Story of an Arrival

Your faces tell of forgotten things.

You stare out, your large, hungry eyes hollow from your crossing, from bad food, illness, and your ill-shapen clothing threadbare and stained from overwearing.

One of you, dark hair peeking out from under the edges of a head scarf, you hold a tiny, sleeping infant as tenderly as if she were a sack of seedling potatoes. The babe is so new, so ethereal and small she looks premature, her early delivery brought on by your terrible seasickness, one that made it impossible for you to hold anything down, especially in the cramped communal hold that always reeked of vomit and shit. Your exhausted face is very young, no more than adolescent, but ancient as well, as if you’ve seen and felt and been longer than a person should. Such suffering and woe in the world.

And you, the man who stands alongside. Your gaunt face shadowed and too stern under your round cloth cap as you hold the hand of the serious toddler beside you. Your bony wrists and prominent Adam’s apple speak of a long hunger, habitual hunger, constant and gnawing. You, too, seem as old as the oceans. And yet. A gleam in your eye, a fierceness says this journey was your idea (for a better life, dear wife!), your dream, your ambition. You want…more.

Behind you, behind the rails of the ship’s prow, rising from the water like a conquering copper goddess, towers Liberty, her strong classical Roman visage calm, powerful, full of promises, her face looking to the glass and stone canyons that curtain Manhattan Island. The promised land!

Your faces stare out. Fearful. Hopeful. As if what awaits you, a carved-out corner of a cousin’s tiny, noisy tenement dwelling must be, has to be, more than what it seems. Is only temporary. Your faces plead, saying this is America after all, the New World, the land of the free, land for the taking, where having nothing means nothing, and given enough time and enough hard work, and yes, sacrifice (sadly, the baby will not survive the coming typhus epidemic), you know you can succeed. You have skills. You are a tailor, and you, a seamstress, and if all else fails you can work in a garment factory. In a few years, the toddler will be old enough to contribute to the family, and though he will lose two fingers working a machine notorious for maiming the small, nimble bodies of the children who scramble around and under it, the money he brings in will add to what you need to open your own tailor shop in the growing garment district.

Your aching want spills out. It flows and swirls, deep and eddying around you like the waters of the Atlantic behind you. So many like you here, so many more to come. And Liberty watches you all, eyes calm, maternal, protective. You are my children, she seems to say. Welcome home.

Only, what you will find in the New York City of 1890 is not a welcome. Not peace. Not plenty. The streets are slick with animal carcasses and manure and human excrement, fresh water hard to come by, fresh food harder. You, the newest wave of immigrants, fresh from the boat, worthy only of derision, of slavish work that will whittle and grind your bones into nothing because there are plenty more like you.

And yet.

There is something here that you didn’t or couldn’t have before. A chance. A glimmer of a sliver of a chance to make that better life you crave. Because, while all you heard about streets of gold and land for the taking is a fairy tale (yes, there is land out West, already secured from the native people through mass killing and government decree, if you can survive the journey getting there, and the harsh winters before you bring in a crop that will sustain you), this country will eventually be a place where being a new immigrant won’t matter. A place where opportunity and safety for the waves that come after you can be found. That is, until it isn’t.

But that is not your concern, you four from the old country, as you enter the harbour, standing there stiffly with all your hopes and dreams and fears written on your faces and in your postures and your bodies before this symbol of a democratic ideal. You who are this new country’s greatest strength, until it begins to believe otherwise, and slowly, slowly perishes because of that belief.

Someday, after you two beleaguered parents have survived a few years in that gritty, constantly growing city you are inching towards, you might shake your heads ruefully about what you gave up to come here, the warm family hearth and fresh air, the wholesome if meagre food from the farm. What did you gain finally? A country so stingy that you still barely eke out enough for a small dingy room full of coal-choked air, for the near rotten vegetables and rancid meat you make into watery stew. A place where children from older immigrant groups bloody the nose of your surviving child just for being slightly different. Why, why did you think you’d be better off?

But you, little toddler, once you live long enough, survive those mean streets and hungry factory machines, you will make a better life. You will become an electrician, earn enough to leave New York and settle in Chicago (or Minneapolis). You will have children who grow, then have their own children. And so on. And somewhere along your line, your progeny will lose the connection to you and your hungry-eyed parents on your boat headed for more. Your progeny, who will be so much better off than your parents could have ever dreamed, will believe they are the only ones who deserve this country, their country. They will darken Liberty’s beacon, her promise. They will forget. They will turn away and hunt anyone too new.

And that will be the beginning of the end of your dream.