Abel

Every Thursday and Friday, 4: 00 or somewhere close to, Anna and I climb the flat cement steps to appartment 8, just off State Street. When the door opens, it's usually to a dark family room with a mother laying on the couch and at least one of the children watching Saved by the Bell. Or Dora.

We go to help Abel, the oldest of the three kids, with his spelling, reading, writing, and math. As we step inside and remove our shoes, the mother smiles and nervously nods her head as she tells one of her children (in Tigrinya) to go get a Fanta for us from the kitchen, and another to turn on the light.

We usually sit down on the other couch, and she is up and gone before we finish taking out all the books and materials for the day. Abel comes in, Anna attempts to crawl inside my body as the two younger siblings start excitedly asking her questions and offering her things to try and get her to play with them.

Some days it's a circus. Drinks spilling, Eritrean bread and yogurt falling into shaggy carpet, Delana running around with Anna barely hanging onto her back and Yosef literally hitting himself, over and over in an attempt to make her laugh.

Sometimes I am all knowing. All three kids plus Anna snuggle up next to me on the couch as we read stories  or play games and I answer their every question.

Other days it's awkard. The mom stays on the couch, her head and torso completely covered by a blanket she pulled over herself just after I walked in, leaving me unsure if she's hiding, resting, or just pretending not to be there.

But every time, our time together ends with all three siblings walking us out to the car, then running into the street and behind buildings to meet up with their other 8-12 year old friends roaming the streets unsupervised. Never to they check in with their mother.

My role is hard to know with this wonderful family. To them I am just someone from the IRC, a tutor. But when they're almost getting hit by cars, or discovering a chainsaw someone left out to dump, or trying to wade through a thick packet of story problems with wording and references to things absolutely alien to their minds,  about I feel this urge to protect, to mother them.

I neither question nor disrespect their own mother's ability. She has seen and done more than I can imagine. But they are in a foreign land now. There are things here she knows nothing about, things her kids soon will or already do. To have children so much more fluent in all things than you must be at once terrifying and demoralizing. The balance of power is off, and I worry she has turned off, her kids left to wander and watch obama impersonators singing gangam style on youtube.

I can't change or keep them from everything. I can't tell their brave mother how to mother. So, I just try and make the time we're together as beneficial as I can, and be grateful these three little bright eyed siblings are in my life for the time being.

*this last picture is shamelessly posed. The IRC asked me to send some pictures they can use for recruiting new volunteers. Yosef did a pretty great job taking it. He is 9, after all.