room. For all her fearlessness, Nika started to frighten me, the world she had escaped threatening to overshadow my own, silent as the radiation she may have smuggled here in her chromosomes. My pains felt so miniscule in comparison, but I here I was insisting to Nika that they get their due. When it was clear I wouldn't come to tea, she stopped crying and her eyes hardened to an elemental gray, both knowing and aloof, an expression I'm convinced can only be achieved by Central Asian women. On my way to Dr. Randall's office, I felt relieved, unsure I wanted to visit Nika's home anyway, afraid ofwhatl might find therean unfamiliar spice; a crowded dining table; the TV tuned to whatever the antenna could get; or too many precious trinkets, painstakingly brought from home, chipped and scratched nonetheless. Perhaps something as mundane-yet precisely descriptive of her essence-as an empty bowl, dust motes settled in its basin, a cracked red varnish. Who was I, thinking we had anything in common? Since that day she's been surly. Now, along with her threats about the cake and the video, the botched invitation hangs between us. We don't speak of it. If Nika was quiet in class before, now she exerts her silent gravitational force on other students, like Faina. I try to get them to share experiences, practice role-plays in English-buying produce by the pound, returning a scarf. Everything is a transaction. I get sick of it, too. They want to know how to get jobs as good as they had in their home countries. Marta has "golden hands," they say. She sews so well. But how to get a business license? Make dresses for profit? My Salvadorans, a brother and sister, sell bag lunches to construction workers in their neighborhood, sandwiches in sweet white buns with sprigs of cilantro piled on top of spicy pork. What will they do when the new townhouses are finished and the workers move on? A Taiwanese man insists that the only way to get ahead is to find a job-any job-and work your way up. "Learn English!" he exhorts, and I bring the class back around, remind them that's what we're doing; even their tangential arguments are practice. Nika says nothing during these exchanges, but rests her hand on Faina's arm,
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