Under The Sun

By Charles Ferrin

In the summer of 2010, I went to visit my mother’s farm in the foothills of North Carolina. There I climbed to the top of Chimney Rock and peered out into a broad canyon studded with Precambrian boulders some 4 billion years old. Then I turned around, proceeded to the Charlotte/Douglas International Airport and boarded Delta Flight 2227, the ship that would ferry me back to my home here in North Miami.

Upon arrival, I claimed my luggage, rode a tram to the Hibiscus parking garage and found my car on Level 5, Section D. I then struggled through a twisted maze of concrete ramps, searching for an exit gate. A series of toll booths signaled an escape, and I prepared for the final hurdle—my long-term parking fee.

To me, airports are places that take many moments of anxiety and compound them into diamonds of pure misery. I can only wait to leave them. So it was at this moment, perched at the gate of freedom, that I became most annoyed.

The car in front of me stopped. The hazard lights began to blink and a woman pulled herself out, distraught and speaking to the cashier more in hand gestures than words. I waited. The cars behind me waited. And we waited together further still. Then a parking official approached my vehicle.

“What’s her problem?” I asked. He answered, “I don’t know. Maybe she doesn’t have her ticket. You should turn around and go to another gate.” She looked as though she had never parked at an airport before.

And it was then that an emotion grabbed me, a feeling that contained a distinctly articulated phrase. “Here I am, back in Miami, where everything has to be so hard.”

The Carolina foothills are a beautiful patch of Earth. The hazy blue-green mountains dip and climb into rounded peaks, and people say, “Hi, how are you?” and “Y’all doin’ OK?”. Their voices are inflected with vowels that rise and fall like gentle waves, and nearly everyone speaks the same language, from the tattooed skaters to the old-timers lounging on the veranda. Their intentions and motivations are apparent to me. This is an easy place.

I am a product of this Appalachia, raised not too far up the mountain chain in western Pennsylvania. My life was more Rust Belt than Dixie, but it all feels comfortable to me, as the difference is only a slightly different dialect. I know my people, and more importantly, I understand what they are saying.

Many of my days in Miami are spent not understanding people at all. I am buffeted from Spanish, to Creole, to French, to Russian, to Portuguese and beyond. My brain feels like a computer without a compiler, and oftentimes I am inclined to think, “This is so hard.”

On my way home from the airport, I grew hungry and decided to stop for takeout. Nearby was one of Miami’s most famous chains, El Palacio de los Jugos—The Juice Palace, and my stomach recommended that I get some ox tail.

In the past, I had always gone to El Palacio with friends who spoke Spanish, and they did the ordering for me. This time, I had no such company. But hunger is the great motivator of man, so I stopped, went inside and did my best to order in a language that I do not speak:

“¿Cómo se dice ‘ox tail’ en español?” I asked, and just in case they missed that I am a gringo, I followed up with the same question in English.

The counter girl directed me to the menu. She pointed out the words “rabo encendido”, and then we repeated them several times together. This seemed to make her happy. Her co-worker looked over, also pleased with my lesson. Then I thought about the man who had ordered before me. He was also a gringo with no Spanish, but his approach had been different.

“I want that. That one. That one! And I want a can of Sprite. Sprite. Sprite!” His voice became a hammer and his words were nails, disrobed of any mellifluous syntax. His expressions were just naked coins of commerce, clattering into a jar of lost opportunities.

On the way home, I thought about life as a counter girl at The Juice Palace. How many hours they must spend on their feet, serving inconsiderate people who leave their tip jar shallow, and then to be rewarded with a wage that fails to provide the kind of life where children are secure, debts are fulfilled and healthcare is a matter of course.

Often, people I know from up north will give me a call. “Why the Hell do you live in that place?” they ask. “Get out. We can find you a better job. You’ll be appreciated up here. Come back to us, your people.” Many times, I am tempted.

A gap between languages is a gap between cultures, and a gap between cultures is a gulf between nations, continents and every living person on Earth.

When you find yourself faced with such an ideological expanse, you can try to jump across, or you can stay where you’re at. It may seem safer not to jump, but it is in fact more dangerous not to do so. When you don’t jump, you deny nature’s greatest gift to the human species—the ability to acquire and retain knowledge.

It’s possible that the woman at the toll booth had never parked at an airport before. She may have been from a poor country where people never get to fly, and at the time, I was unwilling to consider that possibility or feel any sympathy at all.

When we don’t make an effort towards understanding, we become Arizona. What’s happening there is one step towards a scenario that history has repeated before: “Show me your papers. Alright, now turn around, spread your feet and put your hands behind your head.”

And then you disappear.