My parents never planned on staying in America permanently. Then one day they woke up and they had two kids and decided they were too old to start another adventure.
* * *
I spent a flight to Poland sitting next to a man being deported back. He had nothing with him except the clothes on his back, and most of his teeth were missing. He spoke with sweet sadness about the course his life had taken, spitting him out right back where he started. When the plane landed, he was met by police at the exit, handcuffed, and escorted away.
* * *
LOT Polish Airlines is a charmingly quaint airline. When my uncle was supposed to come visit us, the plane that was supposed to take him to New York never arrived in Warsaw because a group of men had gotten drunk and beaten up a flight attendant and the plane had to stop in Iceland so they could be arrested. Apparently LOT doesn’t have any extra planes on hand. It was probably for the best since immigration wouldn’t have let him into New York with his expired visa anyways.
* * *
Shortly after my father arrived in America, he and his friends were drinking and ran out of vodka, so they set out to buy more. They didn’t know that liquor stores were closed on Sundays in New York. Their quest ended with them in East New York, which at the time resembled a war zone. Every surface had been vandalized, and there were bonfires blazing in the street. A police officer stopped my father and his rag-tag group, and told them the only white people who come to East New York are cops and people looking to buy drugs. One of my father’s friends had majored in English, which was fortunate as the rest of them couldn’t even speak English when sober. He said something and the officer let them go. When my father started driving a cab, he refused to take passengers who asked to be taken to East New York.
* * *
Another one of my uncles has spent much of the last ten years in limbo. He lived with us a few years, working construction for people who wouldn’t check if he had papers. He has a sister living in Vancouver, and he went to go visit her. At the airport in Montreal, he was taken into custody and sent back to Poland. After spending a few months there and not being able to get a job, he went to Australia on a student visa he had somehow obtained despite being 60 years old. Again he worked for people who wouldn’t check his papers. He called my father and asked him to look for a wife for him. A green card wife goes for around $30, 000 these days. When my father hung up, he said he wouldn’t even bother looking because there was no way my uncle could save up enough money. Each of his roommates moved out of the apartment one by one. He was left with no furniture except his bed and a rent he couldn’t afford. Back to Poland he went. He tried to visit us last Christmas but at the airport he was sent back. Again. He says there’s nothing left in Poland for an old man like him.
* * *
When my mother came to the states, she worked for a decade and a half as a housekeeper. She was able to get by pretty comfortably, as many of her clients were wealthy. She cleaned for the fashion designer Elie Tahari, and she has a few dresses and pantsuits of his design he had given her. She got a job offer from Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta Jones to clean their New York apartment, but she was heavily pregnant and had to turn down the opportunity. She cleaned for one woman who lived in a townhouse on Park Avenue with her millionaire husband. She never paid on time and was always borrowing money from my mother for taxi fare.
She was able to make these connections through her friendship with an ancient Japanese woman she had met when she first arrived in New York. We called her Myoko-san. She had worked as a live-in housekeeper for Yoko Ono when she was married to John Lennon. A few months after Lennon was shot, Yoko found a new man and they fired their entire domestic staff and hired a new one. Myoko-san was left with a room full of old furniture that Lennon and Yoko Ono had given to her after they were tired of it. Today, it would’ve been worth millions. Once, Myoko-san left her house for a weekend, and while she was gone, her junkie son had sold all the furniture.
* * *
My father lost the engagement ring on the nine hour flight to New York, so my parents never got engaged. I imagine my father, slowly taking a drag off his cigarette, simply stating “Let’s get married Saturday,” and my mother saying “Okay” and going to Macy’s to buy a dress. At JFK, my father remembers being stifled by the intense heat as he went through immigration and customs. Having finally stepped onto American soil and finding my mother, he made his way to the door as quickly as possible, hoping to catch a breath of freedom. As he stepped outside, he found the August heat to be even heavier than it had been inside. As he rode to his new home, he looked out the window and thought “Shit, this place is uglier than Warsaw.”
* * *
My best friend is undocumented, also from Poland. When the Supreme Court decides to recognize same-sex marriage on a federal level, I’m going to marry her so she can get a green card.
