Pretending he is not a prince, Eddie
Murphy is on the bootleg VHS tape in the no brand VCR on the Soviet era barely color
sick faded TV. He is coming to America. And I sit and stare cartoon eyed in
wonder at him, standing on a winter morning New York balcony saying, ‘behold
Simi, Life! Real life, a thing that we have been denied for far too long!’ I'm
at that time 10 years old and just one day away from before I cry myself silly
flying over the ocean for 12 hours, on my way to the land of the free under the
wing of my mail ordered bride mother.
I
mostly cry myself silly like that then because I'm leaving my friends and
grandparents and I’m scared, but I feel better after a stewardess with gleaming
white refrigerator door teeth smiles at me and hands me for the first time in
my life the Sky Mall catalog and shows me the toys and trinkets that I never
could have imagined existed in any un-American world
After
that plane lands and until today, I never receive any of the things I circle in
the catalog. But I keep it until it becomes a faded and fragile thin rag of
pages. After all, there are other mountains to cross before mama and I can
reach the catalogs, before we can reach status to take out a credit card,
before I can have the Velcro shoes that light up, before we can leave the large
pale man who is supposed to be my new father, even before I figure out he is
lying about the school bus costing money.
In
school, everyone asks, why Ohio? Why did you move to Ohio? I imagine because
people here have nice grass and cars, and I don’t know how to answer, even
though I read in English better than all of the third graders, and am moved up
a grade in the first two weeks. Even then, I still have never heard of such
things as ‘walkers’ or ‘riders.’ I still think taking the school bus or getting
a ride from parents is for rich people. So I walk home from school and wonder
when we get to become ‘walkers’ or ‘riders.’ On my last time ever walking
home, a police officer picks me up and we find my house after I point out to
him the objects leading home that have already been burned into my eyes and
heart- the spinning tri color wheel garden stakes, a mailbox shaped like mail
truck, the house with their own
trampoline, and the house that once had two unattended bicycles laying in front
of it. We arrive and I learn from my stepfather that I have a very big
imagination, imagining things like the school bus costing money. This isn’t Ukraine
after all.
In
the kitchen my mother struggles to figure out how to cook anything but soup for
this man, but it takes the longest time to figure out what the paper towel
holder does, that it is a paper towel
holder, and why this new man is so upset and pointing and using his hands
making gestures like washing his face and then wiping the counters and yelling in
American.
On
the streets when U-Haul trucks pass, my ignorance privileges me to imagine that
the various pictures on the side represent the actual cargo which they carry.
Until I begin to see space men and dinosaur bones, I have no doubt that the
trucks carry cactus flowers, fresh fish, and even Native Americans
Everywhere,
I'm learning English very fast. I have to learn the word 'accent,' and figure
out why everyone says I have one. I watch the Price Is Right and Baywatch to
find an American accent of my own. I find out that the word 'island' has a
silent 'S,' that 'pop' is not only coca-cola, that the windshield factor on the
weather channel is not how cold the wind is when it hits your windshield at a
certain speed, that the cities of Lakewood, Youngstown, and Erie are not known
for their wood, young people, or strangeness.
On
one occasion, I walk up to and am impressed by a tall red soda machine. Close
enough to touch one for the first time, I find out that it doesn't dispense
free cans like in the movies, and that the pennies stuck on the oil stain
bubble-gum pavement are not even close to enough. I save them anyways, and they
come in useful just a few months later when mom, bruised and bleeding on her
cheeks and lip, drags me out of bed one night and we leave to stay with a
friend that she had made in our short time there. To my surprise, she has been
saving change as well. She has been saving only silver change though- We find a
payphone and call Ukraine. We try to hear my grandparents. The phone does not
connect that far so we hang up and spend the change on pink waffles and a
variety pack of potato chips. Sitting by the payphone in the dark, with styrofoam
cup ice on her face, Mom goes on to remind me that she finished 10 years of
University in Ukraine and that she was the head doctor at an Olympic swim team
training facility. And that I need to know that right now in Ukraine currency
can’t be trusted. Its values become low and unpredictable enough so fast and
often that people resort to scrapping steel ripped from power lines, park
fences, manholes, cars, motorcycles, TV antennas, factory equipment. That
instability of tomorrow and need for food today outweighs the logic of saving
plumbing, electricity, and transportation for the long run. Veterans and senior
citizens starve in the streets, begging for money on the piss caked metro stops
wearing their military dress uniforms, displaying war medals. None of this is
televised in any country, and she got us out the way she could. She is thin,
tall, dark featured, and smart, she put a profile into some brides magazine. It
works, and now we can eat pink waffles and any flavor of potato chips and not
worry about the dollar becoming obsolete. We have come to America, and now
we’ll be able to eat McDonalds and watch real
copies of Eddie Murphy comedies on real
American TV’s.
She
reminds me that she is a daughter of a doctor and an electrical engineer.
Children of the front lines of World War II, who grew up eating burned sugar out
of bombed out factories and stuffing their bellies with chewed up weeds and
pine needles. Children of malnourished dead baby siblings, and a one horned
sick cow that couldn't produce more than half a glass of milk a day. Survivors
who left the village and finished universities- Children of peasants who worked
on the railroad and in potato fields, whose father played the accordion and
loved to smoke tobacco and dream of the many children and grandchildren who he
could also help raise to play the accordion and smoke tobacco. Who himself was
a child of a carriage maker who during the Russian revolution starved to death
in prison for being considered part of the upper class with money, no one ever
considering they were killing honest tradesmen not business people or nobility,
leaving his wife a widow- a small dark woman with Greek ancestry who had thick
black hair down to her ankles which she brushed and put in a dark tight braid
ready for her voyage over. Like the Ukrainians to America, her too fleeing
Greece for Ukraine- for some reason, for some place to survive, and maybe
prosper.
You
know, I wake up in Manhattan this morning, and know right there in bed that at
the Buzzard’s Banquet later that night, I will talk about a dream or a memory.
But the truth is, no one ever really wants to hear about other people’s dreams.
And in the case of dreams and memories, with time, the difference between the
two tends to become unclear and indiscernible. So I get out of bed, and go
crawl freezing out the window to the balcony. Turn my head and look around to
destroy the hazy dreams. It is now quiet, and the city glows far to downtown. The
U-Haul trucks, and paper towels, and soda machines, and pink waffles are now 18
years behind me. My accent is gone and somewhere in me, my mother’s bruises and
fat lip are gone and faded. It’s a goddamn winter morning in New York. With no
one about but the wind chill factor, I look around and say, 'good morning my
neighbors!' And when the world stays immovably cold and absolutely still, I
reply, 'Yes! Yes! Fuck, you, too!'
