The Bus To Delphi

Everyone sat by themselves in their bus seats because there were so few kids on the bus. The Delphi program was a new program and that meant the whole school bus was just for us. The sun streamed through the windows as we headed back to school. I sat by the window letting the sun toast me because it felt good, I never liked being cold. It was special in a way I didn’t understand. I just knew that one day my fifth grade teacher told me that I qualified to be a part of the Delphi program and would get on the bus every Wednesday afternoon and go to another school. There were two other kids in my class whom I recognized, and one or two in the other fifth and sixth grade classes that I never met, but I knew who we were. We were the smart kids. The word “exceptional” was used among the teachers when they thought I wasn’t listening. The other two kids in my class were Katie and John, their names were always next to mine. Everyone in the class had a little laminated kite with your name on it, and it floated on a picture of a hill and sky. With every score your kite went higher and higher. Katie, John and I were the three highest scorers every week so our kites were already touching the clouds. The rest of the class was still down in the grass. We had just taken the test for greatest common factors for the number six.

Every Wednesday we were bussed to a different school. The school was like ours, but it was a middle school, so they had different things like computers in the corners of the classroom, a video camera on a tripod to record classroom skits, a large tv with a VCR below it to play back your skits later that day. My school didn’t have any of those things. Theirs had a big resource room with tiled floors where we painted and pulled in large vats of water with mesh screens on top to make our own paper, or dye fabric from boiled vegetables like beets. This program was experimental, the teachers said. There was a pamphlet with pictures that said, “enriching and stimulating academic pursuits”, “cognitively gifted”. I gave it to my parents to read, and simply said, “My teacher told me I have to do this”. There was a sentence on the pamphlet that explained how it was paid for by the school district, and so my parents accepted what I told them.

It wasn’t easy to explain things to my parents because we had immigrated here when I was one. Their English was broken, but what was more impairing for them was not knowing how school systems worked, how American families worked and why people called us “gooks” or “chinks”. The words were new to them, but the looks and the taunts didn’t need translating. Somewhere in everyone’s life you experience someone who hates you because of your face or your skin and hands, and you never forget it. Becoming the unfamiliar or the desperate, you survive on what others are willing to share with you, even if it’s fear. The reality was that we were refugees in this small town in Upstate New York, it was 1985, and nothing was going to change that.

What I did during the school day was unknown to my parents along with the hours from 3:30 pm to 7:00 pm because their job was to go to their job, and mine was to not make it harder for them. So I didn’t say much about my school, my teachers, my classmates, my friends who teased me at recess, or my friends who picked fights with me when I walked home alone from the bus stop. “Show me how to do karate!” they would yell as they would walk by, always in a group of two or more. I didn’t give much of an expression, I wasn’t sure how to feel about it yet. And I had nothing to say in response. My 100% on my math test didn’t have much relevance here. So when I left school on Wednesday afternoons and when I took the late bus home after school to an empty bus stop and empty streets, I felt just fine.

There was a new project set up for us at Delphi school. We were going to learn all about archaeology, the study of human history using physical remains. Our teachers showed us some slides of what digs looked like and how they were used to discover history. Who’s history? I wondered. The people who used to live in this area were called Ononda’gegas, and they looked kind of like me, outsiders. But they don’t live here anymore. From what I gathered, they were primitive, they didn’t speak the same language and were treated like nothing because they had something, land. Colonizers had resources too, they had the numbers, weapons, and don’t forget they had their reasons too. Who would have enough to survive, to stay, or to leave? Maybe being displaced isn’t the tragedy because it can happen to anyone, you can be coming or going without knowing when. History seems to be about the when, but I think archaeology is about the what. Maybe the real story is what you share along the way, and what you leave behind.

The teachers had everything prepared when we showed up to the field next to the school. Thin white rope tied to small wooden stakes in the field marking neat and equal squares for us to dig in. The grass was gone, the dirt freshly exposed, it was beautiful. To the side were small plastic boxes that held a shovel, a paint brush, a rectangle frame of wire mesh to sift dirt, a pencil and a little black book. The teachers instructed us on how to dig carefully into the ground in small sections and sift the dirt. We each had our own cordoned off square, and we were encouraged to document everything.

We were an excited bunch of kids, buzzing and talking to ourselves and inadvertently to each other. We just knew that there was something to be found in this huge field, and that it was just a matter of time before one of us found it, and it would feel like all of us had found it.

One of the sixth graders found it first, an old wire handle for a small bucket. Our first artifact! He was told to draw what he had found in his book and mark the date and time that he found it. Then someone else on the other side of field found a piece of metal probably a utensil, even John found pieces of netting he was told was probably used for fishing. I sifted and sifted away all afternoon, seeing tiny rock after tiny rock, but I wouldn’t give up on feeling excited. Near the end of the day, I found the tip of what looked like a toothbrush, not very old, but still, it felt like I had become something because I hadn’t given up, an official explorer.

The sun was getting low on the field, and all the kids were told to put their tools and artifacts into their box and put them away until next week. We could take the pencil and little black book home with us so we could draw a map of the roads on our way back. Look for artifacts in the landscape, our teachers told us, mark off the farm houses and tree lines that served as property markers from house to house. What we see and keep in our little black book was ours, they said.

The feeling of perseverance never left me, even if we never left that little town. My parents worked there and I grew up there. I was ready to graduate from high school, I had buried myself deep into my homework all those years and qualified for a merit scholarship to a State University. My parents’ English got a little better, but they never got promoted beyond minimum wage jobs. My mother was a bookkeeper at the church we went to for a few years, and my father was a store clerk at the local hardware store. He was the second man in charge to manage the store without being paid a manager’s wages. The kind owner knew he wasn’t going to get an argument from my father about that.

I knew that if I took that scholarship to University I would be leaving my parents behind to fend for themselves. They had jumped from a sinking boat without knowing where they would land but it was either jumping or dying in war. They chose to survive. How would they fare now? Separated from their own family, their own brothers and sisters found refuge in Canada, waiting for the day when they would see each other again.

I clean out my room, packing up because we are moving into a one bedroom apartment. We no longer need to live near high school anymore, my father says, so we can move to a smaller apartment closer to downtown. You’re going to college now, he says, you will start your life. He looks tired, his eyes sag, like a man who has swam a long way and just wants to take a rest.

A small shoe box holds a few photos and cut out drawings. Underneath them are a few patches from school and hand braided bracelets. Next to them is my little black book. The edges are worn away, the pages furled and the little pencil is there too. I pull on the rubber band and open it to the middle where something lay between its pages. In the center of the little black book is a rock with chiseled edges in the shape of an arrow. On the pages I had written, “funny rock, 3:30pm, October 2, 1985 for remembering history”. I remember finding that rock that day on the field, the little clang it made as my shovel hit it gently as I was digging. That day, I decided to stick it in my book instead of turning it in to my classroom box because it made me feel special, like I had found a surprise just for me. I hold it up to and look at it, turning it in my fingers.

I put the funny rock back and close my shoe box. The next day I would go to the library and look up Native American artifacts. I would find a book that lists the types of tools used by the Native people and their worth. I would see a picture of my funny rock and identify it as an arrowhead. I would look to the next column and see the value listed at $20,000. I would stare at the page. I would hold my breath for what would seem like five whole minutes. I know I could think 'impossible' at that very moment, but instead, I would choose hope, and jump.