the iFan

So I arrive in Cleveland with everything I own loaded on a Penske truck which is probably somewhere in New Mexico right about now--on its way here but with nowhere to go. Slow José Limbaugh (not his real name): Still in Oklahoma. So I crash with The Merry Doorman (also not his real name) at the last minute, and a few short hours later Merry D. and I are up and at ‘em again, our first day of new teacher orientation for the district.

The local coffee house: A place to plug in my computer. A few small gestures around the room acknowledge an external, cosmopolitan coffee-shop culture: Clocks purport to display the current time in Seattle and Tokyo--as well as Cleveland. A U.S. map displays the names of random individuals with itty-bitty Post-Its appended to places like Los Angeles and Indiana. And yet the ever-present Delta dichotomy, this unadulterated whiteness, hangs over everything like a creepy, unacknowledged guilt: A framed print of a cotton bloom hangs over the white women with their reading glasses. And the white college-age baristas with their odd combinations of beaded necklace and too much make-up. The white men who stand around with their booming voices and their RC Cola polo shirts. The silver-haired gentlemen leaning back cross-legged in their gym shorts and white undershirts. Of course the now ever-familiar “In God We Trust” is neatly framed and hung beside the menu. And the hours: Closes every weekday at 7pm. Closed all day Sundays with a sign that reads, “See you at church!”

So I hear about this meeting to be held later the same day at my school. Rumor has it that new teachers will be introduced. Surprised how many cars fill the parking lot. Also impressed by the number of students milling around. And I feel conspicuously white. Internally I debate whether I am too underdressed for the occasion: Not judging by the students and a lot of the adults, frankly, but definitely, judging by the superintendent himself in his natty pinstripe suit and shiny silver tie. Inside, the cafeteria is smaller and older-looking than I would have imagined, but the collection of world flags hanging from the rafters instantly catches my attention. For a while, I look around hoping to find the Namibian flag, but I eventually give up, surmising the collection is probably too old for Namibia anyway. Then the opening prayer moves me more than expected, and an almost “amen” even escapes my lips. Oh, and by the way, it turns out this is really a booster club meeting. Football coaches are introduced to rousing ovations. Speeches are made. Some good speeches. The head coach emphasizes the importance of academics, promising, “The wins will come.” The turn-out is strong and supportive. A girl asks me if I am going to be teaching there and what subject. A woman calls me out by name and introduces herself. I enjoy the meeting. It seems spirited and very supportive of school success. Fund-raising is discussed a great deal, but it seems legitimate and purposeful. Academic departments got over $2000 in booster club grants last year for purchases! The school painted walls with booster club money, because as one speaker put it, “They aint doing it for us over there on the other side of the tracks, so we gotta help ourselves out over here!”

Drove down to Jackson yesterday to hand-deliver an application for something. It was my first trip south of here much. Enjoyed it immensely. I felt my appreciation for the Delta aesthetic begin to take hold: The wide-open roads. The parched bushy soybeans and tree-lined cotton fields. The dilapidated mobile homes next to impossibly optimistic town slogans. And the occasional cypress-lined bayou--polluted as it very well may be by an effluvium of fertilizer and pesticide run-off--strikes me as almost heart-breakingly beautiful. I need to explore a place on my own for this love, this adoption process, to begin.

In fact, ever since I left my family from Arizona to start the new school year here in Mississippi, I have noticed a lift in spirits. It seems to be a trend in my life that I often experience a period of depression in anticipation of a really big change in life--even change I may long for. It happened when I was about to leave for Peace Corps, in the few months before leaving Namibia, and to a certain extent, all this summer in Oxford. I guess I feel a combination of regret, anxiety, and loss at these times--fear that the future may never live up to the past but also that the mistakes of the past may never be corrected--a sense of passing through a one-way portal beyond which I will never be the same. But there is nothing I love more than a new beginning--when it finally arrives!

And one more thing: I finally seem to have broken free from the lingering phantom-grip death-chill associated with my not-so-recent break-up. Possible reasons include: (1) Change in circumstance. (2) Thinking my way out of it by asking myself, if she came to me today and said, “Oh honey, that was the worst mistake of my life, will you take me back?” . . . would I? and (3) Feeling my way out of it by wallowing in the self-pity so long that I actually got tired of it. Whatever the case, I feel ten tons lighter now. Congratulations to me!

I gassed up before leaving Jackson. A white-haired old white man (an older, less refined version of the Ole Miss mascot, come to think of it!) and his dour-looking teenage grandson just sort of stared at me from behind the counter as I paid too much for a bottle of water. It only took one or two wrong turns, yet as I wandered through unfamiliar ghetto streets, past rusted-out, overgrown processing plants and rotted-out houses with unmowed lawns, Jackson impressed me as having all the urban grit of a city ten times its size with all the sophistication and bustle of town one tenth its size. But I only saw a few streets of it for a total of maybe half an hour.

José arrived around midnight, and it took me half an hour and a sweaty shirt (even at that hour!) to load all the assorted belongings I had at stashed Merry D’s place into my rental car. When I arrived, I noticed José’s head peaking from behind a darkened window but thought little of it until he came out to meet me and told me the power was shut off somehow while he was gone. “How do you feel about a late-night run to Wal-Mart?” he asked. (This may have been after I virtually turned my suitcase upside down right there in the parking lot, looking for my flashlight.) So off we went to Wal-Mart, where the late-night environs led me to recall not-so-nostalgic times working at Fred Meyer, and Jose one-upped me with tales of a former telemarketer. We found: A lantern-style flashlight. The iFan personal cooling system (3 AA batteries not included). Picture a blue plastic toy fan vaguely shaped like an iPod. A lanyard cord holding it around your neck. Sleeping like that half-naked in a sweltering apartment with José’s chubby legs protruding at various angles from his whitey-tighties because the bedroom across the hall is simply too filthy to be slept in.

Quick, who can spot the Peace Corps Volunteer in this picture?