The Stranger

It’s always unsettling for a woman alone in a secluded parking lot to encounter a loitering man who does not appear to be simply parking a car and going about his business. I don’t think most men understand how vulnerable women sometimes feel in situations like this. I’m certain the man I encountered Tuesday morning in the ASIA, Inc. parking lot doesn’t.

He—tall, Caucasian, with thin, graying hair and wire-rim glasses—was standing between two of the half dozen or so minivans already parked in the gravel lot when I pulled in. The lot is secured inside a perimeter of chain link, but the low, burnt-out factories behind it create a bleak, lonely landscape. I’m glad I only come here during daylight hours.

As I got out of my car, locked it, and walked along the chain-link fence toward the sidewalk by the street, I made particular eye contact with the stranger.

“Morning,” I said, hoping he got my tacit message of I see you; what are you doing here?

“Morning,” he replied.

Then he started following me.

I turned to look at him, to make sure he knew I knew he was following me, as I made a left on the sidewalk. At the door to ASIA, Inc., I turned again, my hand on the metal bar of the door.

“You going in?”

“Yes,” he replied, eyes not meeting mine.

I held the door behind me for him, then hurried past the unoccupied front desk and into the main classroom where Rebecca holds her ESOL class. I had only the most fleeting thought of this stranger producing a concealed weapon or bomb with which to wreak havoc on the premises. 

None of our students had arrived yet, but Rebecca was seated at the long table made up of eight or so banquet tables pushed together, checking her phone messages. We chatted for a bit and students began filtering into the room, bringing melodic conversations in Nepali and a slight aroma of curry with them. I said hello to the ones whose names I could remember from the week before.

After a few minutes, the tall man from the parking lot entered the room. He tersely introduced himself to Rebecca and me as John, another volunteer for this class from Project Learn. He did not seem amused when I made a small joke about already having met him in the parking lot.

Once most of the students were settled around the huge table, and before we embarked on the myriad of forms the student have to sign each day. Rebecca asked our newest attendee to introduce himself to the class.

“John,” he said, averting his eyes so they rested squarely on the table.

Rebecca allowed only one moment of uncomfortable silence to pass before expelling a small, involuntary laugh and helping him out in a stage whisper: “Could you say ‘my name is John’?”

“My name is John,” John said to the table.

“And where are you from, John?” Rebecca intoned to the class.

“Akron.”

No pause this time: “I live in Akron,” Rebecca corrected.

“I live in Akron.”

And with that exhaustive introduction concluded, we moved on to the sign-in forms.

Rebecca and I flitted around the table from student to student, helping them see where to sign on one form, where to write their Social security numbers on another, how to indicate the start and end times of the class. A few students had to fish out their ID cars for SSNs, though the majority have their memorized by now.

After the sign-in was complete—more or less; there’s always someone who forgot to bring his SSN and doesn’t know it yet—I led the lower-fluency group through an exercise of filling out a faux job application while Rebecca worked with the higher-fluency group on job-appropriate vocabulary.

Through all of this, John sat in the same chair, often with his arms crossed unwelcomingly, only occasionally indicating to one of the students on either side of him that something they had filled out was incorrect.

His stationary presence highlighted my kinetic energy. I made an almost constant arc around the end of the table, moving from student to student to offer praise or correct the format of a date or explain how the area code differs from the phone number. The students unilaterally filled in the space for “country” with “Bhutan,” not realizing that on a job application, this was part of the current address, not a question of origins.

John spoke to me only one time during the hour and a half these exercises took up. I could tell he was addressing me because he looked directly at me for the first and only time.

“I don’t think 2-3-4 is a real area code; is it” he stated rather than asked.

“It is, often for cell phones around here,” I replied with a smile. His mouth smirked a bit, as if I had disappointed him with my contradiction.

At about 11:00, we took our ten-minute break. John discretely disappeared and did not return when we reconvened.

At the end of the next hour, after successfully wrapping up an exercise of writing and identifying the new vocab words chair and pencil, Rebecca and I briefly discussed John’s sudden entrance and exit. We both wondered if we’d ever see him again.

When it comes to volunteering in these ESOL classes, I have never thought twice about just jumping right in and participating. From that first day in Susan’s class last May, to my first day with Rebecca last Tuesday, I have hardly felt a second’s hesitation about talking to the people from halfway across the world who want to learn my native language. I figure there is very little harm I can do them, and almost no harm they can do me, by trying to communicate and understand each other on some level. It’s amazing what I can get across with facial expressions, gestures, and a limited vocabulary.

My mom thinks John might have been a recovering alcoholic whose sponsor encouraged him to try volunteering as a way of filling the void once occupied by drinking. Either that, or maybe he’s had a stroke or is in the early stages of dementia and can’t communicate well.

I think it’s less dramatic than that: not everyone is cut out for volunteering or teaching ESOL. 

The repetition of basic vocabulary exercises can be really boring, while simultaneously requiring a great deal of energy to keep the group on track.  And it’s super hard to avoid waxing into condescension while explaining, for the three-hundredth time, the difference between the letter u and the word you. Maybe John expected to work with students who spoke better English; maybe he thought the forms were a waste of time; maybe he expected more of a traditional classroom-type of set-up. Maybe he felt there was no place for him because Rebecca and I had the whole class pretty much under control.

Whatever his inner dialogue, I doubt we’ll see John again at ASIA, Inc., and it’s just as well. I like being the only volunteer in a class. Daily victories are few and far between for me right now, so I’ll take this one with a tiny glint of facetious pride.

Tuesday, June 3^rd, I won at volunteering.