The Long Highway Pt. 21

Another time I saw Akemi during our period of separation it wasn't really a tryst but a visit to her apartment she shared with her roommate, who was out that afternoon. We were meeting to catch up.

Akemi talked about her experience in the time we'd been apart, her dealing with the bureaucracy. I tried to teach students how to do that and it wasn't easy, neither the teaching nor the learning. Showing foreigners the means of handling city agencies they'd encounter as a matter of course, as foreigners living abroad, temporary or permanent residents, took about five times the effort and time it would have for me to complete the errand for them. Visiting an immigration office and asking for an appointment, for instance. Even buying stamps at the post office or sending a package home involved complication. But of course teaching those chores in the classroom, difficult as it was, involved less stress than dispatching them in the real world would have. And this was stuff students needed to know, skills they'd be called on to use.

I saw Akemi's life wasn't easy as an immigrant on her own, even though she came from a developed country, which gave her an advantage over students, the majority in class, who'd emigrated from the so-called Third World. Some couldn't even read or write their own languages, started at a deep disadvantage.

Akemi showed confidence (without doubt sincerely) that she could manage the challenges of her new country- and I felt she could, but as a native I knew how hard that might be on her own.

She revealed she'd recently been arrested- it must have been for something minor, jaywalking or running a red light on her bicycle- maybe the police were cracking down on the offense in question and she didn't know. Could she have broken an immigration law, taken part-time work her visa didn't authorize?

She was too embarrassed to tell me what she'd done (I didn't ask so this was my assumption).

"What was the jail?"

Akemi said the name. I got the pronunciation after a moment. Rikers. Rikers Island, one of the most notorious prisons in the city, where people are held awaiting trial.

"How long were you there?"

"A week."

"It must have been scary. Or was it just sad? I'll bet it was both."

The inmates downtrodden, dangerous too.

I sat at Akemi's desk in her small room. She was on the futon mat she used for sleep, spread on the floor, taking up much of the space. She was wearing a skirt and facing me, sometimes on her haunches sometimes with knees up. I saw she had on blue panties, a special color- it looked electrified- guessed she had chosen them for me, in case our visit progressed. I saw she needed someone, definitely did for practical help, and that getting seriously involved with her, making a commitment, would involve not only delight but bearing a burden.

From Akemi's place I went to work, where my boss Silvia talked about her life with her boyfriend. We- with one other person- were discussing birth control. I'd raised the topic after my visit to Akemi. Silvia said she used a diaphragm, which I hadn't heard about anyone using in recent memory. I remembered watching my first girlfriend putting hers in- the mystery of women- how floored I was when she reached inside herself matter-of-factly.

Silvia and her boyfriend had a country house in the state of Maine, where they'd spent the last weekend.

"It's one of those off a country road, the only one around."

"Must be quiet," I said. "Sounds good." I meant that. The noise of the city is pretty relentless.

"Yeah, but there isn't as much privacy as you'd imagine," Silvia said. "Neighbors think there's a lot of nympho activity at our place. They saw my boyfriend and I outside naked."

Even though houses were distant from each other, there was a community and gossip, she explained.

"Some people say we're not a good match, that my boyfriend isn't handsome enough for me. But I don't think that's true."

I'd never met the man in question so I didn't know.

On the trip home I chatted with a coworker who happened to be on the same subway platform. The wait was long so I borrowed his camera to take some shots. He's a pro, moonlights photographing for a news site. His camera was an excellent one I was eager to try. He'd shown me some of his pictures he had on it and they looked good, even inspired me some. And the train still wasn't in view.

I shot around to pass the time and when I handed the camera back to its owner, a big, swarthy guy who can handle himself, I said, "I took mostly face shots" (of passengers waiting with us, milling around, getting restless) "because those were the best of the bunch you showed me." I mention his burly physique because some people resent being photographed and can even get violent- they wouldn't with that character. Now and then you'll go to photograph someone and they'll look like they're about to punch you.

"Yeah," the academic and photographer said, seconding my appraisal of face shots, "but they can't be published. It's an invasion of privacy. You can be charged."

I was reminded of Akemi's run-in with the law (a total surprise, let me stress, given her character; it showed the extent of the difficulties she faced surviving here on her own. Sometimes ignorance about the place where you are, not lack of intellect but innocence, can land you in unthinkable situations).

I said to my coworker as he took his camera. "And I bet there are people so unscrupulous they'd let you take and publish their pictures and then sue for damages."

"Yeah," he said, looking at me, maybe wondering why he hadn't noticed my cynicism before.

I went on. "Ask for a neat sum- say, twenty-four thousand dollars." We both laughed at the bitter truth of that.

Yeah, this city could be brutal, people scrabbling to survive. Akemi needed my help and I definitely wanted hers.

A phone call came last night from an old student, getting in touch from out of the blue. She'd been living in Switzerland, where she moved from the U.S. and now is back. She and I were friendly for a while when she took English classes as a refugee. I liked her spirit and her idiosyncratic broken English, which remains the same, I learned on the phone. It's endearing. She is. She's adventurous, has grit, faced tough challenges and has managed pretty well. She finds people, allies, who help her and with whom she enjoys life, always as equals. She had come here with nothing, had nothing when I met her, but I never felt she was in any lower a position than me, any weaker. On the contrary.

She revealed that she's married now. I could hear her husband in the background during our talk. And she said they're having a party soon and she wanted to invite me, also ask if I'd like to help with the preparations. As my former student, she knows of my interest in art, which she and and her classmates hadn't shared- they were focused on just surviving.

I think Tuyet's purpose in asking wasn't so much desire for my aid as to give us time to talk alone, catch up, away from the party hubbub.

I felt a little funny having that phone conversation in front of Akemi. Having left for Europe before Akemi and I met, Tuyet didn't know of her existence in my life.

She joked that she and her husband knew a teenager they'd like to introduce to me. Tuyet knows I like women a lot but I set her straight on one point. "I'd only be interested in a teenager if she was at least thirty-five," the fact that Akemi has a body like a nineteen-year-old notwithstanding.