Page 1 of Rise (Symbols of Love 1)

December 2, 2001

1:00pm

I glance at the clock. It is almost the end of the day, and I am ready to go home. When I left for school this morning my mother had been crying, loudly. I’m thirteen years old and have never seen my mother cry. It frightened me. My older sisters, Milly and Lilly, who were both in high school didn’t say a word at breakfast and left for school before I finished eating.

When I asked Daddy what was wrong, he didn’t answer me, and the drive to school had been silent and terrifying. We usually sing along to whatever was on the radio or talk about what my day was going to be like. He didn’t even respond when I said goodbye in the carpool lane.

I am supposed to be finishing my algebra assignment, but I have only managed to do two of the twenty problems on the worksheet. My stomach is in knots. I glance at the clock again then look across the room. I am trying to catch Cara’s eye. But Cara has her head down and is focused on her worksheet. I glance around the room and see everyone is working, but me.

My nerves become unbearable and I start to raise my hand to ask to use the bathroom when the classroom door opens and Principal Ramey steps in. Her stern dark eyes find mine immediately, but she looks away sharply. I stare as she walks to Mrs. Sneed’s desk and bends down to whisper in her ear.

Her eyes snap up to mine again, and this time, when our eyes met, she doesn’t look away. She stands up, straightens her grey linen blazer, touches her pearl necklace, as if to make sure they were still there and says “Adelaide Hassan, I need you to come with me”. It isn’t the summons that pricks my fear, but the use of my full name. No one calls me Adelaide unless I am in trouble. And I am never in trouble, at least not at school.

I get up, and start toward the front of the room. The principal’s cutting voice stops me mid-stride. “Gather your things and bring your bag, Adelaide. You won’t be back before class is over.” I turn around to find everyone looking at me.

I glance in Cara’s direction one more time, and this time, she is looking back at me. Her dark eyes are open so wide they look like they are going to pop out of her head. In them, I recognize my own panic and fear. I know, somehow, after today my life will never be the same. As I reach for my bag, I feel tears prick the back of my eyes and my heart starts to race. I can’t pull my gaze away from Cara’s. I feel a terror that is almost paralyzing, and I do the only thing I can. I start to laugh.

As I walk from the room, Principal Ramey’s hand on my shoulder, my laughter turns to sobs. And then I cry until I have no tears left.

July 18, 2014

London, England

I love the arrivals section at the airport. It is a magical place. Hugs, kisses, and screams of happiness abound. I sit, waiting for my family at London’s Heathrow airport, and watch people run to greet their loved ones as they come through the double doors. The cacophony of sound and constant movement is comforting rather than overwhelming.

So far, my favorite has been a couple whose three children and their entire families just arrived. They had been sitting next to me, waiting.

The wife struck up a conversation and told me their children, who all live in Australia, were visiting for the first time in three years with their spouses and children. She was holding a tissue she was twisting to shreds as we spoke.

We’ve only been talking for a few minutes when they arrive. Two huge men, three women and 7 children come rushing toward her. She jumps up, our conversation immediately forgotten. I watch as she and her husband are swallowed up in a huge group hug.

The most striking thing about their reunion isn’t the size of the group, but the hush that comes over them as they embrace. I feel like an intruder watching their intimate moment. I look away as sorrow, so keen it steals my breath, washes over me.

My mind drifts back to that fateful day of its own volition, thirteen years ago when my life, as I knew it, changed. The day my future went from one that was clearly mapped out to a complete crapshoot. The day my father chose his ill-gotten gains and freedom over his wife and children is a day branded into my memory, and I feel it like it happened yesterday.

When I got to the principal’s office, a haggard looking woman with a mop of blonde, close-cropped, curly hair was standing in front of the desk. She was flanked by two police officers who looked like they would rather be anywhere but in this room.

“Adelaide, I’m Mrs. Salter. These are officers Clarke and Luman. I need to talk to you about your father.”

The world stopped spinning at the end of that sentence. And in some ways, it never started again. My life, everything which occurred before that day, became a blur of time I only referred to as “before”. Before my father, formerly a pillar of our community, became a wanted fugitive. Before my home became a crime scene and everything I thought of as “mine” became evidence. Before I learned I couldn’t count on anyone but myself, and that there was no such thing as happily ever after.

My father was an Enron executive and had been implicated in the massive accounting fraud which caused the downfall of one of the largest energy companies in the world. Tens of thousands of employees lost their livelihoods; their retirement savings, their homes, their children’s futures. The CEO and CFO went to jail, the Board Chairman would have too, but he dropped dead, and my father, the General Counsel, fled with more than 20 million dollars.

My mother, sisters, and I became instant pariahs in our community. People threw bricks through our window, someone set our garage on fire. In less than 72 hours, the FBI moved us to a temporary home in Maryland, we changed our last names to Dennis, my maternal grandmother’s maiden name, and we began new lives. We received new birth certificates, new medical records, new school records, new everything. The Hassan family disappeared in the blink of an eye.

The press began hunting for us, almost more actively than they hunted for my father. The rumors ran rampant saying we absconded as well. The FBI was forced to issue a statement that we were not suspects or persons of interest in the investigation into our father’s disappearance. Which only turned the gossip from “are they criminals?” to “where are they hiding?”

The money

my father earned before his employment at Enron, our education funds, and some of my parents’ investments were not subject to seizure. Although our circumstances were greatly reduced, we were not completely destitute. The FBI was able to transfer all of the money into accounts opened under our new names.

My mother had given up her career as a lawyer when Milly was born and never went back to work. We bought a small house in Silver Spring, Maryland, and tried to build our new lives.

On the first night in our new house, my sisters and I lay together in one bed, me between them, and cried together until we fell asleep. We were shell-shocked. There was so much change in such a short period of time.

Our mother carried on with life as if nothing happened. I never saw her cry again after the day he disappeared. She told anyone who bothered to ask that she was a widow. At home, we weren’t allowed to speak ill of our father. My mother kept a picture of him by her bedside, her loyalty to him felt like a total betrayal. It was as if what he had done, leaving us, lying to her, destroying all of those people’s lives didn’t matter.

My sisters both took advantage of their excellent grades from the private all girl’s school they attended “before” and graduated high school early. They fled to the Northeast for college. In less than two years after my life exploded, I was alone. They called me every weekend. They came home for holidays and the year I turned sixteen they both came home for my birthday. They loved me, but they had escaped and moved on with their lives. I was left to live with a mother I didn’t respect, who acted like nothing had changed but our zip code.

“Auntie Addie!” A child’s loud scream pulls me from my dark daydream just in time to catch my nephew’s little body as he hurls himself at me. My whole family, my sisters and my mother, is here.

I’ve been in London for less than a year, but my sisters couldn’t wait to come and see me after I moved. I’m actually eager to show them the life I’ve built here. London represented new beginnings and the fulfillment of promises I made to myself after my father left.

They were:

1) I would never rely on anyone for anything again.

2) I would find a way to live in a country where no one would care who I had been “before”.

My college fund has paid for law school and allowed me to focus on studying. I graduated in the top five percent of my class at Harvard Law School and had been co-editor of the Law Review.

I landed my dream job as an Associate in the London office of a U.S. law firm. Even better, my best friend Cara, is also here. She is a dancer in the London Ballet Company, and my anchor.

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