The Rule Breakers
          Ringggggggggg!  The door bursts open, exhaling a wave of students.  Got to hurry out, can’t dawdle with friends waiting for the bus.  The pickup game on the soccer field calls to me, but I can’t keep Dedushka waiting.  He doesn’t like that.  Michelle and I make a beeline for the curve in the sidewalk.  The area is ornamented with orange cones, a signal for parents not to pick up kids there.  However, my dedushka doesn’t worry about things like that.  He meets us in that same spot every single day.  When his silver Mitsubishi pulls up, we sprint out and dive into the back seat.  No one should know that we are the ones breaking the rules, the ones who think we are above everyone else.
          Michelle and I hate getting picked up this way, but my grandpa is even more stubborn.  Nothing will happen, no one ever stops us.  But I know they know, they watch and take note of it all.  But that is as dangerous as my day gets.  Once I’m in the car and out of the parking lot, I am home free.  I can detect the faint smell of car plastic, and feel the warm sun on my face.  The humming engine calms me after a long school day.  I am almost home.

           Written by a Royal Oak High School Student, First Generation American
Thanks to Ms. Morello, Royal Oak High School Honors Literature/Arts Instructor

 Deeda, my twin sister and I

                                The Inspector is Coming
          He has always been around, my grandpa.  No.  Not just around.  Around means showing up for the annual holiday dinner, promising to keep in touch and then returning to your own little hermetic world, or sending cash and a card for someone's birthday because you don't know them well enough to get them anything else.  Dedushka was always here. 
          Every morning when I was little, Hailey and I would go to Dedushka's house.  We would stay there until evening.  Those were good times, ripe with hearty Russian meals, trips to the zoo, and lessons in cheating at cards.  There was only one thing I hated.  Naps.  Every day at noon, Hailey and I had to take a nap.  There was a couch in the den, big and jade green, which could be made into a bed.  Dedushka would make the bed.  Then he would kneel until he and I were eye level, and he'd say, "You girls stay quiet, sleep for an hour.  Don't talk, or the Inspector will come."  Then, he would leave and expect us to sleep.
          But I never did.  I would lie on the hard mattress and fidget, because the thick blankets that cocooned me were rough, itchy, and reeked of mothballs.  I'd stare at the white ceiling, as blank as a starless night, or the dark brown wooden panels on the wall.  Sometimes Hailey and I would whisper to each other.  Or try to, anyway.  If Dedushka heard us talking, he'd march into the kitchen, his worn slippers clacking across the linoleum, and glance around furtively.  "The Inspector is coming."  He'd whisper.  "The Inspector knows.  You must stop talking."  Then he might pick up the telephone, and begin speaking to the "Inspector".  Or he'd walk away, and I'd hear a sharp rap on the front door.  Then, I'd cover my head with a blanket and huddle away from the terrifying Inspector that was coming.

          Written by a Royal Oak High School Student, First Generation American
Thanks to Ms. Karolak, Royal Oak High School Honors English Language Arts Instructor

 Deeda and I

            I spent my childhood days in the care of my Russian grandfather, whom I call Dedushka.  For the first five years of my life, from eight o’clock in the morning to five thirty at night, Monday through Friday, I could be found in the petite pink house on Everett Street.  Before work my mother would drive my sister and I to our simulated preschool, where my grandfather played the dual role of teacher and student.

I learned how to read and write from a man who has a difficult time speaking English.  However, our days always included time for sounding out words and copying down letters.  As we grew older, Dedushka’s exclamation, “Of course I’d love to hear you read!” became as regular as the chiming of a grandfather clock.  He was insistent about the importance of our education.  My grandfather even refrained from teaching me Russian because he felt it would impair my ability to learn English.  Consequently, complex conversations caused Dedushka to struggle with articulating himself in his second language.  “What is the word that I’m looking for?” he would constantly ask me.  His voice made the question into a scholastic challenge, while his eyes betrayed his need for assistance.  At first these queries were a diverting game, but as time passed it became clear that communicating one’s ideas was impossible without a mastery of the English language. 

           My sister and I continued to frequent Everett Street throughout elementary and middle school.  Every weekday at 3:30, when Dedushka’s silver sedan barreled into the school’s parking lot and Michelle and I dived into the back seat to avoid being reprimanded for our grandfather’s illegal parking, the first words out of his mouth were to ask us how our day went.  He was always interested in learning about our educational and social experiences.  Dedushka enjoyed nothing more than comparing and contrasting contemporary American society with the communist Russia of his youth.  If we offered him a nugget of (what he believed to be) interesting information, he would dig an entire mine describing how the situation had differed in the Soviet Union.  I couldn’t bear to interrupt my grandfather’s daily dissertations; he took so much pleasure in reminiscing about his past.  Consequently, I can tell you about every aspect of my grandfather’s life in the Soviet Union from 1939 to 1972.

As a dentist, my grandfather was part of the privileged class in Russia.  By day he worked in a prestigious government hospital.  By night he practiced illicit dentistry on patients who wanted to avoid the bureaucratic red tape.  Although Dedushka and his family enjoyed an affluent life in the Soviet Union, they fled the country at the first opportunity.  My grandfather knew immigration would force him to start from scratch; he would have to learn a new language, take a menial job, and live the life of a poor man.  However, he was optimistic—madly hopeful, even. After spending many years in the Soviet Union, Dedushka had realized that a future in another country offered him and his children more opportunities than a life in Russia.
           Over the years, my grandfather has turned his philosophy into the ultimate catchphrase.  Whenever he senses the slightest doubt or hesitation in me he shouts his slogan with conviction. “We are gonna WIN!” he bellows, and I am sure he is telling the truth.  After all those years of learning, he knows what he is talking about.

      Written by a Royal Oak High School Student, First Generation American

 My sister and I

Deeda

                                                Mad Boss
          Amelia is my best friend.  When we were younger, we spent almost every weekend together.  With all that time and so little to do, we ended up making a lot of new games.  But I will always remember the first game we made up.  It’s quite unforgettable.  You can just tell from the name—Mad Boss.
          There was the mad boss, who would chase after and tackle the employees.  They’d be the bull charging at the red cape, howling with the fury and contentment of letting it all go.  Then their workers would be scurrying for their lives, trying not to get pinned down by the boss, trying to outpace them, trying to escape.  All of this while running, running, running around the doughnut that was Amelia’s second story.  One circle, again and again.  And every once in a while a scream and a scuffle, to break up the repetition.
          At least one person would get hurt each time.  There’d be a sudden stop, and the other two would crowd around the injured.  Are you all right?  I’m so sorry.  Can we get you anything?  Do you still want to play?
          We’d stand around for a moment, questions in our eyes, until there was a call up the stairs.  THE BROWNIES ARE DONE!  Feet pattering down the stairs, we knew there was no reason to worry.  Brownies would erase the hurt.

Written by a Royal Oak High School Student

          Rainbow is a flash of midnight blue, and a dash of magenta.  He is the fish I always dreamed of, the pet I had never had.  Rainbow came in with a bang, right out of the blue.  I was handed the telephone receiver one night and there was my grandpa, his excited voice flying through, asking for two names.  By the time I got to the house the next day, there was only one introduction to be made.  Rainbow, the survivor, the fish-killer.
          He was a beta full of personality.  His dark, mysterious eyes seethed with malice, yet I loved him.  Rainbow was my guard, his round bowl at the corner of my grainy desk, my constant companion.  With just one glance at his own reflection he was ready to fight to the death.  With a fire in his eyes, his fins bloomed to their full grandeur and he struck.  Lunging forward, attacking, and drawing back to regroup and then repeating the same process.  Rainbow never tired and never gave up.  Go, go, go, you can get him, fight him off, don’t stop.  I would get tired of his battles before he did.
          Rainbow was a survivor, strong, never quitting.  He is my goal, my guide, my example.  If he could do it, so can I.

Written by a Royal Oak High School Student 

Squeak, squeak, squeak.  My beat up tennis shoes look like they don’t belong on that glazed linoleum.  I look down and the dark flecks buzz around like fruit flies. All around are bright display cases against a yellow wall, sunny like the sky.  Inside there are treasures, gold and silver and enamel.  There are six-pointed stars and letters like squiggles.  I know these things are important; they represent a culture I belong to, at least partly.  But I don’t see any meaning, can’t make any connection.  They aren’t a part of me.  Yet.
          Others walk down the hallway. Alone or in couples.  Lumpy pears of old women, gossiping in thick accents. Old men with stick-thin arms and legs, shuffling with their over-large bellies.  They are the only ones that come during mid-day.  Even I come with my grandparents.  Sometimes I wonder what these things mean to them.  Do the relics give them the religion that keeps them strong?  Or do they just give a feeling of comfort, telling them there are people here who are like you.  They’ve come from a long way away, leaving a thick trail of lost possessions, homes, and family members.  I’ve seen the arm numbers myself, long black smudges of a long forgotten past.  Only it isn’t.  Many probably think of it every day.  And cry and cry and cry rivers of tears.  But now they are here, in the Jewish Community Center.  And I hope these symbols protect them, and one day maybe they’ll protect me.

Written by a Royal Oak High School Student

Since the first time I came home from the hospital, this was where I lived.  My house.  Its neat red bricks and white shuttered windows are camouflaged by the jungle that surrounds it. There are towering stalks and scraggy underbrush which hide the base of the porch.  The plants are supposed to flower, but it is a promise never fulfilled.  The windows peek out from behind a colossal burning bush and a lofty arborvitae, while the lawn is thick with patches of crab grass.  But the outside doesn’t matter to me.  It’s the inside that I call home.

Every window is filled with stained glass, a product of my mother’s favorite hobby.  The pink carpet that covers the majority of our house is soft and cheery. Cream walls with matching pink trim spring from the carpet, and lead you into the living room.  My favorite room.  There are two marshmallow couches and a mod rotating coffee table.  In the far corner is the record player, my choice way of spending a lazy afternoon.  The big TV is another of my favorite pastimes. Nothing beats watching a great movie on a late summer evening, with my family and a big bowl of popcorn.  My house is where I am at ease and where I can relax.  It is my ultimate comfort.

Written by a Royal Oak High School Student

                                     Nana
          Nana didn't trouble herself about many things.  And considering that she lived through the Great Depression, two world wars, the Vietnam War, and the Korean War, that's saying a lot.  I think the last time she worried was in 1941, when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.  But then President Roosevelt came out and said not to worry.  And she stopped worrying.
               Of course, I didn't know my great-grandmother back then.  I didn't know the plump woman with curly honey-brown hair that hadn't a care in the world, and probably never set foot outside her hometown of Hazelton, Pennsylvania.  I knew the gaunt woman with short, curly white hair that hadn't a care in the world because she wouldn't remember if she had, and probably hadn't set foot outside the Toledo nursing home since she was brought there.  But even then, I didn't know her for long.  
          I occasionally visited Nana.  It was always awkward.  The air felt tight in Nana's room.  I would gaze around at the ugly speckled tile, the cold white walls that sang the songs of the old and helpless-anywhere but Nana's blue eyes.  We would not say much.  We just sat there, she in her bed, and me in my chair, until it was time for me to go.  Once, she slipped her frail, elephant-hide hand into mine and kissed me goodbye.  I didn't see her again after that.  And I don't sit in that chair anymore.

Written by a Royal Oak High School Student