Debbie

“We are not particularly women anymore; we are parties to a transaction designed to set us against each other.”

 

       I met Debbie on the first day of my summer internship. I had applied to this internship over a year ago, had purchased a new blazer to wear to the office, and had built overwhelming excitement for what this summer could hold.

              Debbie received me at the front desk – if eye-rolling and exasperated sighs can be called receiving. When I told her I was the new intern for the office, her expression grew darker. Sarcastically, she mumbled, “Another intern, great.” I was taken aback, but pretended to not have heard the comment.

              The friendly supervisor who had been awaiting my arrival took me into her cubicle to discuss logistics. I was handed an intern manual, a binder, a notepad, and a computer login code. Right as I was leaving the room, my supervisor asked, “Have you met our other intern, Debbie?”

              Huh! So Debbie Downer was also a fellow intern! I never would have guessed it from the way she spoke to me. We were equals, yet she seemed to be pushing me down as much as she could. She had been rude and hard to get along with, and I had no intention of getting to know her.

              Lunchtime proved to be immensely awkward that first day. I sat with my mom's delicious homemade pasta with grilled vegetables on the side, neatly stored in a Tupperware box with my name printed on the lid. Meanwhile, Debbie came back from a nearby restaurant with a giant takeout bag.

              “Have you tried Neprati? Their Italian menu is just divine,” she said, taking her food items out one by one.

              “I haven't. But maybe I'll try it one day.”

              “It's better than anything you've probably had,” she stated smugly rather than suggested. Just like that, she attempted to take away any positive memories I've ever had with food. Just like that, she tried to push me down a little more. Just like that, she spoke as if she knew my truths and experiences.

              I was annoyed with her tone. “I'm fine with my own lunch.”

              She narrowed her eyes at my Tupperware. “What is that even?”

              I blinked at my box, and then squinted at her. Flatly, I said, “It's pasta.”

              With a wrinkle of her nose at my response, Debbie began rattling off the prices of her lunch items: $16 for the sandwich, $21 for the salad, $8 for the potato chips, $14 for the slice of shortcake, $11 for the soup, $7 for the tea, and $13 for the cinnamon bun (that she threw out halfway) amounted to almost $100 in total for a single lunch.

              “You should come with me one day. You haven't tried food until you've had Neprati.”

              “I don't spend money like that on food,” I said bitterly. “I'd rather spend $5 on the local gyro carts around here.”

              She shook her head in disgust. “I don't do food carts.”

              “What do you mean you don't do them? What's wrong with food carts?”

              “I don't know who's serving the food. It could be dirty. It seems unsafe. I wouldn't want to do that to myself.” She lifted her sandwich. “Try this.”

              “No thanks, I can only eat halal meat.”

              “What? What is that?”

              “I’m Muslim. We can only eat meat that’s prepared in a certain way.”

              “What’s wrong with normal meat?”

              “Our meat has to be from an animal that was killed painlessly,” I tried simplifying.

              She laughed. “That’s so weird.”       

              I looked Debbie up and down and decided there was nothing more important in this girl’s life than proving herself better than me. She flaunted her wealth, regarded me as nothing, treated my religion as a joke, and even now our body languages seemed to mimic the current dynamics – me leaning back in my desk chair and her standing at the doorway with her hands on her hips.

              The weeks rolled on with Debbie. I learned she would always take the expensive city taxis home instead of using the subway like most teenagers our age (“That’s too much work.”). She would freely spend $500 from her parents every week (“What? It’s called an allowance.”). She had full confidence in her academic abilities (“I mean, I know I have an excellent chance at Harvard. You don’t really seem like the Harvard type, though.”). She had little patience with constituents (“The last lady I talked with on the phone couldn’t even speak English. I mean, really! Why do you live in this country?”). She was on a roll with the insensitive comments and judgmental remarks.

              As for me, I did my work and kept my contact with Debbie to a minimum. I got along well with the staff members and became close friends with other interns that joined the office over the summer. Debbie gradually became the outsider among the interns.

              “She’s just so damn weird,” another intern Amy laughed. We were having lunch with two other interns, Rafael and Clara. I had been interning for a month by now. “I bet she has no friends in school. I hate her.”

              Rafael and Clara chortled, yet I felt uneasy.

              “She’s not that bad.” I tried smiling as I said it, but my expression was distorted.

              Amy threw her hands in the air. “She’s the worst! Listen, do you know what she said to me the other day? I was sitting here, eating my lunch and minding my own damn business, and she comes in here asking what I’m eating. I tell her I’m eating pasta, and this girl has the nerve to say, ‘Oh. Pasta again?’ Like, excuse me? Who are you even to say that? She’s disgusting.”

              I didn’t reply. The story was awfully familiar to my own.

              “She’s not malicious or out to get us or anything. She just doesn’t get how to talk to people. She’ll learn,” I offered. “Hopefully.”

Amy stared at me. Clara frantically looked from Amy to me. Rafael concentrated on his lunch.           

“Ayesha, you were the one who told us how terrible she was from Day 1. And you were right. She’s horrible and rude and immature. Why are you defending her now?”

Three pairs of eyes peered into mine. I didn’t have an answer. At this point, I didn’t have much of an appetite either. I closed my half-eaten pasta container and excused myself from our table. While heading back to my cubicle, I passed somebody sitting alone with their lunch.

It was none other than Debbie. Surrounded by paper containers and packages of gourmet food, she was delicately perched on her seat while taking slow bites. She saw me watching and lifted her arm to wave. I waved back.

“How’s it going?” I ask.

“Fabulous.”

I nodded. I was still holding my lunch. “Mind if I join you?”

She gestured to the chair in front of her with a dramatic flourish. “Be my guest.”

I sat. We ate in silence. Finally, she nodded at my lunch and asked, “What’s on your menu today?”

“The best pasta in the world.”

“Didn’t see that one coming.”

“Oh, shut up,” I said, realizing too late that I had said that out loud. I quickly glanced up at her and we made brief, nervous eye contact before both of us burst into laughter.

“Seriously, you need to try Neprati one day.”

“Sorry, I don’t have $100 lying around for lunch!”

“You don’t have to spend that much.” She looked at her surrounding boxes and containers. “$100 is a little much, I’ll give you that.”

“Tell you what,” I laughed. “I’ll go to Neprati with you one day if you come with me and get a $5 gyro from the local cart one day.”

She grinned. “Oh, God. Deal.”

               We shook hands, and with that touch our differences seemed to dissolve for a sliver of a moment. Debbie was still a rich white Catholic girl living in uptown Manhattan, and I was still a broke Bengali Muslim girl living in ghetto Queens – yet somehow in this big, crazy universe we found ourselves joined at this internship and it was just going to have to work. With that touch, we created a mutual and cordial agreement of respect. We could get along, or we could not get along. But the easier, less stressful, more obvious, and happier route would be to get along. And we could get along. We were going to be fine. We were going to be great. This bond, tie, link, association, or whatever we had just constructed would undoubtedly transcend our expectations and predictions. We were going to make it together. We would rise each other up with outstretched arms and sunlit eyes. We knew we could.