Crossing Flatbush Avenue: Overstay

I interviewed one of my dearest friends who preferred to remain anonymous. He moved to the States with his family when he was thirteen years old.

I’m from Guyana. I’ve been here since November 2002.

I lived in the rural part of Guyana, as opposed to the city which is more westernized or Americanized. My village didn’t have a lot of residential houses. It just had a lot of empty land and an army base, which was very cool because I was friends with the army guys and I was able to play with their AK47s …they were called GDF. And I got to sit in their boats.

The army base was there to, like, in case there was contraband ships from Suriname or Venezuela in the Corytine River or in the Atlantic Ocean in the area, the GDF… they would get on their jeeps and tow their speedboats to the water and once in a while you would see these really cool speedboat chases in the beach, you know. But my Village was pretty cool.

I lived, like, off the beach and you could have a hammock between two coconut trees and you could wake up and walk out of your hammock and there would be grains of sand between your toe…very white sand—sometimes brown sand and seashells—but they’d have a lot of watermelon vines because watermelon vines would grow around the coconut trees. There was also some squash trees –go figure--but the watermelon trees were awesome—not trees, they’re vines—they just grew wild…maybe at some point they were planted there, but it was just the perfect soil for watermelons.

And the really good watermelons—contrary to American watermelons—a really tasty, really succulent watermelon, has a very sandy taste to it. Like a very grainy, sandy, feeling to it…because it grows on sand…

The beach wasn’t blue water…it was brown water…not like a dirty brown but at the bottom of the beach were sediments or like, lots of sand sediments, it was not like a very solid bottom, just very sandy…so the water would appear like a brown…like my complexion…exactly like my complexion…you could see through it at some points…

It was a predominantly Hindu area so every Sunday morning you’d see people with Hibiscus flowers which are these red almost rose-looking flowers…it’s a very beautiful flower and almost everyone had one in their yard…

and on Sunday mornings the Hindus—my family was Hindu also—they would pick like three flowers each and go to the beach and… kneel at the end of the water where the waves would lap up to the shore. They would kneel at the end of the water, stare into the ocean, close their eyes bow their heads and pray…and when they were done praying—their hands were clasped around the flowers, by the way—they would put their hands down into the water, let the flower go. For some odd reason, the flowers would go in the opposite direction the waves were pushing them, so they’d go out into the river, or Ocean…it was reminiscent of what Indians do near the Ganges…so we kneeled before the Corentyne River and we’d pray and we let the flowers go.

The only other country I really heard stories of was America….and everyone wanted to go to America…where I come from, they would just say “’merica”.

Everyone was rich in ‘merica. Everyone had everything they wanted. Everyone had cookies and Cadbury chocolate and teddy bears and blue jeans….and everyone had sneakers…and lots of cookies in ‘merica. It was what every kid knew: if you want Cadbury chocolate, you go to ‘merica. Or you’d wait for someone to come from ‘merica and they’d give you Cadbury chocolate—you know those ones in the blue wrapper, shiny. Yeah, Cadbury milk chocolate…

When someone told me about ‘merica I couldn’t fathom it as being a real place…it was no different than a dream…there was no ‘merica in my head for real…I never managed to conceptualize where that place was from…

My mom would be like “Your uncle come from ‘merica today. Abi go see dem.” And when I would go they would give me like 5 US dollars…a lot of Cadbury chocolate…and they’d give me clothes…

My father was a very brilliant man, he was a college professor, a headmaster and, sort of like in England, he was a minister of education…a junior minister of education…there are poor ppl…there are very very few rich ppl who live a life far beyond what any other person was capable of, and then there’s my father who’s sort of in the middle…like we never had to go days or weeks without eating…or living miserably but we weren’t, like, millionaires either.

My dad came to America first. When he came back he brought some Twizzlers or other assortment of candies. Then my mom went and when she came back she brought back a Monopoly….so basically I thought America was the land of candy and games…

Then I went to boarding school for two years and I put it behind me.

My boarding school was the most wonderful institution ever. Impoverished but effective. It was called the school of excellence.

“We can. We must. We will.”

That was their credo…It’s sort of evocative of this very strong sentiment of a people fighting for survival, of a people who must overcome some sort of oppression or overcome some sort of an obstacle…

This was a school for geniuses, mind you. I’m no genius but this was a school for geniuses. The IQ in this school was greater than American debt. And that’s saying something. The problem is…these kids could be Einsteins and they would never amount to anything, not because they’re incapable of it, but just because there is no opportunity. But the boarding school itself, it fostered discipline, it nurtured a very positive social upbringing…

'tolerated' was not a word we would talk about; we just loved each other.

Like, the Muslims, the Hindus, the Christians, you know, we all had mutual respect for each other…the country has a high rate of segregation, violence, but the boarding school itself, it was like the epitome of an institution of understanding…that breeds love…and excellence.

I expected to come to America and have a great job…I wanted a Lexus Jeep…and I wanted to see Usher…I wanted to come to America, buy a Lexus, drive it over to Usher’s house and say ‘Hi!’ …I thought it was that easy. I thought I would…show the American kids what I had…not arrogance, it’s just that I was eager to prove myself in America…I was eager to be someone great. So, basically, my expectations were: I’d come to America, I’d get a great Lexus—Jeep—I’d drive over, make Usher sing, “You Got It Bad” for me, call my friend, Taslema…and tell her I met Usher and then brag about it…I thought I’d have all the candy and toys I wanted. I thought I’d go to High School and I’d meet the jock and I’d meet the blonde cheerleader…

They put me in Special Ed. because my report card from Guyana said I had a 73 average. What they didn’t realize was my 73 in Guyana equals to, like, 125 in America…so in two weeks they put me in the Honors class.

I remember something very cool; when I came over here, in our History class, we played American History Jeopardy…the first question I answered was 'where did the Transcontinental Railroad meet?' It was Promontory Point and no one else knew that…I felt so proud that it was my first week in school and I already won the American History Jeopardy. It was very cool…

While everyone already took the examinations to place them in proper High Schools, I missed that exam and I didn’t even get accepted to my zoned school. My zoned school wait-listed me….but my middle school principal knew the principal of Transit Tech so I just went to Transit Tech…from where I came from, this was not a good school at all. I was Valedictorian easy. I’m not bragging; it was just very easy. I did all my work but considering how hard I worked, it was very little.

Guyana is the only English-speaking country in South America. It’s sort of what some would call broken English, though some might find that offensive, …you have…some cacophony of words or concoction of…basic words of so many languages…it’s very obscure, what it is, but I’m only speaking of the Indo-Guyanese population of Guyana, I don’t know what the African population speak like. It’s very similar but some of the words may obviously be different, have more African roots, like for the Indo Guyanese population the words have more Indian roots…

Actually, I went to a school where they taught you English. You take any other person from Guyana…fresh off the boat… you probably wouldn’t be able to understand them.

I’m still Guyanese…I once had this girlfriend in High School; she was American. Whatever values I had, whatever standards I upheld, whatever expectations I had from people or from cultures, whatever things I kept from a place long gone…being with her…I guess it wasn’t her fault, it’s just that being with an American, being that close to an American girlfriend, it turned everything upside down…or it just threw them out the window…it wasn’t a very subtle transition; it was violent, almost…it was a violent realization…sort of what I would call the most violent episode of culture shock. Maybe I’m exaggerating, but I think so. I was being with an American woman. I’m not criticizing her…it was my moment of culture shock…dating the American woman….

To be quite frank about it, she already had sexual partners. I was seventeen, she was sixteen. But she already had a sexual partner and that was like, ‘whoa!’ I’m like, ‘really?’…it’s not something I’m used to. I realized that if I’m gonna have an American relationship, I’d seriously need to get over what some people would call- - inhibitions. I realized that… a great number of the things I value would be rendered quite ridiculous in this environment…

it’s not a very good feeling to know that all those things that you held to be beautiful principles, beautiful standards, to be violently overthrown…

I realize it has no place in this world. Maybe it has no place in Guyana anymore, I don’t know. It feels like the very essence of your being…all your dreams…all these very basic, very fundamental things that you valued and dreamt about and imagined…things that have driven your imagination, the things that have driven your love and affection, the things that have constituted every…romantic feeling you ever had or every chivalric feeling you ever had…to have the majority of these things called ridiculous, or thrown out, or be ignored or considered out of place, you know, it feels…

it feels like you no longer exist, like not only have you left a life behind, but you’ve died.

And here you are being reborn again and you have to fit a certain standard. You have to be something very stylized…there’s already a precedent you have to match. There’s a precedent for the American male…the American male has to be a particular something…he has to have a very particular set of standards…you’re not free to imagine your perfect woman, you’re not free to look at your woman and think of princesses and fair maidens and forever anymore. It’s just not there anymore. I mean, that’s how it feels. Practically speaking? Reasonably speaking? Maybe they’re not wrong. Maybe it’s just not the place for it anymore. Maybe I am ridiculous. I don’t know.

Until a few years ago I didn’t know I wasn’t a U.S. citizen…all my friends were working and I’m at home and I’m like, ‘Ma, I wanna get a job.’ And she’s like, ‘No. You can’t get a job.’ And I’m like ‘Why?’ She’s like, ‘Don’t worry about it.’ Eventually I found out I needed a Social Security Number to get a job. Like who knew, right? Who knew I needed a number to be somebody?…I thought only old people needed it to get some sort of benefits. Am I wrong? Isn’t that what it was meant for? …I was heartbroken…

As time went on, my friends went to work for the MTA as part of the course requirement and I was stuck fixing old computers at school, and my girlfriend was working at some cancer institute in Manhattan making like $600 a week just filing stuff. I was stuck at school fixing old Dell computers…blowing dust from between the keyboard keys, and then I was heartbroken. And then I realized that this was gonna be much harder than I ever thought. I was seventeen.

Brooklyn College is very, very wonderful…they’re very accommodating.

Like, in High School I graduated valedictorian; I have like perfect scores on regent exams; I have over 2000 on my SATs, you know, I got like a perfect score on the English part, both English parts. I have like five offers of fully paid tuition, and books, and room and board from scholarships from colleges all over America…and you know what?

I couldn’t go to any of them; I couldn’t take any of those full-paid scholarships.

One that stood out in my mind, because a lot of people got scholarships from my school because my school was predominantly Black…they all had partial scholarships to this Black school in Tennessee called Fisk. I’m not a Black kid but I had the only full scholarship. They even offered to pay for my books, my room, my board, my food, and they offered to give me a stipend…and I couldn’t take it….the story of my life basically. I had so many opportunities that I couldn’t take. And then, one day, I was…visiting Brooklyn College with my girlfriend…I bumped into a very good woman who has some power at Brooklyn College…she looked at my transcripts, saw my perfect regents grades, saw my 98.96% graduation valedictorian score and my SAT scores and she said, ‘You’re coming to Brooklyn College.’ And I’m like, ‘Thank you.’ Then she told me I was full of bulls*** for some reason…long story…I love the woman. But you know, here I am, Brooklyn College. And I still can’t get a job.

Right now being an American means having nine digits…I would love to be an American. I think I would be a good American. Do you know I haven’t littered -actively littered- since November of 2002 when I touched down in America? I am yet to actively litter…I perform my civil duties. That’s what I would like to think.

Being an American means having those nine digits, means taking those nine digits for granted, not knowing what you have, you know? Not knowing what it’s worth. That’s being an American, right?

There are a lot of people who are willing to sacrifice a lot of things for nine digits. At this particular moment, I think I have a chance. I see myself with those nine digits. And you know what? Those nine digits are not just nine digits to me; those nine digits represent a fighting chance. I see myself with artillery. Nine freakin’…ordnance!...you know what I’m saying? I just see myself with a fighting chance. It will be more than nine digits. You know? It will be something of value. It will be my greatest asset. Most Americans, I think, don’t consider their Social Security Number an asset. It will be my asset. I’m studying accounting; I want to put it down as an intangible asset. A priceless, intangible asset.

To me, having a Social Security number, that’s the greatest intangible asset you can have.

Why don’t we all put it down as our greatest intangible asset? You know? It makes perfect sense to me.