April 2001

Caitlin

WHEN MARTIN SENT ME HIS O-level scores, I wanted to make copies and hand one to everyone who doubted him, and me.

“Remember the grifter scam artist kid from Zimbabwe you warned me about?” I’d say in my revenge fantasies. “Well, guess what? He just got nine As on a national exam. All As.” Then I’d whip out his report card and say, “See?!”

I never once doubted Martin, and so I wasn’t in the least bit surprised that he did so well. And now that my mom finally figured out how to send him money safely, I could focus on being sixteen.

I celebrated my birthday that March with my extended family. My grandparents from both sides came, as did several aunts, uncles, and cousins. My mom added another table to the end of our dining room table, which extended into the adjoining living room to fit everyone. She bought me an ice-cream cake from Dairy Queen and I got lots of presents, but the best gift was being able to finally drive my car. The day after my birthday, my mom took me out of school to go get my learner’s permit. Damon met me at the DMV—he had skipped school, but lied to my mom when she asked him why he had the day off.

“Parent-teacher conferences,” he said. I knew that wasn’t true; we had planned the whole thing the night before so we could spend the day together. My mom fell for it.

We’d only been dating for a month, but I was falling in love with him. He was my first serious boyfriend, and more independent than any of the guys I’d ever dated, probably because his parents gave him so much freedom. Like us, they started dating in high school. Damon’s mom was sixteen when she had Damon’s older brother. Damon’s dad was diagnosed with MS when he was twenty-one, a year after Damon’s little sister was born. His mom was so busy taking care of his dad that Damon was the only guy I knew who could cook dinner, wash his own clothes, and make sure his little sister did her homework. He also helped teach me how to drive, which I’d been doing for a month when I received more good news from Martin.

He wrote that he had won a scholarship to a prestigious private school two hundred kilometers north of Mutare, in a town called Nyanga. I pulled out the new atlas of Africa that my mom had bought. I had already circled Mutare and Harare on the Zimbabwe page. I wanted to circle Nyanga, too, but no matter how hard I looked, I couldn’t find it. Neither could my mom.

“It must be really rural,” my mom said.

Martin also wrote in his letter that he was even more serious about coming to university in the United States. That news made me want to do cartwheels and a backflip. I read that section of his letter out loud to my parents.

“Can you imagine?” I said. “We’d finally get to meet him!”

“I can,” my mom responded. “Lots of international kids come to school here. Martin is so bright, I’m sure he could even get a full scholarship.”

He sent the list of universities he was interested in applying to, which included Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania. He asked me to contact each to have application material sent to him at his new school.

“That will be good practice, Caitlin,” my mom said.

I was halfway through my sophomore year, which meant I needed to start thinking about college myself.

At the time, I was thinking about pursuing a degree in technical education. It was my favorite class. We did mechanical drawings using a computer-based program called CAD. It came so naturally to me that my teacher encouraged me to consider it as a career. That was the first time I even thought about my life after high school. I was in awe of how organized and focused Martin was. In his letter, he said, My aim of becoming a doctor is to help some primitive Zimbabweans who still resort to traditional medicine and end up dying. My other aim is to increase the number of doctors in Zim because there are few and cannot serve everyone.

Inspired, I logged onto our computer to send a few requests on Martin’s behalf. I started with Harvard and then let out a deep sigh as I sent the last e-mail.

“Everything okay, hon?” my mom shouted from the other room.

“Everything is more than okay, Mom,” I said as I clicked the computer off. Martin was going to come to school in the United States, I thought. I felt it in my bones.