Public Charges
I’m standing in the auditorium of a Catholic girls’ school in Southie, just a few doors down from Triple O’s Lounge– Whitey Bulger’s, vacated, headquarters.
It’s around 9:00AM, on a bitterly cold, March morning, in 1999.
Outside the auditorium, grey-brown snow piles, littered with frozen in place broken furniture, beach chairs, milk crates, are holding fast for now, but are doomed to a watery demise by the inevitable tilt of our planet just a few degrees closer to the nearest star. In the broader world, beyond Triple O’sand the nasty snow piles: Bill I-didn’t-have-sex-with-that-woman Clinton is just over his impeachment; Timothy McVeigh has just had his death sentence for the Oklahoma bombing confirmed by the Supreme Court; gazillions of dollars and Euros (just a toddler currency then!) are being spent on averting something called “Y2K;” and, unbelievably, it’s already the tenth birthday of the Global Climate Coalition, a “nonprofit” formed and, handsomely, funded by fossil-fuel and industrial mega-corporations, to keep politicians primed that climate science “is too uncertain to justify any action.”
Meanwhile, inside the girls’ school auditorium, all around me, sitting in wheelchairs, slouching forward onto walkers, leaning heavily onto canes are a few hundred elderly Eastern Europeans drawn out this freezing morning by the threat of losing their right to access Federal aid aimed, primarily, at the elderly and infirmed.
The tension in the room is palpable.
Like the good rule followers we are, we’ve been waiting for almost an hour, with no one seemingly in charge.
A few feet away from me, but up on the stage, an elderly, tall, stooped man, in a dark winter coat, black wool cap, waves his arms rapidly and issues a string of indecipherably fast words, to clear a similarly elderly woman off the piano stool.
He sits down and opens the piano lid with a dull thud.
He flexes his long, boney fingers – I imagine I hear the knuckles crack – and starts playing.
His fingers flow mellifluously over the black and white keys.
The music, one of Bach’s Partitas – an almost three hundred year old piece of music, and something familiar enough that even a Neantherdal like me knows it – is eerily calming in the voluminous, tension fraught room
A few minutes into his piece, a door opens at the other end of the hall. A mob of people crush, in the sluggish manner an elderly, infirmed mob crushes, toward the door to see if there’s any news.
He keeps playing the piano.
The door bangs closed, with that familiar school door metallic rattle.
A hushed murmur shimmers across the crowd as it parts, in its distinctively sluggish manner.
A nun, nunnishly-plump, fifty-ish, dressed undercover in a dark blue skirt, purple cardigan, except she is wearing the black and white head-thingie, stalks across the auditorium, her hard soled shoes resounding off the parquet floor.
The piano keeps our end of the hall energized.
The nun makes her way up onto the stage, her heels competing with the piano.
She touches the piano player lightly on his shoulder.
He stops playing.
“APOLOGIES,” she says loudly, and takes a practiced pause, waiting for the murmuring to stop.
“Apologies, we are running a little behind. Quite frankly we’re overwhelmed with the turnout, but …, BUT, I can guarantee you that everyone will get to take their Citizenship Test today, … every … single … person.”
She looks slowly around the room.
“So please, please be patient with the sisters. You may now proceed to the classrooms through THAT door,” she points to where she had entered.
The door rattles opens again, and the mob surges, sluggishly, toward the opening.
The sluggish-crush through that doorway sums up how human systems work: Bill, I’ve-a-small-problem-with-the-truth Clinton just happens to have a rightward tilt, to save his presidency, and is playing junior-Republican, labeling non-citizens as Public Charges and thereby denying them access to federally funded end of life healthcare. Clinton’s rightward tilt causes a rush on citizenship applications by these octogenarian Eastern European immigrants. They had been brought here by far-to-the-right Presidents Reagan and Bush – after already living hard lives in Eastern European countries – to show up the failures and inequities of communism. This rush on applications has required that the INS subcontract the Citizenship Test to third parties – among them the Southie nuns who happen to run a school, that just happens to be next to James, where-are-you-now-Whitey, Bulger’s old headquarters.
I’m here ‘cause I can. After five years with a Green Card, you can apply for Citizenship, and I did. And thus, with my own, not even pretending to be under control, trauma and anxiety about being abandoned by the herd, I launch into the mob of the aged, the crippled, the infirmed crowding the doorway. Employing, questionably legal, skills honed on the rugby fields of the West of Ireland, I’m plowing my way through the mob, when a rare moment of clarity dawns on me.
I pull up short, turn, and walk to the back of the line, offering, but getting refused, to help a woman so doubled over in her wheelchair that it’s hard to see how she can see where she’s going.
I can wait.
I can take this test next year or the year after, or any year for the next thirty, before access to these federal programs may even be required.
Slowly the mob works its way down the school’s corridors, with nuns waving us into classrooms. I’m waived into classroom 328, where I take a seat, and pull out the four HB pencils I had, per the carefully detailed instructions, brought along for the test.
At the head of the class stands an elderly nun; possibly in her seventies; same undercover clothes, black and white head-thingie; arms tight folded; on her gaunt, bristly face, a seasoned scowl.
Two white-haired, seventy-something, men enter the room talking, laughing and start to take seats next to each other.
“No!” the nun’s voice is loud, sharp.
The whole classroom sits up in their seats.
One of the old guys freezes, half-sitting, half-standing, a pleasant smile on his face.
“You two can’t sit together,” she stalks over to them. “The rules prohibit fraternizing during the examination.”
She waves the half-stander to the other side of the room.
The smile slumps off his face, as he’s waved over to the far row.
“Sit down, sit down,” the nun says, turning, rapping a ruler off the teacher’s desk to get our attention. “The examination will begin as soon as everyone’s seated … and behaving.”
The room settles.
She walks over to the door, her eyes never leaving her class, and closes it gently.
We wait.
She paces over and back in front of the teacher’s desk; the seasoned scowl never leaving her face; her eyes never leaving her class.
We wait.
In the front row, a plump man, his flat cap sitting on top of a head of wild-bushy grey hair, raises his hand.
The nun stops pacing, stares at him.
“P-lease mad…dam, thee papers, p-lease,” he smile-nods, holding up his right hand, a pencil gripped tight-white between his fingers.
“I’ll …, the examination booklets will be distributed when I’m released to do so … and … have them available.”
We wait.
Twenty, long, silent, scratchy, minutes later another undercover nun enters with a stack of booklets and drops them on the teacher’s desk, nods knowingly and departs.
“I am now going to distribute the examination booklets,” the nun stops her pacing, and stands behind the teacher’s desk. “They will be distributed face down.”
She scowl-glares at her students.
“You may not, I repeat, NOT! Turn them over, until I give the order.”
She paces one full loop of the teacher’s desk, her scowl-glare never diminishing, then picks up the stack of booklets and starts to distribute them.
The desk in front of me is vacant. She lays a booklet on the desktop, then immediately picks it up again.
Back at the teacher’s desk, she stands staring around; her fingertips brushing lightly against the desktop. Her mouth opens, she’s about to issue the definitive order that will release her class to start the process of accessing benefits that will prevent end of life penury, when the classroom door bursts open.
In bumbles a burly man, red jowled, eyes deep in their sockets, a shock of white hair, a blue anorak, torn under the sleeve. His eyes furtively scan the desks. He sees the empty one in front of me, and rushes for it, knocking a booklet on his way.
“Excuse me?” the nun snaps. “Where do …. YOU … think you’re going?”
“The peuples say,” his wild eyes focus on her, bewildered.
“Ladee in door,” he waves his left hand back in the direction of the corridor. “Go rhoom free … two … eight.”
“Then sit down, you’re disturbing everyone else. The examination has already begun.”
A few booklets get flipped over.
“Wait!” she yells, the strain showing in her eyes. “I didn’t say to start the examination.”
Heads wag slowly.
“You are only permitted to work on Module One of the examination. After twenty minutes I will … stop turning the pages,” she rushes over to a petite, incredibly wrinkled-faced, blue haired, woman, and snatches the exam booklet from her hands.
“You may only work one module at a time,” she scowl-glares at the shocked old woman for a few seconds, then turns back to the rest of the class, her face resolving to its regular scowl.
“I …,” she raises her voice and waits until enough eyes are looking at her, “will tell you when you can move from module to module.”
She starts pacing and fast-talking.
“You must, I repeat MUST, write your name and applicant number CLEARLY on the booklet’s cover. Once you have completed a module, you may not return to it. You may not leave the room and reenter. You may not talk or communicate in any way during the examination. You may not ask me questions. I will not answer.”
She stops pacing, looks around for emphasis.
“If you leave the room before the examination is complete, your booklet will be submitted as is, even if it is incomplete.”
She glares around the room, the blue-haired woman’s booklet still clutched in her hand.
“Does everyone understand me?”
No one makes a move.
She walks slowly to the blue-haired woman’s desk, hands her the booklet. Then, without looking at him, she drops a booklet on the burly, late arriver’s desk.
Back at the head of the class, she rises slightly onto her toes, holds her wristwatch up to her face and clicks a button on the watch.
“You may now begin the US Citizenship Examination – Module One.”
There’s a loud rustle of papers, the scrape of chairs dragging in tight to desks.
I flip open the booklet, and within a few seconds realize this is a test of basic English skills, something that is not in any way challenging to an English speaker.
The burly man in the desk in front of me has not opened his booklet, and is looking around the room.
The nun increases her scowl intensity as she approaches him, her arms folded.
She stops a few feet away.
“What’s the problem here?” she asks in a loud, clipped, whisper.
He holds up his left hand, and makes the universal writing-in-the-air sign for needing a pen.
“You are required to bring four, Hard Black pencils with you to the examination,” she says, dispensing with the whisper; heads rise at the disruption. “That is your responsibility as the examinee.”
He keeps up his symbolling.
I can’t see his face, but can tell by her scowl relaxing, that he doesn’t understand her, and she knows it.
“I’ll phone down to the office to see what can be done.”
She turns and walks up to the desk, picks up the phone, and dials a few digits.
I finish Module One in about three minutes – wracked with Catholic guilt for how easy it was for me, compared to the clearly evident struggling of those around me.
In front of me, the burly man looks around the room, cranes his neck toward the desk.
I take one of my HB pencils, reach forward and poke him lightly on the shoulder.
He turns, and takes the pencil with a bushy-eyebrowed, thank you nod.
At the desk the nun rummages loudly in a drawer.
She pulls out a stubby pencil; jams it into a mechanical pencil sharpener, and whirls the sharpener loudly – the noise raising a few heads, her head-thingie shaking. After a few attempts at this, she has a three-inch long pencil, with a point that could harpoon a salmon. She starts down the aisle towards my burly neighbor.
A few feet away from him, she stops, her scowl intensity rising sharply.
“Is that a Hard Blaa… ,” she starts to say, but stops when every head in the room shoots up. “Continue, please continue.”
She turns and walks back to the teacher’s desk, shaking her head slightly.
Fifteen, boring if you’re an English speaker, minutes later, there’s a loud handclap that brings everyone to attention.
“Module One of the US Citizenship Examination is now completed. Pencils down!”
We work through the, by now customary, punitive ceremony of finishing one module, and moving onto the next.
“Module Two: Government, will now begin,” the nun eventually gets to say. “On the fifteenth minute of Module Two, I will administer the … Spelling Test.”
Intrepidly, we launch into Module Two, which asks questions like:
Who is the highest leader in the government of a state?
Complete the following: “The Mayor is the leader of the _ _ _ _ .”
On the fifteenth minute, the nun again issues a startlingly loud handclap.
“Pencils down. Pencils down, right way. I will now administer the Spelling Test by saying the word three times.”
I dutifully place my pencil in the pen scoop on my desktop.
“The word you need to spell is … mayor. Mayor. Mayor. I will not repeat it again.”
I slowly write the five block capital letters in the workbook, and return the pencil to the desk.
In front of me the burly guy is scratching his scalp, with what was once my, but is definitely now his pencil.
The nun paces slowly around; her lips pursed, determinedly not saying the word “mayor.”
My burly neighbor’s shoulders suddenly tighten, he pulls the pencil out of his scalp and starts to rifle back through the booklet.
I smile, realizing he’s remembered the word “mayor” was used in a question on those pages.
He finds it, and is carefully transcribing it, flicking from one page to the other, when the nun’s hand comes down hard on his booklet, knocking the pencil from his hand.
“It is prohibited to look back on previous work!” she shrieks.
Every head in the room shoots up; shoulders tighten; the wrinkled-faced woman grabs hold of her cane.
Shaken, the burly guy sits back in his chair, and raises his arms in the universal sign of surrender.
The nun grabs his booklet off the desk, and forcefully creases it open to the Spelling Test page.
I can see he has written: M A Y O.
She places the booklet on his desk, and steps back, her eyes never leaving him.
He leans over, picks up the pencil off the floor, keeping his head angled so he never stops facing the nun.
The pencil is broken.
He holds it up in front of his eye, shoulders subsiding. I take another pencil off my desk, and hold it up in the air.
She swoops in, whisks the pencil from my hand, and leans over my neighbor’s workbook.
I can hear the scratch of graphite on paper.
The pencil drops on his desktop.
The nun stalks back to the teacher’s desk, fixing her head-thingie.