Dave Eggers - What Is The What

The poor man. I suppose I put it on too thick. He was near tears when he finally stood up and shook my hand. 'I'll be your sponsor. And your mentor,' he said. 'I'm going to get you working, and get you a car and an apartment. Then we'll see about getting you into college.' And I knew he would. Phil Mays was a successful man and would be successful with me. I shook his hand vigorously and smiled and walked him to the elevator. I returned to the LBF offices, and looked out the window. He was emerging from the building, now just below me. I watched as he got into his car, a fine car, sleek and black, exactly beneath where I stood against the glass. He sat down behind the wheel, put his hands in his lap and he cried. I watched his shoulders shake, watched him bring his hands to his face.

Eating dinner at Phil and Stacey's house was a very significant event; I had to make the proper impression. I had to be pleasant, thankful, and had to make sure that their young children liked me. But I could not go alone. I did not have my own car at the time, and so I asked Achor Achor to give me a ride to the house on his way to a meeting with some other Lost Boys. I washed and ironed the same shirt I had worn when I met Phil-it was the only appropriate shirt I had at that time-and I ironed my khakis. When Achor Achor and I got into the car, he informed me that he would be picking up two other Sudanese refugees, Piol and Dau, on the way.

'What?' I said, angry. I had planned for Achor Achor to walk me to the door, because I did not feel I could make it alone. And now I would be escorted by three Sudanese men? Would Phil and Stacey even open their door?

'Don't worry,' Achor Achor said. 'We'll leave after we drop you off.'

We parked the car on the street and walked up the footpath. The house was enormous. It was the size of a home reserved for the most exalted dignitaries of Sudan-ministers and ambassadors. The lawn was lush and green, the hedges trimmed into cubes and orbs.

We rang the bell. The door opened and I saw the shock on their faces. It was Phil and Stacey, each holding one of the twins.

'Heeeey,' Stacey said. She was petite and blond, her voice clear but uncertain. She looked to Phil, as if he had neglected to tell her there would be four Sudanese for dinner, not one.

'Come in, come in!' Phil said.

And we did. They closed the door behind us.

'I hope barbecue is okay with you guys,' Stacey said.

I turned to Achor Achor, to give him a look that would urge him to leave, but he was too busy marveling at the house. It was obvious that Achor Achor and Piol and Dau had already forgotten about whatever meeting they had planned. They were staying for dinner.

Inside, the house was more impressive than from the exterior. The ceilings seemed thirty feet high. There was a light-filled living room, and a staircase that wound to the right and to the upstairs rooms, with a balcony overlooking the living room. The bookshelves led high up the walls, and there was a gigantic television in the corner, imbedded into the shelving. Everything was white and yellow-it was a bright and happy place, full of air. On a peninsula of marble extending from the kitchen, there was a silver bowl, shimmering and full of fresh fruit.

We walked to the back porch, where Phil inspected the grill, on which six hamburgers were laid, darkening. I tried to smile at the babies, but they were not immediately smitten with me. They looked at me, with my eggplant skin, my oddly shaped teeth, and they wailed.

'It's okay,' Phil said. 'They cry around everyone they meet.'

'You've had hamburgers before?' Phil asked us all.

Achor Achor and I had eaten at restaurants before, and had had hamburgers in our time in Atlanta.

'Yes, yes,' I answered.

'And you know what's inside a hamburger?'

'Yes, of course,' Achor Achor said. 'Ham.'

It sounds like an easy joke, as do so many of our mistakes, the many holes in our understanding, and they were often funny to Americans. We did not know how the air conditioning worked when we first moved into our apartment; we didn't know we could turn it off. For a week we slept with all of our clothes on, covered in blankets and towels, every linen we owned.

We told this story to Phil and Stacey, and they liked it very much. Then Achor Achor told him the story of the tampon box. There was a different pair of Lost Boys, who had recently been taken shopping for the first time, at an enormous grocery store. They had fifty dollars to spend, and had no idea where to start. Along the way, they had picked out a very special box and put it in their cart. Their sponsor, a woman in her fifties, smiled and tried to explain what was in the box, which was in fact tampons. 'For women,' she said, not knowing how much they knew about women's anatomy and cycles. (They knew nothing.) She thought she had accomplished her task, only to find that the men wanted the package anyway. 'It is beautiful,' they said, and they bought it, took it home and displayed in on their coffee table for months.

We tried to be polite about our eating, but there were many new foods on the Mays's table, and we could not know what was a danger and what was not. The salad seemed different than the salad we had eaten before, and Achor Achor would not touch his. The vegetables looked familiar, but had not been cooked, and Achor Achor and I preferred ours cooked. All fresh vegetables and fruits were problematic for us; we had not been fed such things in our ten years in Kakuma. I drank the milk placed before me. It was my first-ever glass of Western-style milk, and it caused a good deal of problems for me in the ensuing hours. I did not know then that I had become lactose-intolerant. I was at war with my stomach for my first year in America.

Finished with his dinner, Phil dropped his cloth napkin on the table.

'So do you guys have expressions that you use, like, Dinka words of wisdom?'

I looked at Achor Achor and he at me. Phil tried again.

'Sorry. I'm just interested in proverbs, you know? For instance, I might say, 'a stitch in time saves nine,' and that would mean…' Phil paused. He looked to Stacey.

Stacey offered no help. 'Well, I don't know what that one means. But do you know what I'm asking for? Like something your parents or elders would say to you?'

The four of us Sudanese shot each other glances, hoping one among us would have a satisfactory answer.

'Excuse me,' Achor Achor said, and walked to the bathroom. Once down the hall, he cleared his throat loudly. I looked to him; he was gesturing for me to join him. I excused myself, too, and soon Achor Achor and I were whispering furiously in the Mays's bathroom.

'Do you know what he wants?' he whispered. There was an urgency to this matter, just as there was always an urgency to matters in those early days. We thought our whole world might hinge on every question, every answer. It seemed possible to us both that if we didn't please Phil here, he might change his mind about me, and refuse to help me at all.

'No,' I said. 'I thought you would. You're better at Dinka than I am.' This was true. Achor Achor's command of the language and its dialects and idioms has always been far greater than my own.

In five minutes together in the bathroom, we gathered two proverbs that we thought might fulfill Phil's needs.

'Here is one,' Achor Achor said, sitting down to the table. 'It was spoken by an important official in the Sudan People's Liberation Movement: 'Sometimes the teeth can accidentally bite the tongue, but the solution for the tongue is not to find another mouth to live in.''

Achor Achor smiled and we all smiled. No one but Achor Achor knew what the proverb meant.

After the plates were cleared, Achor Achor, Piol, and Dau left, and Phil asked me to stay so we could talk. Stacey brought the babies to their room, and said goodnight. Phil and I walked up their grand staircase, to the babies' playroom. I had never seen so many toys in one place. It looked like a day-care center or preschool, but for dozens of children, not just two. The walls were painted with murals, pictures from children's books-fairies and flying cows. There were stuffed animals, three-dimensional puzzles and a dollhouse, everything in white and pink and yellow. At the far end of the room was a large adult's desk, on which sat a laptop computer, a phone, and a printer. 'Home office,' Phil explained. He told me it was mine to use whenever I needed it.