Broken Telephone
by Tanushree Bhattacharjee
It was just another average, summer day. The humidity was suffocating. There was a fan in my room, but it was small and practically useless. The thing that was annoying me the most was the music blaring from my dad’s cell phone. He had been on hold for the past half hour.
I sat there until I was aggravated enough to relocate. As I made my way to the living room, I wondered why the hodgepodge of modems and hardware had to be kept in my room. The faint sound of the smooth jazz was still making its way down the hall until an operator finally interrupted it.
“Hi, sir. How may I help you today?” she asked flatly. Her tone told me that it was her 100th call of the day. She was ready to hang up before the call even started.
“Hi. My home phone. Not working. There are only outgoing calls. No incoming calls,” my father answered.
My dad’s English is not the best. When my dad first came to Canada, he took a few beginner lessons along with his pharmaceutical college courses. After a couple of years, he had to put his education on hold to provide for his family. Now, he drives 40 minutes every day to work at a bread factory.
Despite the fact that he has lived in Canada for 13 years, you could hear the struggle in his voice in impromptu situations. Yet he somehow seemed to have all the confidence in the world. If it were not for my embarrassed giggles, he wouldn’t even know that he had problems with his English.
Over the next few minutes, I could hear the woman’s frustration slowly escalate. She tried to play it off, but it was not working.
“I put the blue wire in the black box. Still no dial tone.”
“Okay, that’s the ethernet cable. Now check for blinking lights,” she said with a forced laugh. She sounded like an angry kindergarten teacher.
“There is still no light.”
At that point, I had to close my eyes. I could not help but sympathize with the lady; she thought she was just going to get another customer, but what she got was a lot more than that. My dad was evidently making the woman’s life intolerable.
All of a sudden, yelling entered the picture. Except it wasn’t my father’s or the operator’s; it was my mother’s.
“Go help your father! Can’t you see he’s struggling?” my mom yelled in Bengali.
What was I thinking? I should have gone sooner.
It happened all the time. I had to recap important parts of parent-teacher interviews in the car. I had to look through lengthy emails and instruction manuals. As a 10-year-old, I never signed up for the responsibilities that came with immigrant parents. It was a weight on my shoulders and I knew that it would never come off.
I lazily made my way to the room. When I opened the door, I saw my dad on his knees, covered in wires. He was still wearing the bulky clothes he wore to work that day. His face was spotted with little black and white hairs. He only shaved on special occasions. He looked like a completely different person with a clean face. I wondered why he didn’t do it more often.
I interpreted as usual; I held the phone with the lady telling me the instructions, and I told my dad what to do in Bengali. Clearly, I had underestimated the task because the instructions were difficult even for me to understand. We unplugged various coloured wires and put them in different ports. We pressed the refresh button several times. I called the home phone more than I ever called it in my life. Finally, with the perfect combination of wires and buttons, we heard a dial tone. Our father and daughter team had succeeded once again.
Although it may seem like it, I was never truly unhappy with helping my father. I felt proud every time. It was the looks of others (or what I thought were the looks of others) that would make me second-guess that feeling.
The first time we went to the theatre to watch an English movie, I was nervous about how things would play out. Deep down, I knew that the movie was going to be boring for my parents, but I was still hoping for the miracle of my parents genuinely enjoying it. Kids and their parents kept laughing at the crime-fighting, yellow, cylindrical creatures in overalls. When I looked over to see if my parents were also laughing, I found them dozing off.
That was the first and last time we went to the theatre to watch an English movie. Not only couldn't I properly watch the movie, but I also couldn’t get mad at them. I knew that it wasn’t their fault. I just wanted them to understand and laugh with everyone else.
Then it dawned on me that I had seen the same -- in Bangladesh. When we went to visit the high school that my dad taught at, his former colleagues were eagerly waiting for him. They reminisced about the good old days when they would teach science. We also toured the school. All the teachers and students stopped their lessons to come greet my dad. My dad was understanding, laughing, and enjoying his time.
He had everything in Bangladesh; he had his friends’ love, his students’ admiration, and strangers’ respect. Yet he threw all that away. For me.
How could I possibly overlook a sacrifice of such magnitude? How could I laugh at his struggles? How could I be another telephone operator?
With each exhale, my heart sank deeper into my chest. It hollowed me out. I couldn’t look at him in the eyes. Still, feeling guilty was not going to do anything for anyone.
“Thanks, Baba,” he said with his warm smile.
“No problem. Let me know if you need anything else.”