The cockroach in front of us is the biggest I’ve ever seen. So close to us, but it doesn’t hasten its speed, strolling the platform, clearly at home here. Growing up, I was the bravest in my household, often squashing any insect with my bare hands as my sister squealed. The little house roaches back in Belarus would run for their lives, whereas this beast is a whole other animal. Another species even. That confident stride of his. He’s a New Yorker. He belongs here more than I do. My yellow two-piece ensemble is still moist with yesterday's sweat.
We’re at the Rector Street subway stop, en route to NYANA (New York Association for New Americans). I was promised their offices are in Manhattan. Our chaperone today (in addition to my uncle, whose command of the English is not better than my own) is my uncle’s sister-in-law–Faina. A broad, tall woman with striking blue eyes. She’s another face and name in a parade of names I’ve never seen or heard of before. Her voice is deep and authoritative. She acts familiar. I presume she’d met my parents before, but if she had, it could not have been in my lifetime. My uncommon age difference from my sister makes for a family dynamic where I only have two living grandparents. Everyone in my genetic circle is significantly older than my peers’ typical experience tends to be. I have only a few cousins, and they are, on average, fifteen years my senior. I’ve missed out on a lot, so it wouldn’t be surprising if I’d missed meeting this woman too.
I’m not used to riding the subway. My childhood town was just big enough to warrant buses and trams. I’ve ridden the subway exactly once in my life in Moscow. It was roughly a year ago–we’d come to beg the American government to let us in as refugees. The fact that Moscow was big enough for the weather to be different in different parts of the city fascinated me no less than the riches of the subway stations there. All the marble, the paintings, the sculptures. None of that here. Instead, it’s peeling paint, rust, and oversized roaches. And that’s on top of the revelation that, in Brooklyn, where we start out, the subway is above ground. This contradicts everything I grew up expecting from the metro. Surely, the thing belongs underground. But we dip underneath only periodically, the views from above still not coming close to my New York fantasies. The roofs are below us, nothing towering above. Now that we’re finally underneath it all, it’s time to get out and be greeted by a cockroach the size of my palm. What I need now is to finally see what America looks like.
“When we come out of the subway, I’ll show you again, but pay attention. When you need to go to Brooklyn, the entrance will say ‘Downtown & Brooklyn,’ but if you’re going to Manhattan or have to go more north, look for ‘Uptown.’” I overhear Faina instruct my dad, none of them the wiser that a giant roach is leading us out of the station.
Like a flock of ducks, waddling up the stairs, into the light. Our bodies warming, after the frigid subway train. Today, our formation is different. The six of us are broken into two groups, my dad, my uncle, his sister-in-law ahead, and Mom, Grandma, and I behind them. The sunlight here is just as blinding as it was in Brooklyn. Once my eyes adjust and the structures around me begin to come into focus, my heart thrusts itself into my ribs. This outside sure makes up for the less-than-inspiring underground. The buildings are high, truly up to the sky, living up to the name. This, this is New York! This is what I was waiting for. I all but cry, but I don’t. I want to scream. I want to jump, to skip. I want to dance. I don’t understand why those around me don’t feel the same.I try to breathe evenly, my eyes open to capacity as we climb a red pedestrian bridge over a highway. The harbor is just to the left.
“The Statue of Liberty is there,” Faina announces, pointing to the waterfront. “Maybe you can visit soon. You have to take a ferry. It’s expensive, though.”
The houses–there aren’t houses. Everywhere I look, there are towering buildings. I was supposed to live in one of these. A studio with a view like this would not be so bad, even with the same garbage a/c. It’s a physical pull akin to a yearning that I feel taking these ladies in. I give in and do a twirl before descending the steps off the bridge on the final approach to the black high-rise housing this charity organization called NYANA.
“NYANA is heaven-sent, you’ll see. They’ll give you a test and place you in the right English-level class. They’ll set you up with all the information you need–schools, hospitals, what have you. And when you get your own apartment, they’ll bring you furniture, too!” Faina talks as fast as she walks. I want to stop, look up, and not have to watch my step as my dad had instructed me to do as a preschooler when I took a tumble down the stairs with my nose to the sky. But Faina is determined, her pace firm. “You guys have it too easy.”
The undertone of annoyance, thinly veiled bitterness to our kind, it’s not completely unjustified. All we did was get on a plane, and now we’re headed inside the offices of a place that will give us support for simply showing up. A short layover and we were here–no waiting, no limbo. The move was much more involved when it had been Faina’s family’s turn, and my uncle’s too. As soon as the subway doors had closed with us inside back on Kings Highway, she sat us down and immediately proceeded to walk us through how hard they’d had it and how easy our ride is about to be by comparison. First, I learned one had to give up much of their Soviet possessions and board a train to Austria, likely experiencing more than one emotion in a crowded train of tear-streaked faces. Once there, herds of Soviet Jews would admit that they did not want to go to Israel but would rather, instead, keep moving and beg the American government to recognize them as refugees. Israel, of course, was always an option, gladly and generously ready and willing to take any Jew seeking refuge. But the many non-Zionists among us saw their homeland as the last resort, a place to go to only if America was not in the cards. And so then they would move further west, to Italy, where they’d spend many more months applying to the American Embassy before eventually receiving the green light to fly across the ocean. There’s a tinge of nostalgia in her voice, and my uncle’s too, when the subject of “immigration” comes up. We’ll soon realize that many from these earlier immigration waves romanticize the time they lived in unheated houses in the suburbs of Rome, selling their belongings in Roman markets, and learning English. We are only three days into our immigration story and we are meant to understand our place. We are to remember that our struggles will always pale to those of refugees who’ve come before us. All we have to struggle with is jet lag, after all. Complaining will not be tolerated.
“Me too?” I ask, joining the group on the sidewalk, closer to the door. Faina is only a few feet ahead of us. I anticipate the cold blast of air to hit us once we cross the threshold.
“What do you mean?”
“Classes?” Just imagining it makes my lower stomach tingle. Taking English classes in real New York would surely prepare me for September.
“Oh, no, that’s just for adults,” Faina laughs, the others smiling for company. I’m starting to discover that I’m funnier here. Her voice booms over me, her footballer’s build not inviting questions. It’s not the buildings whose tops I cannot see that dwarf me. It’s her laughter.
