Thought for the Day

[bcholmes]

As I sat with my brother and uncle, separated from the green-eyed man by a polished wooden desk, he looked through our papers, a thick file accumulated over the last five years, the blood tests to prove my father's paternity, the TB diagnosis and treatments, even the X-rays of our lungs, both before and after treatment, and later I would learn, character references from my parent's friends, employers and pastor, my parents' pay stubs, bank statements, tax returns, a summary version of who they had to be in order to be allowed to live in the same country as all their children.

"Ta maman, ton papa te manquent?" Do you miss your mother and father? The man leaned across the desk to ask me, then my brother.

Hanging on the wall behind him was a large American flag, the stars literally bursting from the corner square, their spiky edges merging into the wall. Sensing that it was the right thing to do, we both nodded, as if bowing to the flag that our grandfather had once fought against, that our mother and father had now embraced for nearly ten years, that we were about to make our own. As my head bobbed up and down, I felt my old life quickly slipping away. I was surrendering myself, not just to a country and a flag, but to a family I'd never really been part of.

"I'm going to make you very happy," The man picked up a stamp and dangled it in the air in front of us before lowering it on the top sheet in each of our files.

"You're both approved," he said in what must have been official singsong. "You're now free to be with your parents. For better or for worse."

Pour le meilleur et pour le pire, he'd said. Why? I wondered if he knew something we didn't. Besides, what could be worse than waiting most of our lives to spend five minutes with a person who would say something like that?

— Brother, I'm Dying, Edwidge Danticat

My god, what a powerful book.