April 2003
Caitlin
ALL OF MARTIN’S COLLEGE CORRESPONDENCE was being sent to me, so I started checking the mailbox every afternoon that spring. The anticipation I felt reminded me of being in seventh grade, desperately waiting for Martin’s news.
My mom still had her heart set on Villanova. She felt like the two women on the International Admission staff were the most sympathetic to Martin’s story. Her new strategy was to focus on one school versus dozens. She started calling Villanova every week.
“Hi, Candice! Any news?” My mom’s chipper voice resonated through our house.
Or, “Valerie? It’s Anne. I’m going to be on campus tomorrow and wondered if I could bring you lunch.”
She was working every single angle.
The rejection letters came first. His SAT scores were likely the reason, though his personal essay was also a bit difficult to comprehend. He wrote about his dream of becoming an actuarial scientist, which I had never heard of until then. When I looked it up in our encyclopedia, I understood why: It was “a discipline that applies mathematical and statistical methods to assess risk in insurance and financial fields.” The definition made my head hurt. I had just dropped a statistics class at college because the number problems looked like Mandarin.
The form rejection from an Ivy League college made me angry. I wanted to scream, “You are making a huge mistake!” It infuriated me that Martin’s fate was being determined in this cold and impersonal way. If any one of these college presidents could meet him or correspond with him, they’d be begging for him to come to their school! They would feel lucky to get him.
Some schools saw this and offered him partial scholarships. Temple was one, but we already ruled that out after seeing Wallace’s difficult transition. Yale was another flat-out no. I knew Martin would receive all this news via e-mail and just wished I could be there when he did, to say, “This means nothing. They don’t know you. Don’t give up.”
The problem was, I was starting to.
Especially when I heard my mom talking to Candice one afternoon in late April.
“Are you certain?” she said, her voice cracking on the last word.
I walked into the kitchen.
“So there’s nothing else we can do?” she added, her chin trembling. “Thank you, Candice. I know how hard you have been working on this.”
After she hung up, my mother looked despondent.
“That was Villanova,” she said. “They have a spot for him, but no money.”
She could not hold the tears back any longer.
“I failed Martin,” she said. “And you! I’m so sorry, honey.”
It was difficult to see my mother defeated. I wanted to comfort her somehow. This was not the end of the road. It couldn’t be.
“Mom, you have worked so hard make this happen,” I said. “We cannot give up now! There has to be a way.”
Mom just shook her head.
“Have you heard back from Oprah?” I asked. I knew she had written her earlier that spring, trying to get Martin’s story on Oprah’s show to raise awareness—and hopefully funds—about his story.
“No,” my mom said, blowing her nose. “Or from Bill Gates or Bill Cosby.”
My mom had a file for every wealthy celebrity she had contacted, every organization that offered international scholarships, and every institution that might sponsor a brilliant kid from Africa.
“We’ll find another way,” I said. “We can do a shoe drive, or a bake sale. I can get sponsors and do a bike ride across America!”
I was on a roll.
“Caitlin, you concentrate on your finals,” my mother said, wiping tears from beneath both eyes. “I’ll keep working on Martin.”