“What’s your first language?” said the social worker, and Katya echoed him.

“Grebo,” said Patience.

“But you learned some French.”

“Yes, enough, as a refugee in Côte d’Ivoire. I went to school there when I was nine and ten, and again when I was sixteen. The Ivorian government did not like Liberians in their schools, but some nuns enrolled me. I was unusual there. A Liberian who had studied French. Most others my age had never gone to school. Some older people had gone to school back in Liberia, but that was in English, not in French. They were at a disadvantage. Of course, now that we have been resettled in the United States, they turn out to be lucky. I am still unusual, but no longer fortunate.”

Katya relayed this. In this reverse conversational direction, she also used the first person.

“Please tell me what was your place of birth?” the social worker said.

Alarmingly, it was rather Katya who clattered her saucer and cup. Like a book-of-the-month-club reader feeling personally addressed, Katya remembered her own early dislocation…

“I know from hearing my parents’ regrets that I was born on a farm in Grand Gedeh, Liberia. My grandparents, parents, and aunts cultivated peppers and sweet potatoes. I cannot remember the farm. Then one year Charles Taylor’s men came through, killing and setting fires. My family walked with thousands of others, all of us trusting a rumor that one day we would reach Côte d’Ivoire. My grandmother and littlest aunt died on the journey. I was too young to remember them. Finally we got to safety, but there were too many of us. We waited for the peace that would come with one side winning the civil war, but while we waited many people starved. My father decided that we should go to the city, Abidjan. He worked picking trash for a boss who had a scrap metal stand. What the boss didn’t want, my father used to build our family’s house. My mother spent each day waiting in line to siphon water off the water main. I tended to my grandfather.”

Patience’s inflection was as flat as a prepared statement. Her hands cupping the little girls’ shoulders were her lone sign of disturbance. Alarmingly, it was rather Katya who clattered her saucer and cup. Like a book-of-the-month-club reader feeling personally addressed, Katya remembered her own early dislocation at her classmate Nicole’s apartment. The uninvited memory of her scorn and resentment, contrasted with Patience’s unrancorous matter-of-factness, interjected a silence into the interview. Finally the social worker prompted, “Could you translate what she said?” and Katya, without debating it, switched to the third person.

“What is your maximum level of education?”

“As I said, for a while the nuns helped me go to school. But then the government said it was sick of Liberians and expelled us from Ivorian schools. I worked selling soft drinks for several years, until the government changed its mind. Then I went to third and fourth grade. I was seventeen and in fourth grade when I married my husband. This little girl is his sister. The other girl is our daughter. In 2002 the Ivorian army conscripted my husband, and we never saw him again. At that time Côte d’Ivoire had big problems. They blamed the Liberians. After soldiers burned down our neighborhood, we lived in a UN shelter. My parents did not survive the transition. It was also the end of my education. For a while in the shelter I taught the small children French. Eventually we were approved for resettlement. We have been in the U.S. for a month. In America, no one is prejudiced against Liberians. In Abidjan I wanted to be a secretary in an office building, with a lot of glass to watch people passing on the street, but I could not be. In America, I will go to secretarial school and become a secretary.”