A Dream Gone Awry

I had been out of work for almost six months. That was about as long as my sister had been married. I was living with her and my brother-in-law and had been living with my sister even before she got married. I moved in with her from campus after graduating from college. My brother-in-law started working at Kinko's several years before the merger that transformed the company into FedEx-Kinko's took place. I wasn't as lucky as he was. During the last several months, I had looked for a job, walking up and down the familiar shopping plaza nearby, and nothing had materialized.

I asked my sister if I could borrow her car. I was going to go look for a job. I did not know where, but I was fed up with what one who had no means of survival had to endure. I drove around the vicinity of Smyrna, the one city in the U.S. I was most familiar with. Finally, I pulled up to the Smyrna Community Center and parked the car facing the railroad tracks. I briefly closed my eyes as I needed a moment of serenity and repos. As I turned off the engine of the car, I pondered the path I would take. A thought came to mind.

"The Bagel Shoppe." The Bagel Shoppe was located off of South Cobb Drive, which was a couple of minutes down the street from the community center. It was a bagel store franchise and it was owned by a husband and wife. It stayed open until late at night. I used to stop there all the time but didn't think that one day I would be going there to apply for a job.

As I pushed open the glass entrance door to the store, I noticed the hiring sign that was posted in the window. As I pushed the front door open, the tinkling bell sounded and announced my arrival. There was a female cashier at the front register. There was classical music playing in the background. I approached the register and quietly asked,

"Are you guys still hiring?" The cashier at the register responded to me, "Yes, we are." She gave me an application form to fill out. Once I was done, I handed it back to her and she informed me that she would turn it in to the owner. I thanked her and left, heading home for the day. After a couple of days, I received a call from the franchise owner of the store.

"Can you come in for an interview?" he asked.

"Yes," I replied. I breathed a sigh of relief. It was a couple of days before Christmas. I was to start my first day on the job right after Christmas, and I was glad that I was able to work out a schedule with the franchise owner where I could still make it to church on Sunday mornings. I would be making seven dollars and fifty cents an hour as the secretary and a back-up cashier. My job duties would include answering phone calls and taking to-go orders, processing invoices, and speaking with our vendors. "A secretary," I thought. I would now have a little sense of dignity because I too had become a responsible young adult doing something meaningful.

The series of events that had led to me setting up camp in a place where folks younger than me were making more money than me still lingered on in my mind. It all started back when I was in college. I came to the U.S. as an international student. In high school, my school counselor had informed me about Agnes Scott College, an all-women's college in Decatur, Georgia. Georgia was her hometown, and she knew of the college and its standing as a reputable college. I applied for admission and got accepted with a partial scholarship. So, I packed up and moved here.

My college days would officially end upon graduation. Yet, I still had no direction in life and did not know if I would be able to extend my visa. An educational program offered to degreed students after graduation would be my only saving grace. I applied for this program and I received an additional twelve months in which I could find a job related to my field of study. Other college students had decided to brave the storms and go for a post-graduate degree. I had always felt weaker intellectually. These were students who had the professors' ears available to them at all hours of the day. As much as I had graduated with honors, there was still a part of me that felt inadequate. I didn't feel worthy and I didn't believe that I would get the same attention from the professors as the students who were going on to get their graduate or doctorate degree.

This feeling of inadequacy would become a self-fulfilling prophecy once I faced the real world. The last job I held before working at The Bagel Shoppe was at Target. There was a Target down the street from where we lived off of Cobb Parkway. It was in the fall when the leaves start to turn colors. I was working overnight as a back-stock employee. I was hauling pallets of merchandise from the back room onto the floor of the store. It was hard work that got my arms and legs toned. I weighed a hundred and fifty pounds, the lowest I had weighed since graduating from college. I had used my temporary work permit that I had obtained through the educational program to apply for the job. This was supposed to be for my training related to my field of study. I was supposed to then launch into a successful career path. The only issue was that Target was not hiring me for my French-speaking abilities nor for the knowledge on how markets worked that I had gained while in school. Rather, the department store viewed me as any other applicant who had walked in and applied at their online application station and qualified.

The hiring pay started at seven dollars and fifteen cents an hour. There was a differential of thirty cents for overnight workers, so I opted to join third shift. Working third shift on the back-stock team was hardly what I came to the United States for and completed my bachelor's degree. However, this was the only place that was willing to hire me. A friend from church named Fidel had been listening to me about my plight for months and took a sympathetic ear to my tales.

"Why don't you go to Target right there and apply?" he had asked one day. I had not thought about that.

"You really think I can go apply there?" I asked, sounding hopeful. Fidel assured me that I could find a job at Target. Soon, I was reporting to start my orientation period. When the last customer was checking out, the entrance doors were locked and at this time, shoppers could only exit the store. My shift supervisor was a lady named April. She had an accent that sounded Caribbean, but I never got up enough nerves to ask her exactly what her nationality was. Another young man was going through training as well, so I was glad I was not the only person who was wet behind the ears.

I had never worked for a well-known retail store before. I was still a fairly shy person coming out of college, and I would need to learn to interact with other employees who came from different walks of life. I had tuned out all kinds of music that was considered secular. The hip hop and rap sounds that played overhead in the stock room were a little harsh to my sensitive ears. I did, however, grow fund of a few songs that had a nice beat and melody. Erikah Badu's Bag Lady became one of my favorite tunes to listen to while looking for merchandise to fill up my pallet in the back room.

Shortly after I began working at Target, I made a friendship that would ease the pain of the hard labor. The company had a break room where most of the staff would spend their fifteen-minute break and lunch time. It was during one of these breaks that I met Alpha. Alpha was a few years my senior. He also worked on the overnight shift, but he and I were part of two different departments. He worked on the main floor. I brought stock items to the floor. On days when I wasn't taking a nap during my break, Alpha and I would chat and talk about our individual lives. I learned that Alpha was from Sierra Leone and that helped create a bond that I did not necessarily have with the rest of the crew. He held a second day job and he was focused on being able to provide for his family. I likewise shared my story with him about my mother who lived in Ghana, and how I came here to better my life but now my aspirations had gone awry.

Morning at Target was something that always brought me great delight. When 6:30 AM arrived, it meant that I could now head home and catch up on some much-needed sleep. On days we shared the same schedule, Alpha would offer to drop me off at home.

"I'm just around the corner," I would say, not wanting to impose. He would insist that this was no issue for him to drop me off. On one particular day, he and I sat in his car for over an hour, listening to music and talking while parked outside my apartment. I did not rush upstairs like I usually did to go get some rest. Alpha had revealed to me early on in our friendship that he was Muslim. That day while we sat in the car, something happened. My feelings and my reasoning were at odds with each other.

"It would never work," I told him. "You're a Muslim. I'm a Christian." This was my diplomatic answer I had already prepared in my heart and had given him. I had been taught that I could not be equally yoked with a man who was of another faith. What I did not tell him was the fact that I enjoyed being here with him, holding hands like two little children as our palms became sweaty. The possibility of being able to go out with Alpha made my heart skip as he told me his position on the subject.

"Yes it can work. I believe what matters the most is believing in God. We both believe in God, so why can't it work?" How reasonable it all sounded. But the Christian faith I had engrained in me overruled all reasoning.

I cherished the little moments I was able to spend with Alpha. I quietly reveled in his acceptance of the person that I was. I felt that I had found someone who looked beyond my faults and failures and saw the actual person hidden behind the disappointments of life. He eventually accepted my resolve on us not being able to go out. We parted ways as our lives called for us to attend to new adventures.

At the little bagel store where I had now found administrative work, I now felt as though I had previously subjected myself to work that should have been reserved for a man. Looking in the mirror, I would worriedly stare at the little wrinkle that had formed during my employ at the department store. "If only I had known," I thought to myself. Thankfully, being a secretary had removed the demands of climbing up ladders and hauling heavy merchandise from my job description.

Now far removed from campus life and the dreams I had at Agnes Scott, my focus had shifted. I started to concentrate on meeting basic needs. Food, toiletries, enough money for gas, and a portion of the rent had become my main concern. When I got the chance, I would go shopping for clothes, and I would smile with glee at the purchased item or items that were the reward I would give myself. I would be driving down the road, and I would take note of the trees and the leaves that had started to turn.