Title: Diaspora
Author: The Categorical Imperative
Feedback: Makes writing worthwhile; please feel free to leave a message c/o or email me at All comments, good and bad are appreciated and used constructively.
Spoilers: Shibboleth; Noel
Summary: Post-ep to Shibboleth. Ensemble. Toby reflects.
Disclaimer: The characters referred to in the West Wing and who feature regularly do not belong to me nor do I make any money from them. Other subsidiary characters have been created by me and any similarities to real people, dead, alive or yet to come are entirely coincidental. Historical details given are fallacy and most probably particularly unrealistic, however, I am claiming artistic license as they meld to create the story.
Please forgive my inaccuracies
Thanks Snowbear96 for the review. I see what you mean about being hard to follow. I had originally put breaks in but they seem to have been eaten on the way. Hope this makes things clearer – apologies to anyone wondering what on earth I'm doing!
Notes: Using date of Toby's birth established in Enemies Domestic and Foreign.
1963
"Amen." Chirruped twenty-five small voices, none more than nine years old and all with hands together and eyes closed, looks of deep concentration on their faces, pensiveness etched into their very features. They sat at their desks which faced the chalk board at the front of the room and opened their eyes at the end of the prayer. As the eyes of twenty-five fourth graders from Brooklyn, Borough of New York opened, they were drawn immediately to one little boy facing them, standing at the front of the classroom while doing his best to avoid eye contact with any of them.
The boy stood with his arms wrapped protectively in front of him, his small fingers drumming nervously with no short amount of dexterous movement. He was wearing a brown jumper that was too big for his small frame and ill-fitting grey trousers with patches in various colours and fabrics. Beneath the trousers could be seen odd socks and a solid looking pair of brown boots. His hair was dark and curly and present in great quantity; with his head bowed forward, the boy did not complain when it fell partially over his eyes, obscuring not only his view of the other children but their view of him.
His gaze focused down, concentrated on counting the cornucopia of multicoloured dots on the flecked carpet, all of which bled together to create a brown jumble. When trepidation was succumbed by a sudden but brief surge of fortitude, the boy looked up, his eyes always skirting around the edges of the room, nervously peering at a map on the wall or the window that led to the school yard beyond. The boy, small for his age and certainly the smallest by comparison to his peers, dared not look at his classmates and should his gaze accidentally stumble upon one, it moved quickly on, trying to avoid any confrontational glares that may have been induced. He knew for sure that the physical confrontation would come later; in the school yard at recess, during the lunch break, on the way home. He never knew exactly when it would come but he knew without a doubt that it would.
He had never missed a day of school, his mother was very proud, his brother and sisters too. He hoped his father also would be proud of him, he yearned for that but he was unsure; since his father had been imprisoned, sustaining contact had been difficult. His mother received the occasional letter full of platitudes and apologies, always full of good cheer and optimism about how he was looking forward to coming home a reformed character and that it wouldn't be long before he was free and everything would be better than before, a real life Billy Bigelow with a family to support and the world's best intentions but it was hard for immigrant families in America. It was not the land of promise and opportunity for all; it was the land of promise and opportunity for those already there. For the immigrants, forever arriving from distant horizons, it was a place of oppression and exploitation, yet there always remained a small glimmer of hope, one that was in existence everywhere; that children may lead a better life than did their parents before them.
The boy's family had come to New York from Europe, forced from their homeland by persecution.
January 1945
They arrived on a lonely, large, grey boat in their hundreds, glad to be free of the concentration camps; with the throngs of people stepping down onto the docks of New York. Arriving in the United States were families with small children, older couples who had sworn that they would never leave their home, some orphans; their demography was varied but all had one thing in common; they were in pursuit of a new life.
The boat, one of many that had arrived from Europe since the war had started, had been crowded and thanks to the constraints of war, food for the arriving immigrants had been scarce. Each had their own set of papers, sometimes the papers were all they had, clutched tightly to their chests, stuffed into a coat pocket or packed among the few belongings they had been able to bring with them. They came from all over Europe, all having left from a common point, a small harbour in Norway. They had gathered seeking asylum from Germany, Poland, Austria, France, Russia and the satellites that amalgamated to configure the Soviet Union. Every person there was essaying to flee the poverty that was wrought upon them, a consequence of severe and perilous war time conditions or the persecution of their nation, religion or community. They were fleeing the abstract and sweeping menace of bombing raids and the unequivocal, corporal threat of being captured and enduring the subjugation of the concentration and work camps, subject to both the menace and ire of the Commandant or the dread of being arbitrarily condemned to death in the gas chamber. All of those seeking sanctuary spent many hours at embassies and consulates, all hoping that they would be among the fortunate ones granted asylum in the United States of America. Each person was counted as they got onto the boat before their long voyage began as each would be counted off; any discrepancies imputed to erroneous counting rather than acknowledging some of the mortalities that had occurred during the months crossing.
There was scarcely room to move on the quay at New York harbour as luggage and people filled all conceivable space; the atmosphere was charged with electricity. Like the plethora of immigrants in whose footsteps they were following, they were filled with hope. The planks that led from the ship could not be seen, hidden by a colossal snake of people; hordes of people slowly coming down them, their hearts fluttering with a combination of anticipation and anxiety. There was no rush, not now; they were there. They savoured the freedom around them soaking in the sights, sounds and smells of the big city. As their feet hit the dock they looked about them and attempted to absorb all the sensations that assaulted them, everything so different to the conditions on the boat; overwhelming them, offering them new opportunities, offering them hope.
The salt water coming in from the ocean smelt refreshing after the stench and confinement of the cramped liner. They could hear traffic as it passed in the streets nearby; car horns, engines and the hum of people going about their day to day life. As they looked back out over the water they could see a myriad of tall buildings standing strong and proud and they raised their own posture, responding to the pride held deep within and represented by their solid wallsThe cacophony on the docks was surreal and deafening, the air thick with strains of new accents; they had arrived at the world's greatest polyglot nation.
A man hurried down the final section of a gangway leading down from the monstrous and imposing vessel and put the two small, brown leather suitcases he had in his hands onto the grey concrete. He held out his hand for the solemn-looking, dark-haired woman to take. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail that hung straight down her back. Her head was covered with an olive green headscarf, her steps were tentative and she took the hand of the buoyant man gratefully. When she had joined him on the ground, he took her into his arms and picked her up, spinning her around him in what little space there was. He was nineteen; she sixteen and the couple were newly married. Both the man and the woman knew people who had been taken away by the Nazis, the people who went missing in the night and whose existence it was advisable to forget. They each knew people who had been subjected to the toil and travail of the labour camps, people with whom they had gone to school and among whom they had grown up. At the urgings of their parents, they left the world they knew to seek an ameliorated and safer life on another continent.
"We have made it," he said, elated, "we are in America! This is the land of opportunity and freedom for everyone; here our children can be great, they can live without fear. Eva, their dreams will come true." As he placed her back down gently, they were both overcome with emotion and embraced one another tightly. "Gone is the dark grim grey of the concentration camps, here we can work hard and play hard; we will make a success."
"Jules, this is a dream; this is too good to be a dream…"
"We will be happy here, yes?"
"We will be the happiest!"
"Eva, I love you and I will love our children and we will all love America."
"Toby? Toby?" C.J. Cregg clicked her fingers directly in front of the face of the White House Communications Director, Toby Ziegler. "Are you O.K.?" she asked him concerned, having vivified him from his reverie. The President had just finished giving the Thanksgiving proclamation and C.J. had beat a hasty retreat from the lenses of the cameras after leading the singing of songs and the playing of lutes.
The Press Secretary had been sitting behind her desk tapping the side of Gail's gold fish bowl. The fish responded happily, swimming around in giddy circles and swimming close to where C.J.'s finger rested on the glass. She had prattled away obliviously, one minute ranting about having to stand in front of the press corps and sings songs she didn't know with a drove of small children, the next contentedly talking about her Thanksgiving plans and reflections thereof of times long past. Toby was sitting on the couch in the office, his feet propped on the glass and chrome coffee table, his eyes looking at nothing in particular. Perturbed that she was getting no response from her friend she had risen to her feet, automatically brushing the wrinkles from her suit and advanced toward him endeavouring to attract his attention.
"I'm sorry?" he asked, still looking distracted. C.J. sat beside him and put her hand onto his leg.
"Are you O.K.? You were some place else just then," she adjured, knowing that such distraction was not habitual.
"I was just thinking."
"A penny for them?"
"They're not worth a penny. I was just thinking about things I remember; things my parents told me once,"
"Everything's all right, though?"
"Sure," Toby rubbed a hand over his face tiredly and changed the subject, "did you not want to spend Thanksgiving with your father?"
"I couldn't get a flight to Dayton in time. I didn't want to plan too far ahead; I didn't know how long Thanksgiving would last here; when I'd get away."
"Don't you remember from last year?"
"You don't remember?" Toby shrugged and waved his hand vaguely in front of him in response to C.J.'s exasperated tones. "I was off last year with a one-oh-two point seven degree fever and other flu-like symptoms!"
"I'm sorry."
"Yeah, well, I'm the thanksgiving cruise director and I didn't think that it would be appropriate for me to be as irresponsible as you guys and check out early." C.J. felt certain that she had already had a conversation not dissimilar to this one but assumed in his distraction, Toby's memory wasn't working with the efficiency with which she had come to associate it.
"I wrote the speech,"
"With Sam." Toby shook his head, adamant in his denial.
"No, he was a hindrance rather than a help, he was too busy trying to write a book about crime fighting turkeys or pardoning pilgrims or something else I could care less about."
"Big whoop, Ziegler; I had the Jamestown-mayflower-daughters of the American Revolution," Toby grimaced but somehow managed to refrain from passing comment, correcting her abuse of America's history. Again. "don't pick at me buster. I had turkeys to save and I had the musical to direct live on national television; I had to learn the songs…"
"I knew you didn't know them!" said Josh with smug alacrity as he barrelled into C.J.'s office.
"I saved the turkeys Joshua, what more do you want from me? Thanks to me both Troy and Eric have been given a reprieve and will remain stuffing-free and happy for the rest of their days!"
"Whatever. It was amazing what happened with those immigrants, wasn't it? Though I always knew that California could breed nothing good and efficient. Nothing but show, ego and wussery comes from California. There's nothing real, no substance!" Toby smirked, even C.J. was amused.
"Josh Lyman, I resent that comment and all implications thereof, also, 'wussery' is not a word."
"Bite me Sam," said Josh as Sam Seaborn followed him into the room. Josh went and flopped onto the couch next to C.J., limbs splayed akimbo and half-sitting on the now disgruntled Press Secretary. C.J. gave him a forceful shove and tried to generate more room for herself. When the exercise failed, both Toby and Josh refusing to move, she clambered out from between them rather awkwardly and went to sit back on her desk chair, from which she fixed them both with a querulous glower. Sam went and repositioned the guest chair that was pulled up close to C.J.'s desk to the side of the room and then sat on it, straightening his jacket and trousers as he did so to prevent the inevitable creasing that would occur.
"Do you think they'll be all right, the immigrants?" asked C.J. as she leaned back in her chair, fiddling about with a small lever underneath and tipping herself back further still. She stretched her legs out in front of her and then crossed them neatly.
"It's not gonna be easy," said Toby grimly.
"Our parents did O.K., didn't they?"
"They did," Toby concurred quietly.
"Then they can too." Josh sounded so sure of himself, so confident, as if failure was not an option.
1948
"Jules," greeted Eva as her husband arrived home; she sat him down on one of the two chairs within their cold, dark tenement. The place was small with two cramped rooms, which smelt musty. It was scantily furnished and had damp on the walls; they could not afford to heat the room properly nor pay the electricity bill they had received so they had been disconnected, "you have found work today?" she asked hopefully.
"No, no there is nothing today. Try again tomorrow some places say. Other places, they tell me to go away and not to come back, they don't want immigrants like me working there, they do not trust them. They think we steal." Eva knelt on the floor in front of him and rested a hand on his arm, rubbing it soothingly. "I would not steal from them Eva, they are small minded bigots. I need to work; I must work for us to survive."
"You must work for the baby," Eva added quietly. Jules looked momentarily perplexed, then her words penetrated his melancholy.
"A baby? How long?"
"We will have our first little Ziegler in seven months."
"Well…well, this is…this is wonderful. We must start to prepare. I will find work, I will go out tomorrow with renewed determination, I will tell them our story, I will tell them of our baby; no one would have the heart to see me walk away, they could not let our baby starve." Jules Ziegler leaned forward to take his wife into his arms. For the first time since they had arrived in America they had something that made them smile; something about which they could be truly glad.
Seven months later a healthy little girl was born, she was called Hanna and was the pride and joy of her parents. During Eva's pregnancy, Jules had only been able to find casual work and so he moved from factory to factory; the work he did was mundane and monotonous, the wages were a pittance but he could not afford to turn down any job. He worked many hours a day, leaving their small apartment before first light and not returning home until hours after the sun had set. When he was home he was bone weary yet he doted on his little girl. Hanna was the spark that drove him forward; it was she who gave him something for which to live.
When Hanna started school, a small building packed with the children of immigrants from all the countries of Europe, Eva received the news that she was again pregnant. Like her pregnancy with Hanna, the carriage and delivery were easy; happy months despite the struggle to make ends meet. At the end of nine months Jules and Eva were the proud parents of a second little girl. Called Charlotte, she was a miniature version of her sister and looked exactly as her mother had done at that age. Both Lottie and Hanna got on well with one another, always holding hands; happy contented children, both bright sparks, both clever, lively and energetic. Hanna and Charlotte Ziegler both had dark curly hair, as dark as their father and mother, both had dark brown eyes, intense in their depth.
When the two girls were young the Ziegler family had a stable income. A company for which Jules had done some casual work experienced a boom and recruited extra staff, one of these was Jules. The company thrived for many months making small toys for children.
Two became three when Eva had a son. Although Jules loved his daughters, it was his son David of whom he was most proud. A man could relate to a son; he would be able to teach him things, a boy would be into the rough and tumble; his daughters he deemed as too elegant, to refined; they took after their mother.
Shortly after the birth of David, Jules Ziegler was made redundant from his job at the factory; despite making consistent losses. The company kept on skeleton staff for as long as they could muster but paying them proved too dear when forced to reduce the cost of their goods to compete with larger manufacturers. The development and growth of large companies that produced identical goods for only a minute proportion of the cost meant that smaller factories were forced to close; the company went bankrupt and could not afford severance pay. Things were very tight financially for the Zieglers, they had to scrimp and scrape and the children had to go without many things. Eva, who had until this point stopped at home to look after the children was forced to undertake work in a cloth factory, under whose employ she was for almost two years. The noxious chemicals with which she was working made her feel ill, so abrasive and deleterious were they that they abraded the skin of her hands.
At the end of July Eva was sent home from work having fainted on the factory floor; she discovered that she was once again pregnant. Unlike the other three pregnancies, this one was very difficult; she was rendered very weak, suffered from anaemia and exhaustion and felt very ill. Many times she was overwhelmed by excruciating stomach cramps and feared that she would lose her baby. In October she was forced to leave her position in the cloth factory and remain confined to bed.
After she had been forced to leave the factory, Jules was walking from factory to factory, from dock to dock to see if there was anyone who would give him a job. After a miserable day of searching and no luck he came upon two of the men who had travelled with Eva and him since the beginning of their journey, from Germany. They were standing at the edge of the dock, looking out toward the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, both smoking cigarettes.
"Jacob! Zev!" Jules cried, running over to the two men and taking each one in a warm, brotherly embrace.
"Jules, my friend, how is life treating you?" asked Jacob.
"Not so good. My wife is pregnant, she cannot work and I can find no work; that is why I am here. I came to see if any of the sea men needed a dockhand. I need work."
"Your first child?"
"No, no, the fourth."
"Fourth?" Zev asked, "my friend, you have been very busy!" Zev let out a guttural laugh, provoking a similar response from his two friends. "What are the three you have already, strapping boys like their father?"
"One boy, two girls, they are the elder. David is my son, Hanna and Lottie my two little girls."
"They're good names, Jules, proud names; names with dignity. They will do you proud, I know that for sure." Said Jacob offering Jules a cigarette.
"I should not," said the man shaking his head, "I may get a taste for it and a taste for such luxuries is a thing I cannot afford."
"Call it a celebration, my friend, we may be of some help to you and you may be of some help to us." Zev raised his eyebrows and looked toward Jacob, who nodded discreetly.
"You know where I can find work?"
"We can offer you a job if you are interested. We are going into business on our own, we need another partner. I think that you are the man."
"You have work for me?" Jules could not conceal his excitement. "My wife will be so pleased; it will make this difficult pregnancy easier for her now she does not have to worry about money."
"It's not going to be easy," Toby said again quietly, "it never is."
"I don't think these things should be too easy. There should be a challenge; that's what makes the success so sweet when you've achieved what you set out to do," said Sam.
"I notice that your family had a particularly difficult time coping with immigration, Sam." Josh intoned.
"Well your father did pretty well for himself," observed C.J.
"What about your parents, Toby, how did they cope when they came here?"
"They managed. They struggled but they managed. My parents weren't quite so fortunate as Josh's. My parents were stuck in a small New York tenement where survival was a struggle. They didn't have the education that Josh's parents did. My parents worked in factories and it was hard. My father was made redundant from his only secure factory job, after that he took on a new role, working with some people who had arrived on the boat with them." Toby recounted the things he knew about the struggle his parents had when they arrived in America. "I remember my Mom telling me about everything that she and my father went through; things she never told the others."
"You kids had trouble?" C.J. asked surprised.
"At home we were happy enough and there was," Toby cleared his throat, "love to go around. School was difficult. My brother and sisters went to school with other children from the neighbourhood; it was filled with the children of immigrants. The school they went to was full; seems I was part of the baby boom for the newly arrived generation of immigrants. I had to go to a school with real all-American kids. I was different to them; they didn't like me all that much."
"Because you were the son of an immigrant?" asked Sam.
"There was that, also the fact that I was smart and Jewish."
As he sat at his desk concentrating on his mathematics, Tobias Zachary Ziegler felt something hit the back of his head. He put his hand up to feel where the missile had hit and turned around to look for the offending object. It was a screwed up ball of paper that had come to rest on the floor by the side of his seat. The little boy looked at the bigger children round about him timidly until he caught the eye of the perpetrator. He turned away quickly, afraid of the aggression he saw there.
His attention was captured by the teacher, who was asking him to step up to the board and solve the problem. Little Toby obliged, slowly pushing his chair out from under the small table, cringing slightly at the egregious scraping noise it made. Diffidently he stepped toward the board; he could feel the eyes of the other children boring holes into him all the way there. When handed the chalk, Toby adeptly completed the problem that had been put there and returned to his seat, keeping his head down all the way. He could hear the mutterings and jeers coming from all around him, all the eyes staring at him. He retook his seat feeling all the small missiles as they hit his back and his head. Toby took it without complaint; he knew also that he would be subject to further abuse away from the safety of the classroom and the scrutiny of the teacher.
"What happened when your Dad took the new job?" asked Sam.
"He went home and told my Mom; he would come home periodically with large pay packets and when she asked where he had got them from he refused to tell her, said that she shouldn't worry; in her condition all she need do was take care of herself and relax; he had made everything come good."
"What was your father's job?"
"He didn't so much have a job title as a prisoner identification number,"
"Huh?" asked Josh.
"He was a criminal, a gangster and not a good one. He was arrested the night I was born. I've spoken to him very little since then. Mom told me that the night before I was born he came home and he was anxious about going to work the next day, she asked him why and like normal, he refused to tell her. She spent the night worrying and was forced into early labour. I was born by caesarean section late the next day, two months early. Both my Mom and I were very sick and had to spend some time in the hospital. She was still groggy from the anaesthesia when she found out that he had been arrested. I think that made us close."
"What's he done?" Eva Ziegler resignedly asked ,the two men in dark uniforms. She was so addled by the combination of the medication and the operation that when she thought about it afterwards she would not remember anything distinctive about the officers that bought her the news.
"He was involved in an armed robbery. We believe that he may have been involved in several criminal incidences in the past," said one man, "he faces imprisonment for some time."
"But we have a new son. His name is Tobias, Toby."
"I'm sorry lady but you break the law, you gotta pay, kid or no kid."
"What are we to do?"
"Not our problem, ma'am. We just felt you had a right to know." The police officers left and Eva Ziegler spent the night crying with the cot of her new son kept close to the bed.
Whilst Eva was in the hospital with newborn Toby, it was up to Hanna to keep charge in the Ziegler household. The three children sat in a small group wondering where their parents were, why their father had not returned home from work and knowing that their mother had been very sick, worrying that both her and their new sibling were dead.
"It was difficult for them then, not so much me, I was too small to remember." Josh put a hand onto Toby's shoulder and squeezed it. Toby just turned around and fixed him with a contumacious glare.
"Anyone know where the hell Toby is?" boomed Leo McGarry's voice as he marched into C.J.'s office.
"Here," said Toby raising his hand like a child who had been called on by a teacher.
"What the hell were you playing at with Josie?"
"We want school prayer Leo. We need that debate because…"
"…because of the fourth grader, so you've said."
"What's this?" asked Josh, eyebrows raised.
"Toby's gunning for a fight on school prayer," Leo told the room, "so much so that he tried to get Josie a job in a recess appointment." Josh whistled and C.J. and Sam both looked at Toby.
"It's important!"
"Why?" demanded Leo, "you tell me why."
"I already have. The federal government is meant to bring people together so that no one gets left behind not state that it's O.K. for people to be different as long as they conform to such offensive things as school prayer."
"It's not a Catholic prayer and I don't find it offensive," Leo observed.
"That's your prerogative. I do. I find it offensive that people should prescribe for me the things I should pray for and the things I believe. We encourage people to come here when we brag about all the freedoms we have to offer; they think and we do, that once they get here homogeneity takes over, that they are American citizens. We tell them that they're free; they have freedom to speak, freedom to live, freedom to worship.
"Those Chinese immigrants are gonna have to fight as hard as my parents did, who are going to have to fight as hard as all the immigrants that came before them. Because of this they're always going to be years behind, they're going to be different, their circumstances dictate no less yet we are forcing them to conform, we are forcing them to pray for things they don't believe. I think that's wrong. But above and beyond that there are other reasons why school prayer should be front and centre:
"It's not the first amendment, it's not religious freedom, it's not church and state, it's not abstract…It's the fourth grader who gets his ass kicked…'cause he sat out the voluntary prayer in home room. It's another way of making kids different from other kids when they're required by law to be there. That's why you want it front and centre. The fourth grader; that's the prize!"
Toby felt the kicks coming to his stomach, a blow to his head. He could feel his eye swelling closed and the blood flowing from the corner of his mouth, warm and sticky against his skin. The blows to his head had begun to disorientate him. He could feel areas where he knew bruises would begin to flower and he could feel the grazes that he received when they pushed him to the floor stinging. Still, he would go home to his mother who would wash his wounds with antiseptic, apply band-aids and wrap bandages; he would then cry, she would quietly comfort him and he would be back at school the next day. He would have the cuts and bruises but he would not be beaten.
When the beating had finished Toby waited on the floor till he felt sure they had gone, then he limped home.
"That's what they did to me." Toby said quietly. "I never missed a day of school, I worked hard and always handed my assignments in on time. My lifestyle was different, my home life was different; my family and its history were different. The thing we had in common was the school, the school the law prescribed I went to. As if there aren't enough challenges, differences to overcome…
"I chose to sit out the voluntary prayer; it's not something I believe in. My brother said it, my sisters, all the immigrant children I knew said it, hoping that it would make them better Americans; I couldn't. Everyone should be afforded the protection of the constitution, even the fourth-grader who sits out voluntary prayer. On a day of national thanksgiving when we celebrate the existence of the United States of America, not only should we embrace our unity, we should embrace our differences. We are a multinational super-culture, our lives are intertwined and our experiences are shaped by one another; the mix of cultures, the mix of people. It is that which makes this country truly great."
"Enough already…" said Leo, hoping Toby's diatribe had ended.
"We need to help the fourth grader Leo,"
"Would that mean we get more people like you?" asked Josh.
"Possibly," Toby replied.
"Good." Josh concluded.
FINIS