10,000 Miles

Between the World and Me

I gazed at an image of my family from our vacation to Tokyo three years earlier. Harmony. Laughter. Everyone smiling from ear to ear. I muttered to myself: Did I make the right choice? Now alone. 30,000 feet above the azure Atlantic.

I replayed my last embrace with my mother. Closing my goodbyes to my father, my Aunt Arini, my little sister, and my Nana Ty, I sauntered over to my mother, wiping the tears off of her cheeks once I reached her. She wrapped me in her arms, and I felt her tears form a small pool of water on my right shoulder. Her weeps echoed in the ghost-town-like airport.

Holding me closer, choking on her tears, escaping her trembling lips she stuttered the words, "Go do us proud, Div.”

As I turned to the gate with the large blue screen with block white letters stating “New York City”, a fresh teardrop made its way from my right eye to the bottom of my face, soaking my mask, leaving a trail behind.

The plane landed at John F Kennedy Airport.

As I glanced through the narrow, oval-shaped window, the sky was dark as slate.

With my tense and stiff leg muscles, I trudged to the directed immigration queue. Through my noise-cancelling earphones I heard the whispering sound, “Get your passports and immigration slip ready for examination.” My eyes dilated. The music faded, and the only sound I could hear was my heart pounding on the surface of my chest. In a swift motion, I slammed my leather bag from my shoulders onto the marbled floor. Zip, zip, zip, zip, zip. Wondering if my mother snuck the sheet into my pocket. Wondering if she reminded me to fill it out. Wondering what she would do.

Now 10,000 miles away. The small, rectangle strip of yellow paper was missing. Sweat racing down the sides of my face, flowing down my neck, drenching my cotton crewneck. Still aimlessly hunting for the paper slip, I felt a hand grip my shoulder firm. My left shoulder twitched and I jolted to face the person. Maintaining a grip on my shoulder, wearing a yellow vest, a woman, tall and lean, stared down into my soul. “You can fill out your form over there, sir,” she remarked in her deep, monotonous voice while pointing at a bench with a stack of yellow paper slips and 3 pens evenly spaced across.

The clock struck 15:00 when I exited the terminal. The cold, icy wind roared from the west. While waiting in an empty taxi queue, the scent of my dried up sweat violated my sensory neurons, and my legs muscles on the verge of a cramp. “I was still very afraid” (121).

I stared at the yellow, eight-character license plate as the gray Nissan van faded into the distance. Dragging my two suitcases along the pebbled floor, I searched for the location of my dorm. Walking in circles and desperate to find a person to ask, I stood in front of a building with a woven tapestry saying: “Welcome to

Carter Hall!” The pace of my breaths increased by the second as I traipsed into the low lit hallways of the dorm. A tepid scent of sweat and old Chinese food startled my nostrils as it lingered in the air. The rumbling of stairs and the sound of chatter amplified as two boys flew down the flight of stairs. Intimidated by their towering heights, an intended greeting escaped as a cry. Instead, they introduced themselves, Ryan and Dhruv, and offered to move my baggage into my room. The two of them stared at me as my body remained stationary. Having transferred schools what felt like every other year in Jakarta, I was prepared for another round of two weeks sitting alone, waiting for the returning kids to get comfortable with me before engaging in any conversation.

Seats filled. Hearing someone holler out my name, only recognizing a group of three faces from the dorm, I dragged a chair next to them, assuming they summoned me over. Grilled chicken and dried-looking rice was served. “You need a knife, bro?” echoed every 4 minutes with a series of laughter following. Not noticing for the first two times, I surveyed the table. No one held a spoon. My eyebrows pinched together and my jaw plunged. Growing up in Southeast Asia, I only knew to eat with a spoon and fork. Mastering the technique of slicing food with a spoon, the redundant knives in my household collected dust in their exposed tray. Vacated seats grew in number. As the boys rose from their chairs, I followed them towards a dark maroon door. Entering the room, the bright white from every corner shone in my eyes. Examining the spacious closed area, I observed a sea of around 200 teenagers, engaging with one another, typing on their phones, spectating a ping pong game, staring at the TV. Latino, White, Black, Asian, Native American to name a few all gathered in a single space, wearing Nike sweatshirts, tight leggings, graphic tee shirts. They called it the SNUG. Every school I’ve gone to I only recall noticing others who looked Asian or exactly like me, sporting the same light blue collared uniform. My eyes took another second to admire the room. A collection of varying skin colors, races, exotic backgrounds.

Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me explores the ideas of leaving one’s place of comfort, seeking a greater world. Coates most notably exhibits this notion in his continuous praise of Howard University—claiming it his “Mecca”—and how it “formed and shaped” him (40). Astonishing at the diversity of the

Yard in the Mecca, witnessing “seemingly endless variations” of black, Coates demonstrates an eye-opening moment in which he observes the beautiful complexity of his own race within a single gathering space. Coates’s essay emphasizes the importance of the Mecca in how he views his race and the world as a whole, but crucially, how Howard offered him an escape from the streets of Baltimore, dominated with the drugs and gangs. Furthermore, Coates extends this concept of searching for “something grander” in this world during his trip to Paris (121). Recounting how the plane “punched through the sky, punched out past West Baltimore, punched out past the Mecca, past New York, past any language and every spectrum known to [him],” Coates suggests his ambivalence, uncertain about the ambiguity of another side of the world (121).

When Ta-Nehisi Coates vacated his hometown, optimism and hope filled his search for his Mecca. As I left my hometown, I felt only fear and anxiety in what seemed like I was leaving mine. However, my experiences traveling and assimilating to a foreign country on the other half of the world mirrored many of Coates’s recollections. Like Coates prior to his departure to Paris, “‘I [was] afraid.’ I did not know the customs. I would be alone” (121). For so long my mother refused to let me leave the house into the bland city after dark, policed my diet, followed my whereabouts. For 15 years, she has detached me from the real world and its struggles.

And, when the "starship" broke free from Jakarta, past my three previous schools, punched out past the 15,000 islands of Indonesia, for the first time, I was vulnerable.

Though, the Loomis Chaffee community fostered me, welcomed me. My heart raced after my initial steps into the SNUG, where cultures and backgrounds from all over the world intertwined. Students who cut their food with spoons, who watched anime all day, who hung around in hope to catch the eye of the popular girl in a skirt and creased shoes all gathered in a single room. I discovered my Yard. Resembling Howard acting as an escape for Coates from the ruthless streets of Baltimore, Loomis provided me the opportunity to blossom and at last break free from my mother’s bubble. The Loomis Chaffee School became my Mecca.

After reading Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me in class for my CL English Seminar course my junior year, the renowned memoir has become one of my favorite books due to my ability to relate to a lot of his explained experiences in the book. The feelings of being lost in a foreign country, some racist encounters, and finally experiencing a feeling of belonging in a new school/university. Unlike others in my class who didn’t really enjoy the book because of its recency and its political and social views on society, the parallels I discovered from the moments in the book to my life kept me engaged. Moreover, the messages and morals of the story felt powerful to me as I too have been in the shoes and experienced the emotions and moments that Ta-Nehisi Coates elucidated in his captivating memoir.