Halfway Heaven: A Personal Odyssey

By Kristina Hagstrom | Tuesday, November 10, 1998

On May 28, 1995 Sinedu Tadesse, an Ethiopian student at Harvard, murdered her roommate Trang Ho. Sinedu stabbed Trang forty-five times in the arms, neck and chest, and then proceeded to hang herself with a noose that she had prepared in advance. Trang was asleep in her bed, unable to defend herself.

The crime was widely publicized. The New Yorker magazine commissioned Melanie Thernstrom to write an article about it. Thernstrom had met Sinedu once; Sinedu had applied to take a creative writing course Thernstrom taught at Harvard, but been rejected. Thernstrom's article eventually became a book.

Halfway Heaven is selling — I got the last copy at the bookstore. Is it the 'juicy story' that Sinedu promised The Harvard Crimson in an anonymous note with a picture of herself that is attracting readers? Or is it Harvard itself that sparks people's curiosity?

I know why the book attracted me: I graduated from the International Community School of Addis Ababa a year after Sinedu. We took French together but mostly knew each other the way you do when your high school has fewer than 150 people in all. I remember asking her what she was doing after graduation. She wasn't very outgoing and I had never felt very comfortable with her, so I asked mostly to make conversation. Her response was stiff and proud: 'You haven't heard? I got a full scholarship to Harvard' — as if I should have kept track. This was my only real conversation with her, and it is sad to think about now. I probably didn't realize what getting into Harvard meant for Sinedu.
Sinedu probably didn't fully understand what going to Harvard would mean either.

I would like to say that I am not trying to present an 'insider story;' simply, I felt that Thernstrom's book affected me personally.

My three years in Ethiopia were, for many reasons, the most difficult but also the most important years of my life. I think that those who lived there with me when the civil war culminated and the military regime was overthrown remember that experience as a sharp, tangible 'thing,' separate from most other things in our lives. I feel it is separate, even though Ethiopia was the only home I had then. I have not been back for five years, and I have lost touch with almost everyone I knew. I have felt the need to separate myself from it, precisely because it was such a difficult experience.

Halfway Heaven was a jolt. Realizing that no one in America really knew Sinedu, Thernstrom decided to go to Ethiopia. And this part of the book coincides with my experience: she talks to my teachers and quotes recommendation letters teachers wrote for Sinedu that sound like recommendations written for me (I think one may have been done by the same teacher). She meets with a very close friend of mine from high school at the restaurant where I spent every Sunday for three years. I don't know if this sounds like it should feel as odd as it does. I somehow thought that experience was mine.

It is a chapter of my life to which I haven't returned, and here someone else is returning to it, making it public, because another person who figured in that chapter has committed murder. It does feel odd.

This book is not about me, of course, but about two young women whose paths crossed in a tragic way after Sinedu left my picture. Sinedu's relatives believe that America did 'it' to her. In America, people believe 'it' started in Ethiopia. My former English teacher, Maura McMillin, believes 'it must have been a betrayal by her friend, that friend... must have meant a great deal to her.'

For the fact is that Sinedu was a model student, the valedictorian of her class, an intelligent girl with a bright future. It is hard to imagine her committing this crime, she was so small and quiet. I confess that the indifferent adjectives Harvard students used to describe her ('nice,' 'unattractive,' 'mousy' Ò generally no superlatives) fit my memory of her.

Ms. McMillin recalls Sinedu as 'one of those little academic machines' who never sought friends or tended to her personal happiness. Other members of the faculty agree. Generally she was seen as driven, meticulous, reserved. Yet her yearbook page (we all got our own) is covered with statements such as 'friendship is life's most precious treasure.' It seems that friends were what Sinedu sought most, and lacked most. She developed an obsession for Trang, professing to make her 'the Queen of my life.' When their friendship dissolved, Sinedu could not take it. And Trang had to pay the price.

We are left with questions about the reasons for this tragedy, about the
possibility of preventing it, about Harvard's responsibility.

In her first chapter Thernstrom wonders about the story Sinedu wanted to tell through creative writing class. Halfway Heaven is perhaps an attempt to tell Sinedu's story.

II.

I call Melanie Thernstrom. I have no idea what to say to her, don't know what I want to ask anymore, and I end up doing most of the talking myself.
Thernstrom believes Sinedu wanted to be known: she staged a 'spectacular death' for herself and left her journals, written in English, where the police would find them. She wanted someone to find her story and tell it. I find Thernstrom's book very personal, as much a story about herself as about Trang and Sinedu. She is a little surprised, she considers this to be her most journalistic work so far. She feels this is the only way to tell it.

I agree with her — the urgency of the book lies in its personal tone of voice. I explain that I sometimes had trouble remembering the magnitude of Sinedu's crime while reading, as if I almost lost sight of Trang while gaining insight into Sinedu's torturous situation. Thernstrom says that while reading Sinedu's journals, she felt compassion for her. However the gravity of the murder was never lost; she spent time with Trang's family and that 'evened it out.' Thernstrom attended Trang's funeral, and the book is dedicated to Trang's best friend, who was sleeping next to Trang when she was murdered.

There is a general sense that Trang and Sinedu both were victims. Mental illness drove Sinedu to end two lives, one her own, and the tragedy was as great for Sinedu's family as for Trang's. Sinedu's father had a heart attack. The family would not believe that Sinedu was guilty; they believed she had been framed. Thernstrom felt uncomfortable about approaching Sinedu's family in Ethiopia, but telling Sinedu's story was more important to her than her own discomfort. 'It is horrible to feel you are adding to people's pain,' she says, but she feels the situation was so awful that her presence couldn't have made much difference. The trip to Ethiopia was difficult, but it was also an 'amazing experience' and she could not have written the book without it.

III.

We discuss the myth of Harvard; the title of the book after all refers to the status Harvard holds for many students. For both Sinedu and Trang, a refugee from Vietnam, Harvard was the key to the future. Thernstrom believes that this myth was harmful for Sinedu Ò her expectations were so high, yet she couldn't find a place at Harvard. She was very lonely and her academic results were poor. Sinedu did seek help, but was not taken seriously. After the murder, Harvard tried to silence the case.

Harvard has a central role in Thernstrom's life: both her parents are Harvard professors, and her whole family was educated there. She explains that it was only when she started researching the case that she realized Harvard was misleading people about its role.

The administration put pressure on her to stop her investigation, but she felt an obligation to tell the story. She did feel personally disillusioned, but tried to reconcile this Harvard with the one she knew. After all, her own experience there had been good. Halfway Heaven attempts to dissipate several myths. I explain to Thernstrom that I feel this case has been shrouded in mystery, as if Sinedu were some dark, sinister person, and therefore intriguing. I can believe that Sinedu was desperate, but I cannot believe that she was evil.

Thernstrom agrees that evil may play a part in the act of murder, but that there is nothing intrinsically evil about a person. People do have a tendency to mythologize, but the 'evil' in this case is a matter of mental illness. Mentally ill people can at worst be driven to do things that are larger than themselves and what they can understand, things that create, as Thernstrom puts it, 'wounds in the universe.' It is sad to think that Sinedu had to stab a wound in the universe to get what she wanted Ò a friend eternally linked to her, a chance to be seen.

Halfway Heaven: A Personal Odyssey

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