, I had to fund my own studies and so had to watch what I spent. To buy two pairs of earrings was frivolous and a luxury which I could not afford. ‘Sorry, but I really can’t afford them.’
‘Well, I’m getting them as a gift for you,’ Kristina said and walked up to the cashier and paid.
I was speechless. No one had ever been that generous or interested in me. That week, I started turning up for lectures in my newly purchased outfits. Whenever Kristina spotted me in the hallway, she smiled approvingly, ‘My, don’t you look lovely!’
Something began to shift. I no longer felt invisible or an outsider on campus. People began to engage with me as if I was normal, as if I was like them. I blended in. In class, a young lady who belonged to a sorority invited me to her sorority house. A young man stopped and asked, ‘Hi, have you got a boyfriend?’ and in my writing class, a group of Mexican boys invited me to their community festival. I was no longer the foreign student with funny clothes, and I felt accepted. Kristina, and I began spending more time with each other going to art exhibitions and amateur dramas. I found out that she had recently been widowed and had two grown up children and a grandson. Kristina told me that she had always wanted to further her studies but had married the love of her life very young and had not had the opportunity to study till Bill, her husband, died of cancer.
‘I have no regrets,’ Kristina said. ‘We had thirty wonderful years together. I wouldn’t swap it for the world.’
But why study Russian I wondered but did not bother to ask. The following week we both spotted a large poster on campus advertising a coach trip for students to Les Misérables in Los Angeles. ‘We’ve got to go!’ Kristina said excitedly.
The next weekend we went clothes shopping again to pick out an elegant red dress for my culture trip to Los Angeles. ‘You look absolutely gorgeous,’ Kristina said looking at me proudly as if I were her daughter. I felt humbled receiving so much generosity from someone I had only known for about four months.
As it was an all-day bus trip to Los Angeles, we bought snacks and drinks and looked forward to our trip. We had decided that we would sit together on the journey but the morning of the trip as we waited for the bus, we met Anna, a sixty something English lady also going to the show. Anna was travelling alone so, Kristina invited her to sit across the aisle to us. This, I thought was most inconvenient as Kristina kept turning away from me to chat to Anna. It turned out that Anna, used to be a professor of Sociology at Fresno university and was extremely interested in Kristina’s life. She seemed very curious about Kristina and took no notice of me. In fact, her whole conversation excluded me. I was a little miffed at first but soon began to eavesdrop as Kristina talked about her childhood. Kristina told Anna that she was originally from Ukraine, which surprised me as I had always assumed Kristina was born in America. She explained to Anna that when she was about eight years old, she was sent to a concentration camp during World War Two. This elegant, graceful woman was once a Ukrainian refugee and I had not even bothered to ask about her fascinating life. Finally, it dawned on me. Learning Russian at the age of fifty-five - it all made sense, but I also felt a little hurt. I had known Kristina for four months and not once had she told me that she was born in Kyiv. Anna, whom she had just met for a couple of minutes, managed to get more information from her than I ever did. The next day, I asked Kristina, ‘Why did you not tell me? Why had you not told me that you were in a concentration camp?’
Kristina looked at me. ‘You did not ask and besides it’s hard to talk about it. It’s something I find difficult.’
‘But you told Anna.’
‘She knew how to ask.’
That hurt me but I persisted. ‘What was it like?’ I asked searching her face.
‘Despair,’ she said. ‘We had to survive but the worst thing was the nights. We couldn’t sleep. We could hear babies’ everywhere, babies crying of hunger and dying.’
Kristina looked pained as if the very mention of the war had ignited a deep pain buried within her. I had assumed her life had been easy. Her home, with wide expanse of land, her horses and nice life in America, had hidden her past. ‘How did you end up in America?’
‘It was after the war. The Red Cross re-located us from Ukraine to the USA. I was adopted by Barbara, a single Christian woman.’
‘Were you happy?’
‘Yes, she was good to me, but I was a teenager by the time I arrived in America, and I had to start school.’
‘What was it like?’
‘Awful. I was terrified on the first day at school. I couldn’t speak a word of English and I felt so awkward and self-conscious. I was put in a lower class. Everyone else had friends and I was so shy.’
KRISTINA DID NOT WANT to talk anymore – something about too many bad memories but I learnt to be patient, to listen and to ask questions at the right time. ‘What happened to your parents?’ I asked one day.
‘My father was executed by the Communist Party just a few years before the war.’
‘But how did you end up in a concentration camp?’
‘It just happened. One morning during the war, my mother and I were at the market in Kyiv when Nazi soldiers rounded up some of us and marched us to the station.’
‘Were you scared?’
‘Yes, especially when we did not know what we had done or where we were going?’
‘What was it like?’ I asked prodding her gently.
‘I remember very clearly being hungry and exhausted. We were on a cattle transporting train. It was dirty, crowded and smelt. There was hardly anything to eat. I was hungry all the time and became very ill.’
‘What happened at the camp?’
Kristina looked at me as if to say, this was a no-go area. ‘It was awful,’ was all she could say.
DESPITE THE TRAUMA OF war, Kristina was always hopeful and thankful for life. Over and over again, she would knock on my door and invite me, who was an introvert, to an art exhibition or to a poetry reading. ‘You must not spend too much time in your room,’ she told me off gently. ‘It’s not all about grades. You must live life too.’
I had a long list of questions for Kristina but knew that at times it was too painful for her to go back to the past. It was as if it still haunted her. ‘What happened after the war?’ I asked during one of our outings.
‘We were in a displaced persons’ camp for a while. Somehow, my mother and I got separated but later I found out that my mother was also rescued by the Red Cross and came to America. Barbara my adopted mum did some research and found that my mother only lived about hundred miles away. She arranged for me to meet her.’
‘So, did you get to meet your mum?’ I asked because I so longed for a happy ending.
‘Yes, I did, but it was painful.’
‘Were you not happy to see your mother?’
‘Things had changed between us. Seeing, each other only opened the scars of the war. My mother looked at me as if I were no longer her daughter. Wars do strange things to people. I never saw her again. Seeing each other just triggered so many nightmares. I had learnt to leave them behind, but I knew this meant choosing to live with Barbara and not with my own family.’
Kristina did not want to talk about the war anymore and I knew when to stop. Instead, I began to take an interest in Russian language and culture. Kristina explained how lost words from the Russian language suddenly returned to her, words from her childhood that had been forgotten. ‘I think you never really forget the language you grew up with,’ she said. ‘But maybe words are returning because I’m ready to move on from my past.’
One Sunday Kristina asked me to accompany her to a Russian Orthodox church in the middle of Fresno city, which she had been invited to by a Russian student for a harvest service. We were welcomed warmly by Daniel, who had saved us the most privileged seats right at the front of the church. The air was warm and stifling inside the humble looking building, but the women wore long dresses with head scarves and the children sat quietly without squirming as they waited for the service to end. We sat listening to the whole service conducted in Russian for almost two hours. After the service, we were treated as guests of honour at the lunch prepared lovingly by the women. I was starving by this time. There were rice dishes, cabbage rolls, dumplings filled with meat, boiled eggs, chicken and bread. The women had prepared a feast! It was almost two before we ate. Food never tasted so good.
SUMMER HOLIDAYS WAS soon approaching, and I knew that I couldn’t afford staying on campus. Once again, Kristina who was good at networking, came to my rescue. She managed to convince Anna to have me as her house-sitter when Anna and her husband went away as park rangers up in the mountains. No matter how busy Kristina was, she always made time for me. But our friendship was not always smooth sailing. A crack began to appear as our conversations led us to fragile questions about America’s role in the world. It was the time of the Gulf War and I had made a remark that America likes to meddle everywhere. Kristina seemed hurt. ‘Internationals do not appreciate this country and what good it has done.’
Our conversations became awkward and tensed and we began to avoid each other. But after a couple of weeks, we missed the banter, the deep conversations about life and the warmth of each other’s company. So, we made up. Soon, it was time for Kristina to return to Houston to finish her studies and I was going to graduate and return home. Not having family nearby, I felt uncertain about attending the graduation ceremony. A week before graduation, Anna invited me for dinner at Marie Callender’s in town. ‘I’ll pick you up at six,’ she said.
We arrived at the restaurant. Who should I see sitting at a table beaming at me was none other than Kristina! ‘You did not think I was going to miss your graduation, did you?’ she laughed her eyes twinkling at me.
‘You’ve come,’ I said not quite believing it.
‘And look what I got for you?’ Kristina said handing me a carrier bag.
Inside, was a short pink skirt, a white blouse and matching earrings. She knew I had no money to buy new clothes for the graduation ceremony.
‘Your graduation outfit,’ she smiled. ‘It’s a gift for you.’
I wept. I had nothing to give in return except to love her. In many ways, Kristina who had been rescued by the Red Cross had rescued me too. During my time in America I lived through the Gulf War and the Rodney King riots. I had seen the best and worst of America, but Kristina showed me the generosity of the American people.
I RETURNED HOME IN May 1992. Most of my peers were either married with children or had bought a house and were moving up in their career. I on the other hand was single, penniless and had a degree in Creative Writing which most people thought was useless. I did not own a thing, but I knew I had grown. Several years later, I received a letter from Kristina. I smiled when I read her letter. At the age of fifty-nine, she had learnt a new language and joined the Peace Corp as a volunteer to teach English to children in Hungary. The last I heard from Kristina was a couple of years ago and although we have lost touch with each other, I know something of her resilience and spirit of adventure will always stay with me.
Sheela Burrell holds a Master of Arts degree in Creative Writing from California State University, Fresno where she had her first short story published in Common Wages, a university journal. Sheela also holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree with Education from University Science of Malaysia, Penang. A trained teacher, Sheela taught English Language to secondary school children in Malaysia. She moved to England after her marriage to her British husband and continued teaching at a further education college. Later, she worked with international students at a local university in Essex. Sheela has been a preschool teacher, a lecturer, a tutor, an educational support worker for undergraduates as well as a writer. Her memoir Marrying Across Borders about an international marriage will soon be published by Onwards and Upwards.
|
supported by
|
awarded
|