The Faces Of Strangers - Pia Padukone

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received commendations, accolades, and have been recommended for honors programs at universities. They have been preppy, athletic, rebellious, lazy, overweight. They have come with eating disorders and autoimmune diseases. They have come with clean bills of health. They have come resplendent in designer clothing, exuding riches from every pore and orifice. They have come needy, some almost destitute, but no matter, because entering the hallowed fold of Hallström levels the playing field. They have all come with open minds, with open hearts, of that Barbara is sure. They have come with good intentions, the desire to lead, to fulfill the common Hallström goal.

      As he stood upon the threshold of the room, Paavo couldn’t imagine these ten people having anything less in common, not to mention how uniquely disparate he felt amongst them, like a lamb amongst wolves. Paavo glanced at each of the students already seated; the Polish and Russian girls flanked the Czech boy on either side. Pyotr’s face appeared sour, as if he were constantly being forced to chew on lemons. Paavo made his choice to settle directly across from the Russian girl, a decision he immediately regretted because of her hair. It was so long and ratty that he almost wished he’d sat next to her so he could pick apart the tangles with his fingers. Nicholas settled in next to him and reached over immediately to the small bowls of snacks placed in a straight line like a dividing border between themselves and the rest of the group. The room was eerily silent, waiting with anticipation for their leader to enter the room. Barbara entered the room squinting, and held her hand up to her forehead like a visor.

      “Looks like we’re all here.” Though she smiled, there was something chilling in her look, as if even though everyone had made it into the Hallström program, she was still constantly assessing and appraising every one of her recruits, to ensure that she had made the right decision.

      “Now,” Barbara said, standing in the front of the room and gripping the chair back in front of her, “let’s reintroduce ourselves to one another, just in case we have forgotten names or faces.” Paavo was secretly glad for this, as he had forgotten everyone’s name except for mawkish Pyotr, who sat sullenly between the girl with the unkempt hair and Nicholas.

      One by one they were reintroduced as partners: Pyotr-Evan, Sabine-Jess, Tomas-Justin, Anika (Unkempt Hair)-Malaysia, Paavo-Nicholas. Each time Malaysia’s name was mentioned, whether it was during a roll call or introductions, Paavo found himself stumbling over the concept of her. Malaysia was a slender black girl, with hair that puffed out around her head like a cloud of spun sugar. Her skin was darker than any Paavo had seen before. He hadn’t encountered anyone quite like her, and not just because black people were few and far between in Estonia. What kind of a name was Malaysia, he wondered. She was clearly not from the country; their people were tawny-skinned with eyes that seemed to screw together at the corners. He had to force himself to stop looking at her; as if she could sense his gaze, Malaysia lifted her head and shifted her body to face the opposite direction.

      Paavo stifled a yawn behind his hand and sat up so that his spine pressed against the back of the seat. It was the only way that he was going to get through this session. He could feel the creep of sleep start behind his eyelids and he twitched his mouth and licked his lips, willing himself to wake up.

      Barbara was warming up. She looked out over her audience as though surveying her kingdom. It appeared that there was something there that just wasn’t right. She honed in on something—someone—seated in the center of the table, and before Paavo knew what was going on, she was walking toward Evan. She held her hand out expectantly and Evan looked up.

      “Give that to me now, Evan,” she said, her voice like stone. Paavo leaned forward. What did the boy have in his possession? A cell phone? Cigarettes? Drugs? How had she even seen what he’d held in his lap? All the students leaned forward and craned their necks to see the contraband in Evan’s hands. He handed over a small book and looked up at Barbara, his eyebrows knitted with confusion. Barbara held it up in front of her chest. It looked like a guidebook. The words Understanding Russian Culture were typed across the front in a firm, Communist font. “This, ladies and gentlemen, will not be tolerated. Do you understand?” Some of the students nodded, though Paavo didn’t understand; perhaps it had a false cover and was hiding something else. But Barbara held the book over her head and marched to the front of the room, shaking it so that the pages flopped from side to side.

      “This is poison,” she said, her voice rising an octave above its normal pitch. “This type of book is what CliffsNotes is to literature. It’s demeaning, it’s degrading and it’s uncalled-for. Hallström is about understanding. It’s about bridging the gap between cultures that have for the past few decades been estranged, unfriendly and misunderstood. It’s about breaking down all the stereotypes that books have printed or movies have compounded. If I see anything like this again, we’re going to have serious words about your future here. Is that understood?”

      There were soft murmurings throughout the classroom. Evan looked down at the ground, as though he were about to crumble into tiny pieces. Even Pyotr looked as though he had softened during Barbara’s speech. Barbara lifted the book into the air again with both her hands, and with one swift motion, the book was torn right down its spine into two halves. She tore the pages from the binding in pieces and chapters and tossed them into the trash bin at the front of the room.

      “I apologize for destroying your property, Evan,” she said. “But that trash doesn’t exist within the Hallström walls. This should mean more than a bolster on your college applications or simply for just a cool experience.” Paavo flinched at the older woman’s use of the word. It seemed forced and neglectful, creating an even wider gap between her and the students.

      With the room shocked into silence, Barbara segued into a long lecture about social and cultural anthropology, about the strength of unique comprehension across borders. She reviewed the scheduled outings, check-ins, protocol for what to do in certain situations, difficulty in school, financial issues. Although each of the students had read all this in their course packets, she rehashed etiquette from both host and guest point of view, and though she stressed constantly that neither of them were to think of themselves as hosts and guests, she didn’t change her choice of verbiage, either. What to do in a cultural conflict, what to do when someone wasn’t understanding you, what to do when you had a problem only your parents could solve but they weren’t there, what to do if you needed something your host brother or sister couldn’t help you with. Barbara drawled on and on, her shiny hair reflecting the fluorescent lights over their heads.

      It was when Barbara addressed bullying that Paavo felt all the air rush out of him. Pyotr had been sneering all morning; whether it was at Paavo or whether that was just the general look on his face, Paavo couldn’t tell. But it reminded him of the gang at home. It made him remember things like the raised scab on his right knee. Things like the memory of the trash cans behind the Kadriorg market, and how the boys had threatened to stuff him into one of them and seal the lid shut. They’d seemed friendly enough at first, surrounding him on his walk home from the bus stop on the last day of school, bumping into his sides good-naturedly so that passersby didn’t suspect that he was being walked against his will. In fact, it looked as if the pack of them were all walking together, toward a unified destination and that Paavo was happy to be right in the middle, the most popular boy of all. The gang was thickly cut, each of them like great slabs of black rye bread, and their identical brush cuts made them indistinguishable from one another. They were cartoons of themselves with their soldier-like severity and their fierce blue eyes stabbing into him with each glance.

      But as soon as they cleared the busy stretch of Narva maantee, the boys flanked him on all sides in a most unfriendly manner, pulling at his knapsack, tugging at his collar. Russian Rabbit, one of them hissed in his ear. Half-breed. He flinched as a stubby finger traced figures into the back of his skull. Know what that says? another asked. Paavo shook his head. Eighty-eight. A lucky number, the boy said. Next time, I’ll ask you why. As they reached Toompuiestee, the pack of boys shrugged him off like a scratchy sweater. Paavo had kept his head down to the ground the entire time, looking where his feet were stepping rather than the direction he was going. When he lifted his eyes once all the boys were gone, he realized that he was going the right way. They had steered him to the start of his street, which was a blessing and curse. They knew where he lived.

      Once,

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