The Foreign Student

© 1999 All Rights Reserved........By Margaret Karmazin

When the telephone rang, Everett Small was explaining to his daughter why welfare had never served the poor. ì It fosters dependency and weakness in people who already have leanings in that direction,î he was saying, and he hadn't missed Marcy's answering smirk from across the dinner table. "Now who the drat could this be, calling during the dinner hour?" he asked testily.

"If it's Ganesh, tell him to come over," called Marcy, as she flipped her pitch black dyed hair out of her eyes. Nothing would aggravate her father more than an evening spent with the tall, silent Indian upstairs in her room with the door locked. It didn't matter that he was celibate and a serious disciple of some obscure religious group. He was only interested in instructing her in the ways of the soul, but to her father, all dark skinned men wanted nothing more than to ravish her lily white body. "If that's what you're after," he would say to her through pursed lips, "don't tell me the details. I don't want to know."

Evidently, the caller was not Ganesh. Whoever it was, he was asking Everett something that was making him uncomfortable. "Well, I'll have to think that over," he said, "but don't count on it. I don't think that kind of thing would appeal to me." And he hung up.

Marcy was curious, but kept her voice nonchalant. "So, what's up?" she asked. Her father looked oddly distracted. "That was Reverend Arthur," he said. "Something about his wanting me to take in a foreign student."

Marcy raised herself from her usual slouch. "What do you mean?"

Everett began to clear the table. He'd long ago given up on expecting his daughter to help. If he let the dishes languish there long enough, eventually she'd get to them, but it might take her a full twenty-four hours, a situation he could not abide.

"The Kohlers were expected to take him in but they backed out. Now he wants me to put the man up. Can you imagine?"

Marcy could hear him loading the dishwasher. She didn't feel the least bit guilty.

Somehow, she blamed him for bringing on her mother's fatal cancer by his refusal to do ‘women's work'. Now he had to. No man, including her father, was going to work her to death.

"Why is it ridiculous for him to stay with us?" she asked, although she knew perfectly well what her father's reasons would be. She rolled her eyes as he answered.

"Why would I want to support the influx of foreigners into this country? You know perfectly well this student will stay here once he uses the American taxpayer for his education! They always say they're going to return to their own countries, but they never do! Instead, they live here, pay no taxes, use up our resources and enjoy our privileges while sending home money to their huge families!" He had stopped working to stand in the kitchen doorway and was growing red in the face.

"But Dad," she said with mock innocence, "You always say you like people who are industrious, but now you're saying you don't like it when immigrants are. What do you want them to be? Lazy beggars?"

"That's a dumb question!" he retorted. "I don't want them to come here at all! Let them be industrious in their own countries. They're pushing this one down the tubes! The good people of European stock made this country great! We're the ones who fought the wars, made the inventions, paved the streets, got everything organized, and now a bunch of low-lifes who don't even speak English are busting in here and running everything down!"

Marcy examined her black lacquered fingernails. On the back of each hand, she had a small tattoo, a dark red rose on her right one and a purple pyramid on her left. "If I remember correctly," she replied in her soft, but sometimes almost scary voice, "your own parents were foreigners who didn't speak English. Didn't they come over before World War II?"

"That was different," said Everett. "They arrived with all their assets and they immediately contributed to society. Your grandfather was a pharmacist and your grandmother an excellent seamstress. They ran a smooth, orderly home. Father was an active Methodist and Mason. You come from stock to be proud of, even if you do choose to pretend you're trash."

This last was a low blow, but Marcy only smiled and adjusted the silver ring in her eyebrow. She knew she was not, as her father put it, ‘trash'. With a degree in art education and a commercial art minor, she'd landed a position on a regional magazine as assistant art director and did a decent job of it as far as she was concerned. This past month, when Julie, the art director, was in Europe cleaning up loose ends after her sister died in Brussels, Marcy had handled the layout and last minute chaos on her own. There had been no complaints other than a minor one on her choice of header fonts for two articles. Her father could only be referring to how she looked. He would, of course, prefer her to wear tucked in tailored blouses, crew neck pastel sweaters, and keep her hair in a mousy brown bob. Please!

She replied, "I thought you'd jump to accommodate Rev. Farter. I mean, aren't you the one who always says people should give back to the community and especially to their church?"

"Please stop referring to him as ‘Rev. Farter'" Everett said angrily. He was back in the kitchen, slamming pans around. "Your humor can be so common. It certainly isn't funny that he's suffered from intestinal parasites! Maybe you ought to spend a few months in Africa doing missionary work and living in the midst of every germ on earth and then we'll see how humorous you think everything is! Of course we should all do our parts, but I was never referring to promoting the downfall of civilization! I think the Reverend is simply mistaken as to the direction in which he puts his energies."

Marcy had risen from her slouched position in her chair and was scraping crumbs from the tablecloth into her palm. She walked to the kitchen and flicked them into the trashcan. "I would think," she replied in her softly mocking tone, "that the Rev. um, Arthur is only following the teachings of Christ. I mean he's trying to help a fellow human being who's struggling to improve himself, who's using the talents God gave him."

The telephone rang again. "I'll get it," said Marcy quickly, hoping anew for the reluctant Ganesh, but she soon handed the receiver to her father. "It's Farter," she whispered.

Everett ignored her, wiped his hands on the dishtowel and put the receiver to his ear. She watched him as he listened, that tight, so familiar expression on his face. Whatever Farter was saying, it was not pleasing. She opened the refrigerator, took out a beer and popped it open, knowing that doing so would irritate her father, but he was not paying attention.

He was a neat little man, not over five foot seven inches tall, hair salt and pepper and cut the same way he had worn it all of Marcy's life. His blue-gray eyes looked small behind his thick convex lenses held in square silver frames, nineteen-sixties glasses, Marcy called them. He dressed in L.L. Bean and kept his fingernails and nose hairs carefully trimmed.

"I just can't see how we could manage it," he was saying into the phone, his black brows knitted in irritation. "We don't have the room."

"But we do!" declared Marcy quite loudly, understanding he and the minister were still arguing about the student. "The rooms in the basement!" She was referring to the ‘suite' they had down there, a damp sitting room and musty, windowless bedroom.

Her father was suddenly silent, overpowered. Somehow Marcy instantly knew that the minister's wife must have taken over the persuasion project. She was a dominating woman and with her in the picture, it was only a matter of time before Everett capitulated.

"I suppose we could try it," he finally said resignedly. "If it's no more than a month. No more than that." He stayed on the phone a bit longer while receiving the details of the operation.

Marcy was smiling broadly when he hung up. "So where is the foreign one from?" she asked irreverently.

Everett was practically speechless. "Damn!" he muttered. "I forgot to ask." He hung up the dishtowel and pushed ‘start' on the dishwasher. The old machine immediately started up a hideous clamor. While he would have liked to disparage the Kohlers for backing out on the deal, he could hardly blame Frank for having a stroke.

"This will surely be a disaster," said Marcy cheerfully.

In reply, Everett said, "We'll simply have to make the best of it. Just grit our teeth and see it through."

"But Dad, I'm really looking forward to it!" she teased.

The student was delivered four days later after morning church services. A sweaty and evidently overwrought Reverend Arthur pulled up in his ten year old Lincoln and heaved himself out to open the trunk so the young man could remove his battered suitcase. The student appeared cool and collected, as if he'd just stepped out of the shower until he got close to Marcy and she caught a whiff of his perspiration. It was potent and sour, but not entirely unpleasant. He wore little wire-rimmed glasses that flashed in the sunlight.

Everett was stiff in his greeting. He mumbled something while holding open the screen door so the minister and the student could enter the house. Once inside, Reverend Arthur wiped his dripping brow with a huge, cream colored handkerchief, which he then stuffed back into his pocket. He was uncomfortably overweight, rather sloppily fat. The student, in contrast, stood like a dark pillar, his hard muscles evident under his slightly translucent white shirt.

"ìWell, Everett," began the preacher in his jovial, social tone of voice, "this is Fortune Cherche from the island of St. Martin."

Fortune stuck out his hand. When Everett took it, the hand was limp. What was this, some kind of pansyish foreign handshake? The man certainly didn't look like a pansy.

"I am enchanted to meet you," said Fortune.

"Likewise," muttered Everett.

Marcy popped up and stuck her own hand out, but the student didn't appear too happy to take it. His hand brushed hers so quickly it seemed he might believe she was infected with leprosy. She looked slightly baffled.

Everett led the way to the basement with Fortune banging his suitcase against the wall of the narrow passageway. He appeared to be content with his lodgings. Reverend Arthur was obviously relieved and left with much huffing and patting of Everett's back and shoulders. "You have done a service for the Lord," he told him.

Everett had mistakenly believed he would be expected to cook the young man breakfast, but this was soon corrected. "I rise at five A.M.," Fortune announced, "and after my morning exercises and meditation, I prepare my own meal of corn cakes and fruit."

Well, buy your own cornmeal then, thought Everett. Out loud he said, "That sounds all right." But would the student be there when he and Marcy were having their breakfast? It turned out he was.

"So, tell me about your life in St. Martin!" chirped Marcy the next morning in a socialite tone of voice that startlingly reminded Everett of her mother's. He noticed she was dressed up somehow, although it was hard to put his finger on what was different. She still wore all dark colors, mostly black, and still had on that garish, maroon lipstick. Had she perhaps combed her hair?

Fortune, who was at the stove heating up the iron skillet after pouring in what looked like a half quart of peanut oil, turned and fixed her with a cold stare. "I don't think you would find my life in St. Martin anything that would interest you." Then he turned back to his cooking.

Marcy's head jerked back as if she had been struck. "Um," she said, trying to collect herself, "I went on a cruise, maybe five years ago, and we stopped at St. Martin. I thought it was a really cool place. Do you come from the Dutch side or the French side?"

Everett was impressed by her persistence.

Fortune did not turn around, but answered, "You see that my name is French. Our family has been under the thumb of the French oppressors for two hundred years. I am called Bonge in my homeland even though I am forced to use this ridiculous moniker for enrollment purposes at the university. You will call me Bonge, if you please."

"I see," said Marcy. "Is that African or something?"

He turned and fixed her with the same unfriendly stare. "It is Bassa. My ancestors were captured from the Bassa tribal lands." Just for good measure, he gave Everett the same hard look, then turned back to the frying pan, which was now sizzling. Into it, he poured some thick cornmeal batter.

Everett was outraged. He opened his mouth and squeaked, then got his voice under control. "If it weren't for those French oppressors, you wouldn't now be attending, on a scholarship paid for by our government, this university that you have to use your proper name to get into!" He could feel his heart thumping unpleasantly as he said this, but he simply could not just sit there and permit this leach to continue spouting nonsense.

Fortune did not hesitate to reply. "If my ancestors had not been captured by the oppressors, I would be growing up in Cameroon and would be proud to contribute to my country. My family would not be broken up and spread over a thousand places.... we would be there together, strong and organized as a family should be."

Everett paused. He liked the idea of an organized, stable family and wished his own were more so. He hadn't seen his sister for over six years and didn't know if his nephews even remembered him. But still he rankled. "But you would be living in poverty and disease. What do they still have there? Elephantiasis! Dysentery! Malaria! All sorts of horrible things that kill you before you're thirty-five! Why would you want to live in that kind of environment?" Now his heart was speeded up from excitement. He was enjoying speaking up to this ungrateful freeloader.

But Fortune only said quietly, "A man's pride in himself counts more than his struggles with disease and the problems of living in a tropical environment."

Everett was silent and chewed his bran flakes.

Marcy mixed some flakes into her fat free yogurt and asked, "Um, what's your major?"

"Economics," Fortune snapped and did not turn around. He was lifting the corn cakes out of the pan and depositing them onto a paper towel covered plate.

Marcy ate in silence, then in obvious relief, got up to leave for work.

"What made you pick that area of study?" asked Everett and, in spite of himself, waited for the answer with interest.

Fortune was out all day and in the evenings closed himself up in his basement rooms. He studied while he ate unless Everett managed to engage him in stilted, but often intense debates. One Friday, home from work and without any interesting plans for the evening, Marcy clumped down the basement steps and rapped on Fortune's door. He opened it bare-chested, wearing only his usual khaki slacks, and his greeting was so icy, she felt as if he'd pierced her.

Angry, she said, "Why are you so rude to me? You're lucky we let you stay here." And she was amazed at what had come out of her mouth. It sounded like something her father would say.

He turned away from her and walked back into the room, but he had not shut the door in her face. She took the liberty of entering, and finding no where to sit, plopped down cross-legged on the ugly pink rubber backed rug. Fortune returned to his desk chair.

"I suppose what you refer to as rude," he said, "is that I don't bow down to you as an American man would. I find American women are, for the most part, undeserving of such adoration. They are basically all whores."

"What?" said Marcy, sitting up straight. "What are you talking about?"

He continued placidly, his smooth brown face like a carved mask. "A Caribbean woman will make love simply because she desires to. An American woman does it to gain material objects, money or marriage, which in the end is all the same."

Her face flushed with fury. "I have had sex because I wanted it!"

He replied with utter confidence. "You had it because you wanted to hook the man into being your steady boyfriend, then eventually into becoming your fiance, and then your husband. Don't try to fool me. I know what you are thinking inside that white woman's head." He almost sneered when he said this.

She felt humiliated. "But I am on your people's side!" she exclaimed. "I support unlimited immigration! I vote for anyone who takes that stand!"

"I have no interest in living in the United States. I am going into politics when I return home."

She stood up. "Oh yeah, after you've taken all you can from our country! After you've used our educational system and the kindness of strangers!"

As she furiously left the room, she realized she was being her father, but she didn't care. She absolutely didn't give a damn.

After that, she avoided running into Fortune and arranged to eat out as often as possible. Everett found himself and Fortune alone at the dinner table most evenings. Everett would make his solitary meal of skinless chicken or lean beef, two vegetables and a salad. Fortune would cook up spicy concoctions, using unknown ingredients and Everett wasn't sure where he bought them all. One evening, Fortune evidently made up too large a batch and, in his gruff tone, offered half to Everett.

"Oh, no," was Everettís immediate response. "I have to eat low fat."

Fortune dished up some of the food for him anyway. "You will find that these spices will clear your arteries," he said. "Eat what you want, but make sure you have these spices in your food and you will be healthy." For the first time, there was a ghost of a smile on the smooth, chocolate face.

In the manner of a shy and wary child, Everett picked up his fork and hesitatingly took a tiny bite. It was a shock to his tongue. He reached for his water glass so fast, he almost knocked it over.

"No!" said Fortune. "Not water. Take a little bite of this bread here, then have some water."

Everett did as told. Yes, the fire cooled down. Feeling reckless and risque, he allowed himself another bite. This time he had the bread ready and soon he was going for more. The food was a combination of rice, onions, yams, peppers, tomatoes, and chicken. Once you got used to the fiery flavor, it was delicious. He was probably imagining it, but he thought he could feel the fire flowing through his arteries. Afterwards, Fortune handed him a plate on which rested a single slice of orange melon. That too was delicious.

"You probably don't have much heart disease down there where you come from," said Everett after he had downed the melon.

"Why do you say that?" asked Fortune. "Because we're all lazy good-for-nothings and never get worked up enough to develop heart disease?"

Everett was taken aback, but yes, that was probably what he had meant. This young man was quick on the draw. "Well, I mean, the pace of life is slower there, isn't it?"

"I suppose so," admitted Fortune. Then he added, "Sometimes a bit too slow for someone of my temperament."

The two men considered this. Everett got up and took out the bottle of Crown Royal he'd been saving since Christmas the year before. "Would you like a shot?" he asked.

"I wouldn't mind one," replied the student.

When Marcy returned home late that evening, she found her father in the living room reading from the Encyclopedia Britannica. From over his shoulder, she could see he had the volume open to ‘St. Martin'.

"Dad, I have decided to move out," she suddenly announced. "Karen needs a roommate and I checked her apartment out tonight. It's pretty convenient for getting to work."

He didn't respond immediately. After turning a page, he looked up and said, "If you think that's what you want to do, then it's all right with me."

"You'll be left alone here with that self centered idiot," she said.

He looked at her as if he had never seen her before, then his expression changed and he saw himself.

"What's that French saying?" he asked her. "The more things change, the more they are the same." "I don't know what you're talking about," she said, turning to go up the stairs. But she did. "Mark and Ganesh are going to help me move this weekend," she told him. And then she went up to bed.

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