no machetes in america

karen halvorsen Schreck

Severino Kwizera splashed disinfectant into the big yellow bucket on wheels, then hoisted the bucket into the metal utility sink. A clockwise turn continued to be his first impulse, but he thought again—righty, tighty, lefty, loosey—and twisted the spigot to the left. Clean water gushed effortlessly from the tap.

Severino knew a few expressions in English now, thanks to his boss, the Facilities Manager at the Bethelsville Public Library. Some proved helpful, provided reminder or inspiration—a stitch in time saves nine—and for these Severino was grateful. Others, uttered by Mr. Jim Fund in moments of impatience, muscles taut as wire twanging in his jaw, Severino did his best not to recall.

In Severino’s opinion (never to be shared), Mr. Fund was, in addition to being impatient, far too thin. Perhaps Mr. Fund was impatient because he was thin? Severino had never seen the man eat a bite of food on the job. Why would the Facilities Manager deny himself when there were, more often than not, snacks arrayed on plastic trays in the library’s staff lounge, liters of soda for the taking in the refrigerator? Perhaps beneath the thin skin of his impatience, Mr. Fund’s blood was clotted with despair. Perhaps Mr. Fund wanted to be nothing more than a bag of bones, heavy spirit laid to rest.

Severino understood this desire. In the past, he had longed for similar release. He hoped never to feel that way again, but no man could predict the future. Ask Mr. Jim Fund. Mr. Fund could not have predicted that Severino Kwizera, unused to the ways of the “First World” (Mr. Fund’s term), would be a library employee who, after three months of training, still clumsily and inconsistently carried out orders. Mr. Fund said there were other, more qualified men, long-time citizens of Bethelsville, who needed Severino’s job. “Remember that,” Mr. Fund said, as if remembering that would make Severino a worker who never made mistakes.

Severino frowned into the churning depths of the yellow bucket. In this country, things were expected to function properly and predictably. If a thing proved unpredictable or improper, someone swiftly fixed it or threw it away. Like a spigot turned to release or stem a flow, Severino vowed to function in the proper, predictable way.

The rising water was gathering heat, and steam drifted upwards, clouding Severino’s vision. He removed his glasses and wiped the scratched lenses with his handkerchief. “Girlie glasses,” jeered his son Janvier, when he first brought the round blue plastic frames home from the donation center at Global Relief. “Tho pretty,” Janvier lisped with a weak-wristed flap of his hand.

Severino no longer understood his son, whose English was very good and whose innuendos and expressions were weighty and complex. When Janvier spoke, he sounded like a real American, an American Black. According to Janvier, Severino would never be mistaken for anything but a refugee.

Severino put on his glasses again. He had chosen the frames because of their shape and color; he liked their shape and color still. But his son was right. The frames would suit a smaller, less fleshy face. No matter how Severino tried to adjust them, they perched crookedly on his round cheeks and slid down the bridge of his nose. He must remember these glasses had come to him at no cost. Scratched, ill-fitting, and feminine they might be, but they were free and serviceable, good enough. Beggars can’t be choosers. Next time Janvier taunted or criticized something like a pair of glasses, next time the boy complained about something he could not have, Severino would try to recall and sternly share this particular bit of wisdom gleaned from Mr. Fund.

How had the bucket become so full—too full for easy lifting? “You’re distracted!” Mr. Fund would say. “Focus!” Severino wrenched the tap to the right, and the water ceased its rapid flow. A drip descended from the lip of the spigot, then another, then nothing. A person might think the well had run dry. Severino knew better now. 

He ran his finger under the collar of his work shirt. He had been warm beforehand, thanks to a busy morning. Now perspiration rolled down his forehead and neck; his armpits were sticky with sweat. No matter the temperature outside, the inside of the library typically seemed to be neither too cold nor too hot, and so Severino found this current physical discomfort disconcerting. Physical discomfort was an unfamiliar feeling now. Physical discomfort reminded him of other times.

Severino sighed heavily, then cast a wary glance over his shoulder. To his relief, no one was there to hear. Unlike Mr. Fund, he could not afford to be impatient. He could not afford to feel anything but gratitude. And Severino was not ungrateful; in fact, he could not put into words how grateful he was.

Still, he felt as he did at the end of a long workday—bone-weary. This was a problem because the day, as Mr. Fund would say, was “still young.” A digital alarm clock perched on the shelf above the utility sink; its bright green numbers blinked 11:53. Not yet noon, and a cup of ramen and a can of Coca Cola spilled on a computer keyboard in the library’s tech center. A smear of excrement—human or animal, Severino did not care to consider—spanning the lobby carpet. Fuses blown, a foul odor of something rotten in the elevator, a splat of red graffiti outside the library’s main entrance. “‘Unite the Right’,” Mr. Fund had muttered when he pointed it out to Severino. Another catchy expression, although Severino did not know how to apply it to everyday life. Righty tighty, he’d thought, applying solvent to the spray paint, scrubbing at the scrawling letters with a nylon brush. Perhaps there was a connection?

The area’s first-ever Islamic Heritage Festival was today, Severino did know that, and it was happening right here in the library. The event was a big deal, according to Mr. Fund, and some locals were quite upset about it. “Things might get a little crazy,” Mr. Fund had warned.

It was true that the building was far more crowded than usual on a sunny Saturday. The more people, the more messes and mishaps for Severino to clean or fix. He was a man who made things seem like they had never happened. This, Severino had decided weeks ago, was the essence of this job. In this way, he worked a kind of magic.

Now his magic was needed in the Youth Services’ bathroom on the lower level. A toilet was clogged. He must wheel the utility bucket and a mop over there, a spray bottle of bleach and a bundle of rags tucked under his arm.

Severino did not like to waste water. Just this morning he had warned Janvier against taking one of his overlong showers. He would not waste the water in this bucket by emptying it into the drain. He braced himself, then lifted the bucket from the sink and lowered it toward the floor. Despite his best efforts, water sloshed as he set the bucket down, dousing his work boots. These, too, he’d retrieved from the donation center. Sturdy brown boots, soles intact, only the toes split. He’d tried to mend them with a roll of strong black tape he’d found in one of the library’s storage closets. Either he hadn’t used enough tape, or the tape wasn’t waterproof— his socks were soaked to the balls of his feet now.

With a rag, Severino mopped up the floor. He draped the rag over the side of the sink to dry, then used his handkerchief to wipe the sweat from his brow and neck. He considered removing his boots and socks to dry his feet as well, but what would be the point? His feet would suffer anyway, because the leather and cotton would remain wet . The years had taken their toll on Severino’s feet—the camps and the marches between the camps and the ill-fitting shoes that preceded these boots. There was a time when he walked on strips of rubber, cut from a blown tire abandoned on the side of the road, tied to his feet with twine. There were long seasons when he went without any shoes at all. Now his feet always hurt. In the days to come, they would hurt worse: blisters, fungus, joint pain. Severino expected nothing less, but he would not complain.

Well, maybe he would complain a little to Clementine when he returned home. This was her day off, after all. If she was not too tired tonight, maybe she would rub his feet. Maybe she would fill their biggest kitchen pot with warm water or cold water, depending on what she thought best, and then he would soak his feet, one foot at a time because only one foot at a time fit inside their biggest kitchen pot. Clementine would suck her teeth and say it had been a bad sign, the day off to such a rough start and carrying on so. A bad sign, indeed. And she would close her eyes and pray to the god in whom she did not believe, although their sponsors at Global Relief did, and encouraged them to do so. Carol and Gene Jensen were passionate in their devotion to The Lord. Every Sunday, they offered to drive Severino and Clementine to an astonishingly large supermarket where the prices were low—but only after the service at their church, which, in turn, Severino and Clementine were required to attend.

What else did Severino and Clementine have to do on a Sunday morning, and when else would they be able to benefit from the luxury of a car ride to the market—and such a large market with such good prices, at that? It was challenging for Clementine to carry numerous shopping bags on a city bus. People stared when she balanced groceries bundled into a towel on her head; she did not like people staring. A ride from Carol and Gene spared her the scrutiny. Besides, the church music was rousing, the song lyrics projected on large screens so that everybody could join in.

Singing at church, Severino and Clementine both agreed, was helping their English. Sometimes, when the drums and guitars swelled, they were stirred to tears. After so many years of not weeping, whether because they chose not to do so or found themselves unable to do so, the tears were gratifying, a kind of release that made Severino feel almost relaxed, the way he did after a bottle of beer or an afternoon nap. Their tears seemed to satisfy Carol and Gene, as well. It was only when Clementine could not stop crying that trouble ensued. This had happened a total of three times, and all three times, Carol and Gene had stiffened in the pew, their faces reddening as Clementine’s tears turned to wails that filled the large sanctuary long after the singing was over. When this happened, Severino led Clementine from the church to the parking lot, where they waited under the shade of a tree. There was no trip to the grocery store for them that day. After the service, Carol and Gene drove them back to their garden apartment, and Clementine spent the rest of the day in bed. Such was the risk of weeping. There was no spigot that one could turn to the right to make it stop.

In fact, Severino remembered, as he wheeled the yellow bucket from the janitor’s closet, Clementine had predicted today would be a bad one, half-waking in the pre-dawn.

The little brown birds outside their narrow bedroom window had begun their peeping. It was unusual for Clementine to wake so early—she worked late into the night at the dining hall of a nearby college, baking breakfast pastries as sweet as candy. Sitting bolt upright in bed, less than an hour after she’d slipped beneath the covers, she’d clutched at Severino, rousing him from deep sleep. She was babbling in Kirundi, their first language, which was something she rarely utilized now, desperate as she was for them to strengthen their English, hoping to bridge the growing gap between Janvier and themselves.  

“Run!” Clementine’s eyes remained closed as her grip tightened on the ragged neck of Severino’s t-shirt. The lingering scents of sugar and cinnamon, canned apples and syrupy berries wafted from her skin. “My brothers, at the window! Run, hide!”

She shoved at Severino then, nearly pushing him from the bed before he was able to restrain her, pressing her head to his chest, disordering her head wrap so that it slipped back and exposed the pale scar that crowned her forehead. Clementine’s scar was as familiar to him as her smile; like her smile, it was thin as a blade and curved down like a frown. She thrashed against his hold, kicked at his shins. When she finally awakened and raised her stricken face to his, he tried to soothe her. He told her it was all a dream.

“It’s not a dream,” she replied hoarsely.

Although Severino had not acknowledged her assertion, he knew it was true. Waking or dreaming, what his wife relayed in terror was always anchored in truth, her memories of life before she knew him—memories of Burundi, 1993.

Clementine’s first marriage was made in 1991 when she was still a girl. She wed a Tutsi man—a self-educated man who taught her the little bit of English that, years later in a Tanzanian refugee camp, she would teach Severino. To love an enemy was an act of bravery. To marry an enemy—this was sheer foolishness. (Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. Another of Mr. Fund’s expressions.) Clementine’s three older brothers viewed their sister’s love as transgressive. For them, her marriage was an act of familial and tribal betrayal.

In the middle of the night, at the onset of the Hutu uprising, Clementine’s brothers, wielding machetes, entered the newlyweds’ small cinder block house. “Devil! Oppressor!” they shouted, and they forced Clementine to watch the brutality that followed. They murdered her first husband, then marked her forehead, scarring her so she would always remember. As if she would forget. Clementine fled to Tanzania, where she met Severino, who’d been living in one camp or another since 1972, when he was ten years old, and a gang of Tutsi militants set his village on fire. It took Severino three years to woo Clementine, who, upon her arrival at the camp, was a cracked husk of a human being who claimed she would never love again. When she finally accepted Severino’s proposal, she had come to love him, too. Severino was her second husband, she said, but he did not occupy second place in her heart. Severino trusted Clementine’s love and her commitment to their marriage, but he knew that her original passion, her self-educated husband of another tribe, a sworn enemy with whom she’d entwined her young life, occupied and dominated her dreams. On mornings like today’s, it took some effort for him to reconcile himself to this fact.

The man haunted Severino as well. There were no photographs of him—none that Clementine had managed to save—but clearly, her first husband was a strong man, a wise man, an intelligent man of great emotional capacity and character. A handsome man, no doubt. When he appeared to Severino, he took the shape of the strongest, wisest, most intelligent and handsome man Severino had ever known—the chief of his childhood village. When the village chief tried to defend Severino’s community, the Tutsi invaders burned him alive. Severino witnessed this before his parents dragged him away. According to Clementine, her first husband, like the village chief, had remained silent even during the height of his suffering. The two men had not shamed themselves by rewarding their enemies with any evidence of weakness.

Severino knew he would not be able to remain silent in the face of such pain. He had resigned himself to the fact that he would always share his wife with another. He consoled himself that she was mostly his to love, his dear companion. The two of them were surviving the First World together. No lost love could take that away from him, from them. Neither could the horrors of the past.

“We’re safe,” he told Clementine that morning in bed, looking tenderly into her tormented eyes. He traced her scar. “No machetes in America.”

But she begged him to stay home for the day. Although it was Saturday, Janvier had a school field trip—to this very library! one of his teachers was requiring her students to attend the Islamic Heritage Festival!—and Clementine begged Severino to keep their son at home too.

“I’ll go to the store and buy your beer and a treat for Janvier. I’ll make your favorite fish. We’ll watch TV together tonight, the three of us. A little holiday. Please.”

Severino and Clementine did need a holiday, perpetually exhausted as they were, and as for the three of them, together—well, they rarely spent any time with Janvier now. If not at school, Janvier was out with his friends, whose faces they never saw, whose names they had yet to learn. But Severino’s answer had been a firm no. He had to save his remaining sick day for when he absolutely needed it. He could not risk his reputation at work, calling out on a whim. Jobs like this were hard to come by for people like him—as Mr. Fund had informed him, there were plenty of other, more qualified men. And Janvier should not be encouraged to miss school.

When Severino reminded Clementine of all this, she turned away from him in their bed. With her back to him, she buried her face in her hands. She was still like that when he left for work, the ghost of her first husband hovering over her: his noble gaze trained on her prostrate form, his full and sensual mouth silently shaping tender words, his elegant hands with their long and nimble fingers stroking the air a hair’s breadth above the wrap that Severino had left disheveled upon her head.

A librarian was waiting for Severino outside the door to the children’s bathroom. She appeared to be about Janvier’s age, but of course this could not be the case. She was leaning against the wall, studying her cell phone, her shining black hair falling forward and hiding her expression. Her arms were covered with colorful tattoos. She, too, was a relatively new staff member, and she and Severino had yet to be introduced. Because the tattoos on her arms were mostly of birds—some of them recognizable as actual species, others fantastical in nature, rising from flames or darting between coils of barbed wire, surviving—Severino thought of her as Bird Girl.

The librarian looked up at his approach. Her brow furrowed, but she managed a smile. “It’s a disaster in there.” She shuddered so that the hem of her blue and white striped dress stirred above her knees. (So short! Severino, spilling water on the floor, might be as wasteful as any American now, but he still wasn’t used to the immodesty that pervaded this land. Clementine would never dress like this. She still preferred to wear the imvutano dresses of her young womanhood, their bright colors and bold patterns faded now from so many washings.) Severino focused on the woman’s dark eyes, and her eyebrows knit together, gauging his expression. “I’m sorry.”

Severino had seen disaster. He forced a smile, shaking his head. “Okay.” He reconsidered and qualified his reply, “It is okay.”

“Maybe, but I’ll stay here in case you need anything. Paper towels or whatever.” She flicked back her hair. “I won’t go back to my desk until you’re liberated from your distress.”

She laughed. Did she expect him to laugh with her? Severino shaped his mouth into a careful smile.

Inside the bathroom: yes, a murky mess, spreading across the floor. But not disaster. Nothing like disaster.

Even so, after spending a few minutes trying to extract a sodden diaper from the depths of the toilet, Severino stepped back to catch his breath and steady himself against the sight and odor. This was a good problem to have, he reminded himself. He had not seen a toilet, except in pictures torn from magazines, before coming to America. He, like Clementine and Janvier, had refused to use the toilet available on the last long leg of their journey, their flight to Chicago. The operations were confusing; how could such a thing be trusted? (The strange little sink seemed less threatening, so he and Janvier had tucked themselves into the cramped lavatory and pissed into it; he still didn’t know how Clementine had managed.) Upon their arrival at the airport, they were met by Gene and Carol, and when Severino expressed desperation, Gene had escorted him to a “restroom.” There were restrooms for men, Severino learned, and restrooms for women. So much space and light and so clean, with individual rooms called “stalls” for privacy! The bright blue liquid inside the white porcelain bowls—was it really water? Water in Burundi and Tanzania was the color of the earth, which was mostly clay; sometimes, the water was a deeper hue than that, nearly black with blood. The drinkable water on the airplane had been the color of air, which was to say the color of the clear plastic tumbler Severino had tipped to his lips. All this had seemed appropriate—the water a reflection of what contained it, or of what it contained. But blue water in a white bowl? It didn’t make sense. When Gene demonstrated how the toilet functioned, pushing a silver lever and saying, “Flush,” Severino jumped at the sudden noise and swirling rush. One moment, the liquid was in the bowl, then it was gone, all gone. When the bowl filled itself up again, Severino was tempted to try and catch the brilliant blue water in his hands. Even after squatting over it and tainting it with his own waste, he had to fight off the impulse to try and keep it for himself and his family, should they ever go thirsty again.

Severino pitched the disintegrating diaper with its unsettling spill of spongy synthetic beads into the trash can, then removed the black plastic garbage bag, and secured a shiny new one inside the can. He mopped the filthy floor clean and wiped everything down with bleach. When he finally emerged from the bathroom, Bird Girl was still there, scrolling through her phone and swaying, her dress’s short hem stirring. Now it was Severino’s turn to apologize. He’d forgotten to tell her to return to work; no disaster; everything was fine.  She should have been able to go back to the children’s desk, where patrons were probably waiting with their questions and their library books. But she seemed only happy, not irritated at all.

“Listen, I wanted to tell you, Severino, my family immigrated here, too! From Honduras.” Her expression softened with what appeared to be compassion and understanding. “My mother was a cleaning lady all my growing up, and my father worked two jobs, sometimes three. Things are better for them now, but I know it’s not easy. This kind of life, this kind of job—I get it.”

Severino glanced quickly around, hoping she had not been overheard. To his relief, there was no other person to be seen. He straightened his shoulders and forced a smile. “I am grateful.”

“Well, I’m grateful to you.” She raised her hand as if to touch his arm—so young and pretty in her short dress—and Severino took a step back. She swiftly withdrew her hand, and silence yawned between them. Then, to Severino’s immense relief, the air crackled with the sound of the intercom being activated, and he heard his name.

“Will Severino please come to the Circulation Desk?” Mr. Fund’s voice, biting out the words. “Severino, to the Circulation Desk.”

“Oh, no!” Bird Girl started in on yet another apology, but Severino was already turning away in relief, trundling the bucket back to the utility closet where he would empty and rinse it, clean the mop and rags, then hurry on to whatever task needed his attention next.

Really, the children’s librarian should know better. With her tattooed arms and short dress, she must have come to this country young, very young, like Janvier. She must not have listened carefully to her parents’ stories. If she had, she would have known the only true humiliation is pity.

Mr. Fund was waiting upstairs by the Circulation Desk, his arms crossed over his narrow chest. His thin face flushed to the roots of his white hair. A bad sign, Clementine would say. Somehow Severino had displeased his boss. Perhaps he should not have taken the time to rinse out the bucket, the mop and the rags.

Mr. Fund was of Swedish descent. He had mentioned this to Severino in a rare moment of personal revelation, his voice swelling with pride. “On my mother’s side. As for my father—his ancestors were from everywhere. He was a mutt.” (Later, Severino had looked up the word, only to wonder why Mr. Fund had called his father a mongrel dog. Severino had felt a flare of protectiveness for a man he would never meet, a dead man from everywhere.) When Severino asked Mr. Fund how long he had been in America, his boss had frowned, offended. “My grandparents were the ones who came over. I’m as American as baseball.” Unlike you, Mr. Fund did not need to say.

Mr. Fund beckoned now, a sharp gesture that indicated Severino should hurry. A stitch in time . . . Severino picked up his pace. In a moment he stood face to face with Mr. Fund. But not too close. Mr. Fund did not like Severino standing too close.

“God spare me the festivals. I knew this day was going to go south, and was I right? You better believe it! Some girls are doing a henna demonstration over by the Tech Center on the other side of the DVDs and Blue Rays, just past the computer stations and scanners beside the CDs and video games.” Mr. Fund seemed to think it necessary to map out the library for Severino every time he gave directions. “They had a big spill. Go figure.” Mr. Fund was speaking too fast. Severino leaned closer—not too close!—hoping to catch everything, or at least the essence of it. “This whole deal is basically a free-for-all, just shy of a circus. The girls should have been better supervised. This whole deal should have been better supervised.” Mr. Fund broke off, regarding Severino. He shook his head. “Never mind. Grab what you need, then get over to the Tech Center. Hustle!”

Severino collected his plastic basket of cleaning supplies from the employee entryway and hurried to the Tech Center. His attention was drawn to a cluster of kids gathered around a table, looking down at something on the other side of it. Most of the kids were laughing; their laughter was not kind. Severino drew closer. Now he saw the three black-robed and veiled young women, down on their hands and knees on the floor. The women were scrubbing at the carpet with wads of paper towels, attacking a dense spattering of brown stains. Severino hoisted his basket higher and picked up his pace. The women would make things worse if he did not stop them, grinding what had spilled into the carpet’s weave.

“Please,” Severino called out, his voice louder than he intended. “Please to stop, please!”

The kids at the table turned as one to look at Severino now. Tough kids, American kids. Boys and girls standing close. One boy, a black boy, an American Black, wore a bright red t-shirt several sizes too big and baggy jeans that pooled around expensive-looking trainers—shoes intended for fashion, not sport, their red laces untied and dragging on the floor. He was the only one in the group not staring at Severino. Instead, he gazed out the wall of windows that flanked the small park behind the library, his arms tightening around a girl who wore a tight pink shirt that exposed her pale middle and the shadowed O of her pierced belly button. The girl’s pants hugged her skinny legs as tightly as the boy’s jeans hung loosely on his. She, too, was a girl from another hemisphere—a Chinese-born girl, maybe. Or, like the tattooed children’s librarian or Mr. Fund, her parents or grandparents were from another place. The “Third World,” as Mr. Fund said. “The Developing World,” as Gene and Carol said. The girl’s clothes were as faded and ill-fitting as those Severino had brought home from Global Relief. Something about the way she wore them—a certain self-consciousness—suggested she had not been in America for long. Certainly not as long as the sullen boy pressed up against her, with his confident, careless slouch.

The boy’s arms moved higher to tighten around the girl’s throat. Neither this couple nor any of their friends stepped aside to make way for Severino. Mr. Fund would simply push his way through them. But Severino was not Mr. Fund.

“Excuse me.” Severino raised his voice. “Please. I help.”

“I help.” The American Black boy said this, his voice dripping with mimicry, and Severino suddenly felt woozy, remembering this morning when he asked Janvier about the required field trip.

“Teacher’s orders—we have to be at the libary by ten. I hate that bitch,” Janvier had said. When Severino corrected him gently, Janvier had flashed a wicked grin. “Libary. Shit, Dad, you been saying it wrong all this time!”

Severino had been too tired for a fight. It had been easier for him to pretend he didn’t understand the foul language or that his son had turned him into a joke. Instead, he had tried to explain that Janvier would have to leave with him in a few minutes to catch the city bus. The next one wouldn’t come until early afternoon; that would be too late. Janvier should not get in the habit of being late. “The bus or you walk,” Severino had said.

It was a good three miles to the library, and Janvier preferred not to walk anywhere if he could help it, let alone run. But the boy, still lying on the foldout couch that served as his bed in the apartment’s cramped front room, hadn’t looked up from his phone to meet his father’s eyes as he retorted, “I walk.” Those two words held Janvier’s disdain for Severino’s halting, flawed English, yet again, Severino had done nothing to defend himself. The old ways—scolding, threats, restrictions—had little effect on Janvier now. For the most part, the boy ignored punishment, or he rebelled against it, yelling and stomping about the apartment, storming out and staying away for hours on end, frightening Clementine. If Janvier was still a young child, Severino might have swatted him. Now, it seemed likely that Janvier would strike him back. The little respect Severino still received from his son would vanish with the lifting of a hand.

There were no machetes in America. There was clean water and a garden apartment, a job, a large supermarket with low prices, a bus to ride. But still, Severino’s family was in danger of being divided. Soon, Severino and Clementine would be living in one camp, and their son, their only child, would be living in another. They would be lucky if they ever saw him again.

Severino trained his eyes on the American Black boy. He would pretend he was Mr. Fund and practice authority. He would stare the sullen boy down, and the boy, blinking, would respect him. Severino would work his magic on the boy, and poof! The boy would move out of his way. The boy, like a mess or a mishap, would disappear.

His magic failed. It was Severino who blinked first. He closed his eyes in dismay and prayed to the god in whom he did not believe. He needed a miracle from this god, from any god who happened to be listening. Because the sullen boy was no stranger, no American Black teen. The boy was Severino’s boy. The boy was Janvier.

A stranger’s pity was nothing compared to the humiliation of a son ashamed of his father. And a son ashamed of his father in the presence of strangers—this was the greatest humiliation of all.

Severino opened his eyes.

Janvier, his mouth a tight line of defiance, met Severino’s gaze. Severino held his breath, but he could not stop his heart from banging in his chest. One heartbeat, then another. Then Janvier hitched up his baggy jeans—where had he gotten these expensive clothes and shoes?—turned his back on Severino, and walked away. Severino might as well have never existed for his son at all.

Now Severino could pass like a ghost between the American teens. He could go to the three young women in their long black robes and veils, tell them not to worry, please to stand. I help. He could get down on his hands and knees, nudge his little girl glasses up on his nose, and address the oily brown stains on the carpet. This was Severino’s life now. This was the job for which he must always be grateful.

Severino thought of Clementine, turning away from him in their bed, her face in her hands. She had warned him about today. He had not listened. He heard her now.

A sound rose in Severino’s throat, and he released it—a melding of moan and snarl. The young people turned and stared. Janvier turned and stared, too, and Severino’s sweat turned cold with fear.

Severino was afraid of himself—the ghost of the man he had been, the ghost of a man he had become. He saw his own ghost, sweaty and slope-shouldered, big-bellied and short-sighted, an ashy shadow of himself, kneeling by three girls in black. His own ghost haunted him, and it would haunt him into the future. Because this was how Janvier saw him—Janvier saw him as a shadow of a man. This was how Clementine would come to see him. This was who he had become in the First World.

Severino set down his plastic bucket of cleaning supplies. He drew himself up to his full height. A few long strides, and he took his son by the arm.

“We are going home.” He spoke in Kirundi. No one else needed to understand. When he spoke in English, the words emerged from his throat, constricted and unforgiving. Kirundi sprang from deep inside his belly like rich laughter or righteous rage. “Your mother needs us.”

“What the hell?” Janvier said.

In Kirundi, Severino ordered him to be silent. There was a time for Janvier to speak, and that time was not now. He gripped his son’s arm—a thin arm, a child’s arm, no real muscle on the bone—and turned to lead him from the library.

The girl with the pierced belly button latched onto Janvier and held them back. “What’s happening, babe?  Where you going?”

Janvier opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again, opened and closed his mouth again and again, like a fish. The girl’s sugary sweet expression soured. She turned on Severino.

“Let go of my boyfriend, asshole!”

“Let go of my son, child,” Severino said.

He spoke in English. He had not intended to do so, but the words came to him, the words were his, loud and clear. The girl gaped; in her surprise, she loosened her grip, and Severino wrested Janvier away. He steered his son from the Tech Center, through the library, toward the exit.

When Severino was a boy in Burundi, the village chief walked through the world like he and the world were one. Perhaps this was how Clementine’s first husband walked as well. Let it be so. Let the chief and Clementine’s first husband appear to him as guides. They would understand danger, division, and suffering. They would respect his recuperation of dignity and pride, his survival in the so-called First World, his ability to thrive.

Mr. Fund drifted into Severino’s field of vision, a white-haired shadow. The white-haired shadow tried to block Severino’s path, but Severino waved him aside. “Emergency,” Severino said. Pale eyes widening, the shadow complied. Perhaps the shadow would give Severino’s job to another man. If so, such a loss might reveal itself as a gain.

Outside, the city bus waited in the street like a large and obedient pack animal. Janvier hesitated. “Beggars can’t be choosers,” Severino said in Kirundi, guiding his son forward.

On board, Severino leveraged Janvier down in the front seat. Severino stood in the aisle beside his son. He knew the bus driver, a man with mottled skin and tired eyes named Bill. Bill was a decent man. He did not treat Severino differently from anyone else.

“Bill,” Severino said. “Kira!”

Bill cocked his head.

Severino nodded at Janvier. With an expansive wave of his hand, he gestured for his son to explain.

Janvier gnawed at his lower lip, but then cleared his throat. “My dad says, ‘bless you’, the way they do in Burundi.” The boy spoke respectfully enough, if not with great respect.

“Well, hey, I like that.” Bill smiled, revealing crooked front teeth. “Kira!”

Severino clutched the top of Janvier’s seat as Bill drove away from the library. The streets were punctured with potholes; turns were sharp, train tracks bumpy. Severino widened his stance, shifted his weight to accommodate the changes. He rode out the juddering as Bill shifted gears, swayed when the bus jolted to a stop or lurched forward. In this way, watching over his son, Severino kept his balance all the way home.