The Bridges We Will Build

Chapter 4

2

2 Sherry

SherrySherryShe was born into a life of privilege and she knows this. This is why she wants to offer up her life to service: service to the poor, neglected and forgotten. It cannot be done in just any way though. It has to be achieved in an international context; she knows this too. She has known this about herself since her earliest memory. Sherry was three and living in a comfortable upper middle class home with her mother, father, and older sister in South San Francisco, California. What she was doing before and what she did after, Sherry has no recollection, but she remembers that moment when her child eyes were opened. The year was 1984 and Ethiopia was suffering from yet another famine. Growing up, parents were famous for guilt tripping their children into eating everything on their plates with, “There are starving children in Africa.” Unlike most youth who rolled their eyes at yet another strategic attempt by their parents to harness compliance through the telling of over-embellished truths and cliché wisdoms, Sherry honored this, because she had seen it. The image of a little boy: black, bloated, skin dry and patchy, her age or maybe younger, staring into the camera, while flies, so many flies, tormented him, crawling into the corners of his eyes, up his nose, and into his ears. Sherry remembered this face featured on the evening news that night and carried it with her always.

She thought of that face while drunk in some club in college. She cried about her guilt for not doing something sooner to the one boy who she thought would understand, but it didn’t help. All that would ease this pounding in her heart would be to go to them. She wasn’t sure who “them” was yet or where they were, but she knew her destiny would remain unobtainable here, in her boujee upper middle-class life. She declared her readiness to leave it all behind in search of this one truth that was more important than all the others to anyone who would listen, and they did. They admired her: friends, family, teachers…but deep down they were scared. What would happen to a little blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl in the heart of Africa, they thought to themselves. Nothing good.

What would happen to a little blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl in the heart of AfricaNothing goodIn college, Sherry had friends, so many friends. She would jokingly declare that they were the popular ones, but secretly she believed it was true. Unlike high school, Sherry enjoyed college. In fact, she loved it and believed these were four of the best years of her life. She needed to experience what it meant to “belong” just once before throwing it all to the wind, loving it but letting it go in pursuit of that shining truth just within her reach.

People talked about the Peace Corps in relation to her truth and thought that it might be a good way of finding it, but Sherry wasn’t sure. While she was ready to give it all up, the loneliness of potentially being the only American and Peace Corps volunteer in a given area was not what she was looking for. She wanted to meet like-minded people, build community and find her truth all at once. Her older sister recommended the Jesuit Volunteer Corps’ International Program. Sherry was doubting her Catholicism, but it wasn’t enough to dissuade her from looking into this further. She learned that they had both an international and domestic program. The founding principles included living in solidarity with the poor and celebrating intentional community with the other volunteers placed with you. This is it, she thought. This is it.

This is itThis is itSatisfied with her decision and confident in her application, Sherry licked the envelope shut and mailed it in. She enthusiastically attended her interview with a JVI administrator, during which she answered all of the questions posed to her honestly and progressively. The final step of many taken, she thought. Now it was in God’s hands. She slept well while waiting, for she knew this was her fate. She knew because she had believed with all of her might since she was three years old, and that was true conviction.

The final step of many takenSherry babysat for several local families to make spending money throughout the school year. During one of these stints, she missed the call. The JVI rep left a voice message, and when she sat on the curb in front of the house and returned the call, the office was closed for the day. How will I survive the next twelve hours? she thought. Then she remembered how sure she was. It was practically a guarantee. If she had known this to be her destiny for so long, and all she was asking to do was serve, who would deny her?

How will I survive the next twelve hours?The next morning she called the rep first thing, 6:00 AM California time, 9:00 AM East Coast time.

“Yes, my name is Sherry and I received a call yesterday about my application.”

“Okay, Sherry. Thanks for calling back. Let me transfer you to Andrew. He is handling all of the applications and can let you know why you were contacted.”

“Thank you!” Everything that came out of her mouth was too high pitched, too energetic, too nervous. Why was she nervous? She wanted this more than anything she had ever wanted in her entire life. This was her path and it was time for her to start walking it.

“Sherry?” asked the voice on the other end.

“Yes,” she replied, trying to keep it simple.

“Hi, this is Andrew and I called you yesterday about your JVI application. Thanks for getting back to me. Listen, I want you to know how much we appreciate your application and your patience with this entire process, but unfortunately we cannot offer you a spot this year.”

The words fell flat, heavy to the ground, dragging Sherry along with them.

“We would like to strongly encourage you to apply to our domestic program, Sherry. I think you’d be a wonderful candidate. Please think about it.” His tone was kind and gentle. Sherry knew he didn’t have the capacity to fathom what he had just done to her. She thanked him for the information and hung up the phone. Click went the call and click went her self-identity, off like a light switch, with a single flick of the finger. Just like that, it was gone.

She walked from the kitchen back to her room and sat in the chair in front of her computer, facing the window. She wished she could stop thinking, stop reeling, but she couldn’t. The thoughts that filled her mind were ones of doubt. What was her purpose then? What was her truth? She had been so sure that this was it, but she was wrong. The most frightening question of all berated her from the inside out, taunting her with its cynicism, torturing her with its innate cruelty. Who am I?

Who am I? She called her mom and divulged the trauma and humiliation of her rejection. She thought of all of the other people she had told about her application and plans, all the people who would be asking her, all of the people she would have to tell.

“Well,” said her mother, “you need to seriously think about what the rep said and decide if you want to apply to the domestic program.” The finality of it all, that she indeed would not be serving internationally, was perfectly captured in her mother’s instructions. Sherry rejected the notion, detested it. She was actually offended by her mother’s suggestion. I am not meant for domestic service, she thought. But then she realized she was, and those words were the words of her former self, the dreamer whose dream did not come true. She pulled up the Jesuit Volunteer Corps website and looked it over. She would not have to fill out another application for the domestic program. They would simply transfer her existing one to the domestic program’s administrator for review. If she wanted that to happen though, she had to decide where she wanted to go.

I am not meant for domestic serviceThey split the country up into regions: Northwest, Southwest, Midwest, South and Northeast. Sherry put her head in her hands, but she didn’t cry. She was too pissed for that. She had to think, to wrap her head around this seeming non-truth and figure it out. The whole point of going oversees was to be the “other,” a concept she had become very familiar with in her philosophy classes. She wanted to experience being out of her comfort zone, to be the foreigner, to be the one who was different, and through it all, be recreated. She thought about where she would be able to best accomplish this while remaining within the US borders. The South. She had never been there, but what she had read and what she had heard sounded more foreign to her than any other place in the country.

When she had determined this and had her application transferred, Sherry then had to choose a volunteer site in one of the JV locations throughout the region. When she decided where she might like to volunteer, this would solidify where she would live. Any romantic impressions of the south that she had acquired were derived directly from the Anne Rice vampire chronicles, predominantly set in New Orleans. She didn’t think this was naïve and saw that there was a volunteer option with a children’s shelter in the city. Upon expressing her interest, she was informed that this placement had just been filled. Whatever, Sherry thought. A state of ambivalence threatened to set in as she was making one of the most important decisions of her life. She fought it off, and tried to stay the course. She looked over the remaining placements and found one more that sounded interesting. The volunteer position was as a teaching assistant with The Unity School in Decatur, Georgia. Where the hell is Decatur? she thought, very annoyed at this point. It was right outside of Atlanta. She had at least heard of that city before, and that was where she would be living if this placement worked out. She again expressed interest for yet another volunteer opportunity. This one was open.

WhateverWhere the hell is DecaturShe scheduled a call with the school’s principal to complete the process and seal the deal. When they spoke it came to light that he had also attended St. Mary’s College many years prior. Their shared alumni status helped solidify her stellar first impression on the man. He sounded like a kind, older man who had just experienced his truth coming to fruition in the form of this school. If it means so much to him, maybe it can mean something to me, she thought. The school was a charter elementary school with the purpose of providing an excellent education for both refugee and American children. Its founding principle was celebrating diversity, and with children from more than forty countries attending, it prided itself on doing just that. The school, the principal explained, had to maintain a population ratio of fifty percent American children and fifty percent refugee children according to its charter.

If it means so much to him, maybe it can mean something to meShe would go, Sherry decided. Her truth had betrayed her, and was thus not really her truth at all. She would go to Atlanta in search of another truth, and she would find it.

All of these memories flood her mind as she sits in a terminal waiting for her connecting flight to Houston. Memories of how she ended up here, everything culminating with this. The Jesuit Volunteer year begins with a weeklong retreat in Texas, during which the volunteers are able to meet members of their future community and learn about the JV philosophy which they will be asked to follow. It sounds a little like a cult, Sherry thinks, laughing to herself. She watches as a few of the volunteers chat, everyone desperate to make a friend. She drops a few questions to be social, and answers the ones posed to her, but mostly she is quiet.

It sounds a little like a cultOutwardly she appears to be observing everyone else, but really this is the façade of all facades. Inwardly she is terrified. A year is a very long time she suddenly realizes, now that this year has actually begun, and the clock ticks so painfully slow. Maintaining a calm appearance, and holding herself to keeping it, is the only thing that keeps her from screaming to let it all out.

* * *

Reflecting back, the JVC Orientation Retreat is all a bit of a blur. As they make their way through the streets of Atlanta, to the place they will call home for the next year, she recalls how wrong her preconceived notions were about some of her housemates, notions and mental images based on nothing more than a handful of e-mails exchanged by the lot over the last few months.

homeWhen the plane had landed in Texas, one week ago today, Sherry found the group of volunteers destined for the retreat, and observed them. Surrounded by people, she felt incredibly alone, but reassured herself that her soon-to-be soulmates might be in this very crowd.

They had boarded a van to take them to the retreat center, and Rebecca introduced herself. She would be one of Sherry’s roommates. As the van took off and Rebecca kept talking, her volume increased, until she was about to blow out Sherry’s right ear drum. Her short, curly hair had gone wild in the Houston humidity, and her overall effect felt abrasive to Sherry’s cool Cali persona. Are all northerners this intense? she thought to herself, all the while trying to smile through it. Feeling bombarded and claustrophobic, Sherry tried to remain calm. We, she thought a bit judgmentally to herself, will probably not be great friends.

Are all northerners this intense?Wewill probably not be great friendsFransheska was supposed to be chubby. All of her e-mails had been centered on the spices she was collecting from the farmer’s market, and all the cooking she planned to do for the group. She was a petite Peruvian though, and had moved to Florida with her family when she was ten. Her nose was a bit large, but other than that she was actually quite pretty.

The geographic origin of the group was diverse. Sherry and May both came from California, Sherry from the Bay Area, and May from Orange County.

Sherry liked May. She was smart and seemingly chill. They agreed to be roommates, while discussing their current relationship statuses and swinging on the swings one afternoon. May’s long thin legs pumped the rest of her body into the air, her long, straight brown hair flying gloriously behind her.

They had been told there were enough rooms in their house in Atlanta for some members of the group to have their own, but the thought of such isolation terrified Sherry. She found a sense of comfort and solidarity in a shared space, a place for her and May to have deep conversations when they confided in one another about past drunken escapades and dreams for the future.

Ben, Mary, and Rebecca were from the Boston area. Sherry hadn’t connected with them yet, but was confident she would in time. They had an entire year to make that happen.

She had been counting down the days since she left home: one, two, three... They crawled by, one after the other, so painfully slow. A year will take forever, she thought, but she was committed, and so, she would make it.

A year will take foreverIn Atlanta, Sherry and her roommates would each be volunteering at a different non-profit for the year. They would live in a low-income neighborhood, observing their vows of poverty and living in solidarity with the poor, all the while celebrating a culture of intentional community with one another in their home sweet f*****g home. The proverbial s**t excreting from some (not all) of those words was something they were each destined to taste on their semi-refined middle to upper-middle class pallets.

“When you arrive,” they were told at the retreat, “a representative from each of your non-profits will be at your house waiting for you. Usually they like to bring dinner, potluck style, just to make sure you feel welcome. They will probably make sure your fridge is stocked so you don’t have to worry about grocery shopping the first few days you are there. You will have enough adjustments to make, without food being one of them.”

As they rolled up in the van, driven by the rep from Rebecca’s volunteer placement, they peered curiously at their house. The neighborhood didn’t look as sketchy as Sherry had expected. The house was brick and the front lawn looked mowed recently enough. Once the van parked in the driveway, one by one they vacated, and made their way to the front stoop. Someone fumbled for the key while the others commented admiringly about the screened in side porch.

The key slipped into the lock, and the door slowly opened.

One by one they walked into the living room, until everyone stood crowded together, looking. The makeshift furniture had seen better days, and that was putting it nicely. A couple of couches and miscellaneous chairs awkwardly lined the perimeter. Who would be the first adventurous enough to sit down and see what critters emerged from the applied pressure?

They continued to walk through the house, step by very slow step. First was the dining room, fitted with a worn round table and chairs that didn’t match. On the opposite end of the room were some bookshelves caked with a layer of dust and dirt. Then, onto the kitchen, where a marinara-stained counter and fridge had become home to a large line of ants, crawling from one end to the other, and back again. There were many comments made, gasps, and whimpering.

On the other side of the wall, separating the dining room and kitchen from the rest of the first floor, were two bedrooms. The first would be Ben’s, huge and empty, with little more than a twin bed and chair. The next would be Mary’s, tiny but quaint, and equipped with a very small, and dark bathroom, but her own.

Making their way to the front of the house, the group made the perilous journey up the stairs. The carpet looked like it hadn’t been vacuumed in years. Lint, crumbs, random filthy debris, you name it, and it was probably there, being crunched and crumbled to an even finer version of itself, beneath seven plus pairs of shoes as they clomped their way up to see what lay in wait.

Upstairs, the smaller bedroom had a door, which was a huge plus. Two queen-size beds and a shabby desk crowded the room. With the consent of the group, Sherry and May claimed this one.

The other room was large and open, no closets, no door, and two-twin sized beds in opposite corners. This would belong to Fransheska and Rebecca.

The bathroom the four girls would share appeared to have been fitted with a piece of junkyard plywood, that when pushed hard enough, scraped to a close, offering sufficient privacy to the chump shaving her legs or taking a dump.

If the house had AC, it wasn’t something currently used, and the Atlanta August heat lay in a heavy bog, coating everyone and everything on that second level.

It was getting late, and the group of volunteers looked tiredly at the “beds” they were supposed to sleep on. Motivated by sheer exhaustion, they accepted their fate for that first night and reconciled themselves to what bites and nibbles that first slumber might bring.

With sleeping arrangements finalized, the crew made their way back down the stairs. They stood in the living room, dazed, confused and hungry. That thing about a fridge full of food, Sherry thought, what a load of crap. One carton of expired milk and a crusted splatter of the same marinara sauce that coated the kitchen counter summed up its contents.

That thing about a fridge full of foodwhat a load of crapThe reps from Rebecca’s non-profit generously offered to go pick up pizzas and drinks. The group eagerly accepted. The reps turned to make their quick exit out the front door, and that was the first time anyone noticed that the door knob was missing. They were trapped, literally. If it wasn’t for the fact that Sherry and her roommates would be living here for the next 364 days, someone might have laughed at the irony, the absurdity of it all.

Someone had the idea of putting the front door key in the lock and opening the door that way, and it worked. “At least we don’t have to worry about fire hazards,” Ben remarked, his sweet demeanor trying desperately to keep the mood light.

After the reps left, May slumped down onto the window sill, because no one had dared sit on the bug-infested furniture yet. Her piercing scream cracked the silence as she jumped up, stuttering belligerently, something about cockroaches emerging from the panes.

Sherry didn’t see anything, but nothing would surprise her now. She was the only girl who didn’t cry that night.