Page 107 - Esquire (November 2019)
P. 107
vocate for all Native Americans. I think other times there isn’t much more to say than: It’s removed a gear that locked it, then put it back
people sometimes stress that on me,” he said. complicated. When I was his age, I existed together, so now it moves. And I was like, ‘If
But “being aware of my grandma’s story helps somewhere between obliviousness and obliv- only I knew how to do this when I was five!’”
me get through hard situations.” ion. I don’t remember having a single conver- The trains, and their blaring horns, lost their
We moved on to the universe. Jeffrey men- sation with anyone about going to college. I charm on me pretty fast, but Jeffrey kept saying
tioned that Lakota people believe they come wasn’t even thinking then of what it might things like “I like the vibrating” and “I could
from the stars, and that scientists discovered take to better myself, to achieve anything like go to sleep to these sounds.” So we talked for
that within their life span, stars create all the a dream. Jeffrey and I have lived very different a while alongside the tracks, pausing to plug
elements in the periodic table. “It’s cool to lives, but our shared sense of experience felt our ears each time a train passed.
start seeing all these parallels,” he said. Talk closer to me that afternoon in Fentons. Cook- We discussed college. Jeffrey wants to go
turned to black holes. “Black holes have this ie-dough ice cream and apple pie are surpris- to Caltech. This year, he’s taking both honors
thing called the event horizon. As light falls ingly good together, but neither of us finished. calculus and honors statistics, because he re-
in, if it passes the event horizon, even light searched which classes would be good to pur-
moving at the speed of light will not be able sue astrophysics. Still, he’s nervous to leave.
to be fast enough to escape the black hole. It THE NEXT DAY, Jeffrey and I “I have severe homesickness. And this recent
swallows up the light.” I can’t say that I un- headed to the train tracks near Jack London full moon has, like, been bringing out my emo-
derstood what he was talking about, or rath- Square. Jeffrey loves trains. He has since he tions,” he told me. “And I’ve been like thinking
er I was hearing something else, from some was very young. One of his favorite movies about college, and having to go away from my
layer beneath Jeffrey’s understanding of the is The Polar Express, starring Oakland’s friends and the people who have supported me
cosmos, a metaphor about escape and light very own Tom Hanks. He, Martha, and Geri throughout all these sort of hard transitions.
and darkness; about gravity and the speed we watch it every Christmas. He likes the gears, And beginning that college-application pro-
must reach to not fall in, just to stay afloat. and studying the moving parts. That’s how cess, and I think of having to move away and
I asked Jeffrey what he thought about the he broke his toy Polar Express train when split paths. We’ll still keep in touch, obvious-
idea of the American dream. Maybe it was the he was a boy, and how he fixed it. “It had ly, but there’s still that physical-distance barri-
apple pie. “I think it’s very much a dream,” the remote control that I’d turn all the way er. That sometimes scares me.” At some point,
he said. “It’s definitely not equal for every- up, and I’d control the speed with my hand, the topic of his college-application essay came
body, for how much they have to work to get which overheated the engine and it broke. up. I wondered about his approach—how
it. It’s complicated.” Nothing about being Na- I think the final straw was when my mom much he planned to write about overcoming
tive American is simple. Nor is there a Native came home and the whole room was filled hardship regarding his adoption, and to write
American dream. Just dream catchers that with smoke. She was like, ‘You’re gonna about being Native American, what it means to
hang from people’s rearview mirrors, as if ac- suffocate Grandma!’ ’cause she was sitting in him—knowing it could help him get in where
knowledging there’s something we need to see the living room, too. She was like, ‘Turn it off.’ he wants. He’s aware of the commonly held be-
behind us. Jeffrey’s understanding of his own And I was like, ‘Fine.’ It never turned back lief that minorities get special consideration on
life, its context, is astonishing to me. Some- on. Recently, I took the bottom part off and college applications, and that the minority of
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