The Newly Dead

It’s 1:13 a.m. on a Monday night when Bob sends me a pro bono assignment, and I am too dead inside to spare an ounce of compassion. I am being appointed counsel to Arles Ortega and Christina Lima Ortega and their daughter Anabel who are seeking asylum from Ecuador. Another thankless task—Ecuadorians are almost always denied asylum—all they can ever prove is vague government persecution, but it’s impossible to put meat on the bones and show personal stakes.

I’m still in my office on the 32nd floor of Lexington Avenue. For the past five hours, I have been filing creditor claims in the Revlon Bankruptcy for our corporate clients to whom Revlon owes massive amounts of money. And I’m not nearly done. 

A second e-mail from Bob pops up: “I expect you to come through on this one, not like last time. Remember, part of our job is to keep up appearances and be seen as philanthropic—we can market off of delivering the American Dream—our CEO clients could give two shits about the old college try.”

As I shift focus and continue to check e-mails, I stumble on an e-mail from my brother Robert which says: “Annie, can you please write back this time? I know we’ve been out of touch for years. But it’s about Ruth—about mom. It’s important.” I can never finish anything before three more things are forced on me—and everyone wants something from me. I have reached a point where I am at capacity and don’t even have the bandwidth or energy for this. Good news always comes in threes, that’s what Ruth used to say—so I can’t wait to see what comes next.

My law firm, Dickens, Woolf & Poe, PC is only a few blocks down from the Roosevelt Hotel where the asylum seekers have been gathering throughout the July heatwave, sleeping outside on the dirty streets by Grand Central Terminal waiting for a room. The city reopened the shuttered hotel. Renamed it the “new Ellis Island.” All eighteen floors are now being used to house migrants. 

I decide to walk by the Roosevelt Hotel on my way to get a drink at Sally’s. As I hit the streets, there is the familiar rumble of tires, the hum of traffic, and the kick of an occasional muffled exhaust. The streets smell of an odd mix of detergent from the vent fumes, skunky drafts of weed, roasted nuts from street carts, and the wet mildewing stench of still-steaming coffee grinds creeping out of partially opened garbage bags piled outside of restaurants. There is also the warm hug of a summer breeze. The constant honking of horns to which I am familiarity deaf, like a fire alarm beep that you have subconsciously muted until someone brings it up. I’ve muted out a lot of things that are meant to warn me before I am consumed in smoke and flame, I suppose.

The electric friction of the concrete—hard and tangible—anchors me in the thrall of the streetwalkers. There is a hypnotic effect to the sound of the click of my Christian Louboutin black leather pumps which I reflexively keep on a steady beat, with a sassy clomp, clomp, clomp, and an occasional snare—click—as I pass by slow walkers—because mommy needs a drink. 

“Bienvenidos al arrival center!” a sign reads, and another right next to it says, “We are currently at capacity.” I know that unnerving lost feeling of taking a last-minute late-night flight and arriving in a strange town where all the hotels are booked—and driving bleary-eyed from one hotel reception to the next before finally finding a room at a fleabag motel offering hour rentals. This is even worse. These people have traversed jungles and continents to land here, to a reception of indifferent concrete.

There are new smells of urine and body odor. There is a restless rustling and scraping of clothes as people try to get comfortable on the cold hard pavement. Kids groan and grumble to their parents with shrill yelps. They are stretched out between 45th Street and 46th Street, maybe two hundred or three hundred families, restless and sweaty in the humid, damp squalor that has followed them. They are all huddled between the exterior of the famous hotel and a set of metal barricades, imprisoned between worlds. 

I walk past the intersection and duck into Sally’s, the midtown dive bar par excellence. Now, I really need a drink.

* * *

Sally’s smells like teen sex in the back of a Ford Focus with too much perfume, too many breath mints, and a double shot of Little Trees New Car Scent. And cinnamon Fireball. And there is a homey hint of sudsy keg beer lathering in the drip tray below the taps. An anxious DJ with a laptop—DJ-Push-Play—is in the back playing “Don’t You Worry Child” by Swedish House Mafia.

Jamie comes to the bar and pours me a tall glass of Macallan on the rocks. “What’s up single malt,” she asks, flicking her head and tossing her straight-ironed bleach-blonde hair over her shoulder, revealing a scoop neck tank top that says, “Tequila is my spirit animal.” Much as I love her, she’s only in her late 20’s and I envy her youth more than she could ever envy my money.

“Pondering lipstick,” I tell her, pulling out a case of Tom Ford Scarlet Rouge and applying it to my lips. Then I look up and say, “Revlon bankruptcy… channeling my inner Charles Revson… I feel like fighting the entire world armed only with lipstick and nail polish.”.

“Ha. Good choice of weapons. They are up for the job. Trust me,” Jamie says, shooting a gunmetal glance at some doe-eyed young pup NYU student at the far end of the bar, and running her fingers through her hair to pull it behind her ear, simultaneously exposing her neck.

“’Lipstick is made in the factory; ‘hope’ is sold in the store,’ was the famous Charles Revson line,” I tell her.

“I like that,” she says.

“For families, I think it’s the other way around,” I say, “It’s the home that crushes the hope out of you. And ‘lipstick’ here means sweeping all of your financial problems under the rug.”

“So, we’re back to Ruth, huh. What do you think of this squirt at the end of the bar? Kind of cute right?” Jamie asks.

“You think any guy that makes googly eyes at you is cute—which is all of them. Not very discriminating, if you ask me,” I say.

“Ehhh. So, what is the Ruth emergency? She call you for money again?” she asks.

“No. I got a text. From my brother,” I say, and shoot the whiskey down in a single gulp.

Jamie grabs the bottle and says, “Careful single malt.”

“It is kind of ironic that a misogynist prick like Charles Revson started Revlon. That he empowered generations of young women,” I say.

“Ehhh, it checks out. It’s not what they give you, it’s what you do with it,” Jamie says.

“You know, my mother always said, ‘Women fall in love with what they hear. Men fall in love with what they see. That’s why women wear makeup and men lie.’”

“Oh, you’re going to do great on the speed dating scene,” Jamie teases, and then says, “Here’s one for the road. See you same time tomorrow?”

“You can count on it,” I say, “But I may need you tomorrow morning for something… text you the details.”

“Last call,” Jamie screams and then jumps up on the bar—Coyote Ugly style—and takes the $100 bill I gave her and sticks it to the ceiling. They have walls of foreign bills and a ceiling full of American bills to boot. The whole purpose of this place seems to be to make their profits into wallpaper, with the exotic foreign currency covering the walls, and the boring local tender looking down from above.

As I walk out, I see Jamie flicking on the lights and chatting up Bobby Boucher at the end of the bar.

* * *

The hotel room where Arles and Christina Lima Ortega are staying has red walls and smells of stale cigarette smoke and carpet lint. I’ve convinced Jamie to come with me because she speaks fluent Spanish, and she is acting as a translator.

When the gangs killed presidential hopeful Fernando Villavicencio in Quinto in broad daylight last month, that sealed it. It was like killing Kennedy. It killed all hope. Christina tells me that during the election, polling places had signs that said, “El voto es secreto.” But no one believed it. The gangs knew everything and ruled everyone. Villavicencio was a former journalist and writer who vowed to free the country from the grip of organized crime. So much for that romantic idea. When they shot him eight times as he left a rally, it was like the gangs were saying, “Bullets triumph over words.”

“Why are you afraid to return to Ecuador, Christina? Have you been harmed or threatened to be harmed in the future,” I ask.

“We live in Quinto,” she says, shrugging, “It is a jungle.”

“But specific harm Ms. Ortega—a beating—being detained—threatened with treason—held at gunpoint—accused of being part of Villavicencio’s regime—anything like that?”

“Of course, of course. You want me to make something up. Everyone has been threatened. Not just us,” she says.

“Please, Ms. Ortega, I need details for the papers,” I say. 

“Things are as likely to turn around in Quinto as Villavicencio is to rise from the dead,” she says, shaking her head, “I won’t take my baby back there. Deport me then. I will find someplace else.”

 “Maybe Villavincenzo [Vincencio] can be a spiritual rallying cry for the people, after all—like Jesus coming back in spirit.” 

“Oh no, letrada, you are wrong, ledtrada de oficio, you make mistake,” she says.

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“Have you ever seen a spirit eat fish?” she says. 

The problem here is that general corruption and gang violence aren’t enough to make a case for asylum, and Ms. Ortega’s specific threats are vague at best.

“Returning to your application, we are going to have to demonstrate ‘credible fear,’ of an identifiable harm upon return…” I say. I watch Jamie translate and Christina gives me a confused look.

“They shot Villavicencio eight times!,” Christina says.

“But they didn’t shoot at you. We have to show a significant risk they’d persecute or torture you and your family,” I say.

“I am supposed to just wait for that to happen,” she says, adding, “What kind of mother do you take me for?”

“No, of course not,” I say, “It’s just the procedure.”

“Sólo el procedimiento? Sólo el procedimiento! Tengo mas miedo de vivir en Ecuador que de cruzar el Darién,” she says, and I look at Jamie as she scrambles to translate.

Jamie flicks the blonde hair out of her face and blows on it saying, “She’s saying she has more fear of going back to Ecuador than she did crossing the Darien Gap—how can I describe this—I’ve seen it on YouTube—it’s like a trek—like if you tried climbing Everest—but it's through this rain forest jungle with mud and quicksand, tree roots, snakes, poisonous bugs, shoulder-high river crossings, treacherous mountains, roadside machete bandits—lots of them die.”

“I see,” I say, and nod to Christina.

“We were almost out of the jungle and came across a human skeleton,” she says, “A little one, a child’s skeleton. The bones were yellow, which means newly dead. The bones do that when they are newly dead. They still pull in nutrients because they don’t know the body is dead yet.” And she looks over at Anabel, the infant sitting on her father’s lap, playing with a gray elephant plush toy that he keeps pulling away to peals of laughter.

“That’s horrifying,” I say.

“Ñawparirka,” she says, and Jamie can’t translate this one, so Christina helps out, apparently knowing more English than she lets on. “One who went ahead,” she says.

“Oh, so you’re saying, don’t be sad for the dead—they’ve gone ahead?” I ask.

“Dead long time. Troubles here are short. The saddest thing is not to live when alive. Or not to go on when dead. The saddest thing is the newly dead, the bones still holding on to life,” she says.

“Like all those people outside, waiting for a room?” I ask, and then ask a second question, “But what is the threat to you if you return?”

“Ms. Meyer, you won’t let them send us back?” she asks.

“Ms. Ortega, I will do what I can, but it isn’t really up to me—”

“—No, don’t do what can; do what it takes,” she says.

“But Ms. Ortega, I’m not the Judge—there’s one rule for everyone,” I say.

“Are we newly dead over here, and don’t know it?” Christina asks.

I’ve been down this road before and know that almost all of the Ecuadorians are turned away and denied asylum. 

But somehow, I’ve got to come through for Christina. I’ve got to show that they are likely to be persecuted if they return, and probably do so with next to no documents and a case as thin as a single sheet of paper.

* * *

I walk out into the din of the city streets during the morning rush. Jamie pulls out a Newport cigarette and the smell of menthol and Chanel No. 5 covers the rusting of the summer sun on a jungle of steel and glass.

A Jamaican man with hazel eyes and long dreadlocks is out on the corner by the Roosevelt Hotel across from the migrants, and he has a group of plastic drummers providing accompaniment. He strums his guitar and the streets ring with a voice like an angel appealing to the damned.

The busker finishes up his rendition of “Take on Me” strumming and saying, “You're all the things I've got to remember / You're shyin' away / I'll be comin' for you anyway / Take on me

(Take on me)…”

I think of how Ruth put her life savings into a Merle Norman Cosmetics franchise after my father left, and those first hopeful days setting up the displays at the Cherry Hill Mall, outside of Philadelphia. She had signed a ten-year lease. Gone into severe debt for the build-out. Bought a package of initial inventory from Merle Norman that she couldn’t afford. Set up point-of-sale systems and with great care organized her display cases. It was astonishing how quickly after that she had a bankruptcy discharge, and a sheriff was at our door asking us to leave.

The busker immediately breaks into “I Ran (So Far Away),” by Flock of Seagulls, singing, “Reached out a hand to touch your face / You're slowly disappearing from my view / Reached out a hand to try again / And I ran, I ran so far away / I just ran, I ran all night and day / I just ran, I couldn't get away.”

As melodramatic and offbeat as the tune is, it stirs something in me. It reminds me of that feeling, that shame, and the way that simple man in cheap polyester, smelling of fast food and human detritus could strike mortal fear in you with only a badge and a piece of paper.

I need to find proof of a credible threat from a supposed authority figure—or invent one. But there’s somewhere I have to go first.

* * *

The hospital rooms at Mt. Sinai are yellow. The smell of antiseptic reminds me of nail polish and the faint smell of talcum powder in the air makes me think of concealer.

Ruth has her permed hair perfectly arranged, as she sits up watching Fran Drescher in The Nanny. I look in from the hallway. I heard that she is selling Mary Kay Cosmetics now. Even from here, I can tell that she is wearing Chanel 31 Le Rouge L'Esprit Cambon out of its crystal glass case, her lipstick du jour. She’ll be wearing this stuff when she is buried no doubt.

I walk over to her and say, “Momma, it’s me.”

“Oh Annie, are you wearing M.A.C. Angel? It looks like frosting, dear,” Ruth says.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” I ask.

“I didn’t want to bother you, honey, with all the stress you have,” Ruth says.

“But, mother, you’re dying,” I say.

“Oh, I’ve been dying a long time now. Not much you’re going to do about that,” Ruth says.

“Mother, I can’t believe you were just going to sit here and die, watching old reruns of The Nanny and never even say anything,” I say.

“You haven’t said anything to me in a long time now,” Ruth says.

“Mother, I know, I’ve been trying to set things right… for myself… but I’m lost,” I say.

“It’s ok dear, we all are. Lost. Somewhere between life and death. Between hope and despair. Unsure if we are still here or if we are just ghosts hanging onto a dream that died a long time ago.”

“But Mom, you’re leaving us,” I say.

“I’m so proud of you,” she says, looking at me every bit the same as Christina Ortega looked at Anabel.

And as I take her wrinkled hand in mine and turn off the television, her bones pull back some of the old magic from when the things that mattered to us were still alive.

* * *