Essay

Rough Ground

By: Hristina Keranova,

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That’s it. Summer holiday, hurray! No students to teach, no supervision to obey! Freedom and, finally, more time with the kids! As she was running down the steps at a South Atlanta’s Marta station to change platforms, she slipped. The pain was excruciating. She could see and hear nothing, but just sat staring at her foot, which was rapidly swelling. The sound slowly found its way to her…A uniform, a policeman, politely insisting that she stand up. She couldn’t. A stretcher appeared and carried her to the station’s offices.
She was in pain. The Marta policemen kept asking her questions about her country, immigrations status, family and job, and she was answering mechanically, her foot throbbing up to her head. After establishing her legitimacy, the policemen decided that she needed Grady Hospital. The policeman on duty in that area was heading there, so he would give her a ride. The took her by the shoulders and carried her to the patrol car.
Although she did not feel like talking, she exchanged a few phrases with the policeman. He had noticed the slight hardness in her accent and thought she was German. She had to explain where Bulgaria was since he was not sure. He wanted to know about how she was settling here, and she told him that she was doing graduate school and teaching English. She was not aware at the time what made her choose those particular facts about her life, but later, when she reflected on what happened, she often thought that, in a very immigrant way, she might have wanted to impress him with her achievements.
When they arrived, he stopped about a hundred feet from the main entrance and she slowly got out. She needed help to make it to the entrance. He got out of the car, came over, and she reached to lean on his arm, but he made a step back, stared at her for a moment, got back in the car and drove away. She thought she would faint, but mustered all her strength and hopped to the entrance on her good leg. What did she say? What provoked that…contempt? The question was throbbing in her head even louder than the pain from her hurt foot.
Inside, the lobby was full of patients, some lying half-asleep on the benches. When she hopped to the clerk to register for an appointment, he told her that her turn would come at 2:00AM. It was 5:00PM.
Dejected, she looked around for somewhere to sit and think, and then called some Bulgarians, but nobody answered. The Bulgarian immigrants she knew were all at their several jobs. Then she called an American colleague from graduate school, Elana, who came in an hour. Carrying a cup of hot chamomile tea, she was quite a spectacle on the background of the suffering with her queen like posture and long blond hair. Elana looked around, inspected the enormous, puffy foot and said , “This is not how things are done, Christine. This is not how things are done.”
She drove her back home, and in the morning, Elana’s husband too her to Piedmont Hospital where a doctor diagnosed a sprained ankle and recommended a splint.
Later that summer, when her colleagues took turns driving her to school, so that she could teach and make money, she forgot about the policeman. As she was enjoying the care pouring on her, she felt she had finally settled and had the confidence to face the next challenge.

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