The green card the green card. The…
Without it he couldn’t leave. To leave he wanted a green card. This was the absurdity. How he desired the triumphant After The Green Card Return Home, thirsted for it – to be able to buy a ticket with the air of someone who could return if he wished, or not, if he didn’t wish… He watched the legalized foreigners with envy as they shopped at discount baggage stores for the miraculous, expandable third-world suitcase, accordion-pleated, filled with pockets and zippers to unhook further crannies, the whole structure unfolding into a giant space that could fit in enough to set up an entire life in another country.
Then, of course, there were those who lived and died illegal in America and never saw their families, not for ten years, twenty, thirty, never again.
How did one do it? At the Queen of Tarts, they watched the TV shows on Sunday mornings on the Indian channel that showcased an immigration lawyer fielding questions.
A taxi driver appeared on the screen: watching bootleg copies of American movies he had been inspired to come to America, but how to move into the mainstream? He was illegal, his taxi was illegal, the yellow paint was illegal, his whole family was here, and all the men in his village were here, perfectly infiltrated and working within the cab system of the city. But how to get their papers? Would any viewer out there wish to marry him? Even a disabled or mentally retarded green card holder would be fine -
It was, of course, Saeed Saeed who found out about the van and took Omar, Kavafya, and Biju to Washington Heights, and there they waited on a street corner. All the shops had grills, even the little chewing gum and cigarette places. The pharmacies and liquor stores had buzzers; he saw people ringing, gaining admittance into a cage set into the shop from where you could survey the shelves and point to what you wanted, and after money had been placed in the revolving tray set into a little hole carved out of the grill and the bullet proof glass, purchased objects would be sent grudgingly around. Even in the Jamaican patty place, the lady, the patties, the callaloo and rotis, the Drinks Nice Every Time – sat behind a high-security barricade.
Still, it was jolly. Many people thronged by. Outside the Church of Zion, a preacher baptized a whole line of people in the spray of a fire hydrant. A man emerged in a Florida hibiscus shorts-and-shirt combo, thin knobby knees, crinkly pomaded hair, little square Charlie Chaplin – Hitler mustache, carrying a tape player, "Guantanamera… guajira Guantanamera. …" A pair of saucy women hailed him from the windows: "Oooo BABY! Look at them l e g s! Ooooooooo weeee! You free tonight?"
Another lady was giving advice to a younger woman who accompanied her: "Life is short, sweetheart – Put him out with the garbage! You are young, you should be happy! Poot! heem! out! weeth! de! gar-baje!"
Saeed was at home here. He lived two streets up and many people hailed him on the street.
"Saeed!"
A boy with a gold chain as fat as a bathtub attachment, his prosperity flashing out, slapped Saeed on the back…
"What does he do?" Biju asked about the boy.
Saeed laughed. "Hustling."
To further chili-pepper the occasion, Saeed regaled them with a story of how he had been helping one of the tribes move; and a car stopped while they were struggling with boxes of patched clothes, an alarm clock, shoes, a blackened pot all the way from Zanzibar thrown into the suitcase by a tearful mother – and a gun came out of the car window and a voice said:
"Put it in the back, boys." The trunk opened, and "That’s all?" the voice behind the gun said in disgust. Then the car had driven off.
They waited at the corner, sweating away, my God, my God… Finally a battered van came by and they paid into the cracked open door, handed over their photographs taken according to INS requirements showing a single bared ear and a three-quarter profile, and were thumbprinted through the crack. Two weeks later, they waited once more – they waited – and waited – and… The van did not come back. The cost of this endeavor once again emptied Biju’s savings envelope.
Omar suggested they console themselves since they were in the neighborhood.
Kavafya said he would join him.
Only thirty-five dollars.
Prices not raised.
Biju blushed to remember what he had said in his hot dog days. "Smell awful… black women… Hubshi hubshi."
"It’s too hot," he said, "for me to go."
They laughed.
"Saeed?"
But Saeed didn’t have to go to whores.
He was meeting a new pooky pooky.
"What happened to Thea?" asked Biju.
"She has gone for hiking outside the city. I told her, ‘AFRICAN MEN don’t look at leaves!!’ Anyway, man, I still have one or two pooky pookies that Thea don’t know about."
"You better watch out," said Omar. "White women, they look good when they’re young, but wait, they fall apart fast, by forty they look so ugly, hair falling out, lines everywhere, and those spots and those veins, you know what I’m talking about…"
Saeed said, "Ah ah ah ha ha, I know, I know." He understood their jealousy.
At the bakery a customer found an entire mouse baked inside a sunflower loaf. It must have gone after the seeds…
A team of health inspectors arrived. They entered in the style of U.S. Marines, the FBI, the CIA, the NYPD; burst in: HANDS UP!
They found a burst sewage pipe, a hiccuping black drain, knives stored behind the toilet, rat droppings in the flour, and in a forgotten basin of eggs, single-celled organisms so comfortable they were reproducing on their own without inspiration from another.
The boss, Mr. Bocher, was called.
"The friggin’ electricity blew," said Mr. Bocher, "it’s hot outside, what the fuck are we supposed to do? "
But the same episode had occurred twice, in the days before Biju, Saeed, Omar, and Kavafya when there had been Karim, Nedim, and Jesus. The Queen of Tarts would be closed in favor of a Russian establishment.
"Fucking Russians! Crazy borscht and shit!" shouted Mr. Bocher in anger, but to no avail, and abruptly, it was all over again. "Fuck you, you fuckers," he yelled at the men who had worked for him.
"Come and visit uptown sometime, Biju man." Saeed quickly found employment at a Banana Republic, where he would sell to urban sophisticates the black turtleneck of the season, in a shop whose name was synonymous with colonial exploitation and the rapacious ruin of the third world.
Biju knew he probably wouldn’t see him again. This was what happened, he had learned by now. You lived intensely with others, only to have them disappear overnight, since the shadow class was condemned to movement. The men left for other jobs, towns, got deported, returned home, changed names. Sometimes someone came popping around a corner again, or on the subway, then they vanished again. Adresses, phone numbers did not hold. The emptiness Biju felt returned to him over and over, until eventually he made sure not to let friendships sink deep anymore.