How I Became a Seventh Grader
Excerpt from Year One
This lady with short and curly fire-truck-red hair in front of us appears to be well into her 60s. She sits deciphering all the documents we just dumped on her desk, eyes squinting and widening as if she’s trying to focus a lens. She hangs over the desk more than she sits, her bossoom resting on our interpreted documents, making the exercise appear more comical than likely intended. From her perch, she eyes my translated birth certificate and report card. We don’t have an interpreter with us here and there is no way the city can possibly provide an army of those for this crowd. We can only hope that dad’s English together with my own will suffice for this outing.
The three of us hold our collective breath when the woman clears her throat and picks up my report card to waive around triumphantly.
“This is good! You are smart!” she announces loudly, as if her volume can make her words sound any less foreign. But we understand the sentiment and beam accordingly. “5 means A, I know this,” she adds, knowingly, with a wink.
She’s right-that is what it means. And I have all eight of those. Technically, it should’ve been six 5s and two 4s, but our town’s resident translator and my own English teacher for that whole one year of foreign language instruction did the translating, and my 4s in Belarussian language and literature were not deemed important enough to ruin my otherwise pristine paperwork. This wasn’t inconsistent with my own attitude toward the two classes.
“Raydun, I won’t give you a 5 for your big brown eyes alone,” my massive Belarussian teacher used to tell me whenever she’d notice me coast with a solid 4 without much of an effort. She never hid her distaste for me or my Semitic last name.
“Then don’t. I’m fine with my 4. I’m never going to use Belarrusian in America!” I would always respond, somehow confident that this small town was temporary, just waiting for my real life to begin. Still, our old translator fudged it up just a smidgen to help me look better at this very moment.
The tiny lie doesn’t bother me. I earned the rest of these 5s through much sludge and quicksand of anti-semitism and awkward tweening at the height of collapse of Soviet Union, most of my teachers showing not much more than tolerance for the likes of me-the few remaining Jews with a path and ability to move far and away from the rapid decay all around. My 5s may as well have been 10s given all the upstream swimming I had to do since preschool-somehow the only Jewish kid across grade level since the late 80s, my family late to the departing boat. I need this new life here. I need it like I need oxygen.
“You were born in 1982. You’ll be twelve in a couple of months, right? So you’ll be starting seventh grade here, ok?” the gelatinous figure with a kind face informs us, without looking up from the multiple signatures she’s been planting on the forms we’d haphazardly filled out ahead of time.
“No! Not ok!” I pipe up, my heart already in my throat and swelling. “I finish five in Belarus. I go six now!” I’m hot in my turtleneck, sweat already prinkling against the fabric, but I am also shivering. The combination is terrifying. I’m free falling.
“She go six, not– not seven,” my dad attempts to come to my rescue, both of our faces flushed now. Mom’s head turns from one of us to the other, seeking translation that neither can currently provide.
“Look at all your 5s! You’re a smart girl. You belong in seventh grade.” The woman is completely unbothered by our pleas. My dad’s long forgotten stutter of his youth seems to be making a comeback, but this lady’s eyes remain unmoved, her glasses resting on top of her soft, poofy head now. She seems genuine in her expression of good faith and optimism and I can see my dad’s resolve begin to dissipate.
“Ok,” I hear him say as panic rattles inside me, matching the drumming in my ears. I can’t go to seventh grade! I know next to no English and now I am to skip an academic year?
“No, I can’t. Please. I go six,” I give it one last try. The woman is not listening. She is packing up our documents, ready to send us on our way. There are so many families still waiting outside. Other than tempting the locked and loaded tears into springing from my eyes, my begging will accomplish nothing. The grownups agreed. I’m eleven and can’t formulate a grammatically correct sentence in English. I have no leverage here. Clearly, this isn’t my life yet. This is temporary. The real one will start later.
Keep the Faith, Michael Jackson is singing in my ear.
“Oh you’ll be fine,” the lady waves me off and that’s that.
I’m a seventh grader.
© Marina Raydun, 2021