On Saturday, I was working with Leo. That is to say that he was working, and I was driving. We do this when he has to work weekends in Rhode Island, which has a rather pathetic immigrants’ rights record. Driving is especially dangerous for immigrants, who need but one cop who fantasizes about being a hotshot federal agent to completely destroy their lives and that of their family. A burnt-out blinker becomes a “where’s your license, son,” and then a “can I see your passport,” and quickly disintegrates into a “step out of the car and put your hands on the hood.” Officers often take liberties with immigrants that they wouldn’t dare take with Americans, knowing full well that José isn’t about to ask for a badge number.
A Brazilian student of mine (I teach English at night) got stopped by a Massachusetts State Trooper who pulled out his personal cell phone to dial Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The real kicker was when ICE informed the officer that they don’t do weekend pickups, so he turned around to my student, cussed him out, informed him that today was his lucky day and that he’d better watch himself, and then asked him – in Brazilian Portuguese – whether he was a fan of Cruzeiro or Atlético (two teams from the state of Minas Gerais). It turns out that the officer was also Brazilian, from the same state, and a die-hard fan of the same team. How’s that for salt in the wound… and lemon… and vinegar… and Frank’s Red Hot…?
Thankfully, only a few Massachusetts municipalities still have the 287(g) agreements that many states and localities use to terrorize immigrants. The agreements connect states and municipalities to federal immigration enforcement and gives them training to do ICE’s work for them, a system that Arizona’s “Sheriff Joe” Arpaio routinely abuses with sadistic enthusiasm. Thank goodness the Obama administration, in one of its microsteps toward showing some understanding for the issues of the “¡Obamanos!” Latinos who won him a handful of Western states, has clipped Arpaio’s wings (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/17/us/17immig.html?em).
Nothing good comes from immigrants not being able to go to their local police. The recent stabbing death of a Brazilian woman in Everett, MA at the hands of her abusive ex is one such sobering result of bad police/immigrant relations.
Rhode Island’s State Police also work under a 287(g) MOA as well as some of the most oppressive state laws pertaining to immigrants in the Northeast. I was helping Leo make his rounds today to avoid any potentially nasty outcomes of Leo getting pulled over in the Ocean State. Mind you, he drives to Rhode Island for work several times per week, and neither of us have control over that, but on days that I can drive him, I do.
We’re so close to our departure that we darkly joke that deportation now is like a “free” ticket back to Brazil, but on Saturday we had a particularly good reason to make sure Leo got home safe and sound: it was our joint birthday party! Our birthdays are 4 days apart, so we do something small and nice for each other on the actual day and then something big for both of our friend groups. This year, we decided to have our party at Machu Picchu, which is a wonderful Peruvian restaurant in Somerville (and the site of our Valentine’s Day dinner, wedding proposal, and rehearsal dinner… they know us a little too well).
As we drove, Leo and I discussed how days like this remind us how unsustainable our life is here. He has to lean on me much more than either of us are comfortable with. I have no doubt that when we get to Brazil, Leo will revel in his independence – small things, like going to his friends’ houses without asking me for a ride or calling the doctor’s office for himself. And despite Brazil’s violence, he won’t have to constantly look over his shoulder the way he does here, but since he also earns 5x more here than he did in Brazil, he doesn’t complain nearly as loud or as long as I think he should.
The money is what worries him. He says that every time he thinks about going back, his stomach goes cold. Still, I cannot persuade him to stay here while I do my Fulbright; he says that we need to go somewhere that we can create a somewhat normal existence. Still, we have only a small amount saved up, not the tens of thousands that Brazilians dream of bringing back with them. And since he knows how hard it can be in Brazil – and how easy it is to make money and accumulate things in the US – this is a source of undying anxiety for him.
Almost any major expense turns him an unearthly shade of green, while I – having never lacked for anything in my comfortable middle class life – am obnoxiously nonchalant: “don’t worry about it; we’ll figure something out.” That’s not to say I don’t work hard (I have two jobs, after all), but in my paradigm there is always money there to earn.
On our little excursion – somewhere near Pawtucket – our trusty Subaru Outback, Molly, suddenly sounded like she’d hit a newspaper and was trailing pages of newsprint in the wind, making that fwapfapfapfapfapfwapfap sound. Leo and I looked at each other with dread. I think he thought that was the sound of her literally hemorrhaging money. Then the power suddenly dropped, like there was nothing more than a weak lawnmower under the hood; the more I pressed the accelerator, the more she murmured and slowed. We pulled over. Next to a dead deer. Not a good omen.
Leo got out and did what any man would do, poking around indiscriminately under the hood and making wild accusations about hoses and belts and fluids. He turned her on, turned her off, drove a few feet at a crawl, announced that she wasn’t going to make it back to Massachusetts, closed the hood, got in the car again, got out of the car again, went under the hood, and started the process over. I called a tow.
No one seemed available to get us. The Rhode Island tows didn’t want to take us to Boston. The Boston tows didn’t want to fetch us in Rhode Island. Finally, we got through to one company, and an hour later, Molly was loaded on the back of a flatbed truck and we were sitting alongside Dave, a blue-collar New Englander in the most noble and endearing sense of the term.
Dave was very concerned about us missing our birthday party (and also about the day that his 4-year-old daughter turns 15; beware future boyfriends of Dave’s daughter: he is fixing to buy a gun… or rocket launcher). He therefore announced that he would be personally responsible for us arriving on time, turned on his lights, and flew down the highway at a roaring 85 miles per hour, cussing out the tiny cars below us and threatening to send them flying with his enormous battering ram of a truck should they stand in the way of our celebrations. We gave Dave a nice tip.
We left Molly at Fresh Pond Gas in Cambridge and trudged dejectedly to the nearest T stop, having terrifying daydreams about her needing a new engine or transmission of some other such thing so absurdly expensive that we’d have to sell our bodies to pay her repair bill. At the very least, Subaru parts can be hard to get, so we figured Leo would be several days without work and therefore without income.
Imagine our delight this Monday morning when Tony the mechanic called us and said “it just had a few bad spark plugs and wiring. You can pick her up whenever you’re ready, dear.” I announced that Tony was my hero, and we promptly called a cab. What arrived for us was a smelly monster of a van driven by an unkempt elderly man who opened the sliding side door with a battered old cane and barked “where to?” He spun out on the slush and jerked off down the road, working the peddles with a Riverdance-like fervor. When we arrived at the mechanic’s 12 minutes later – slightly whiplashed and motion sick – there was Molly, like a big snow-covered cranberry. Leo and I high-fived our better-than-expected luck.
His good mood lasted a few hours. Now, however, he is sitting on the couch behind me, eating an apple and muttering, “meu Deus… tantas contas para pagar… vou chegar no Brasil sem dinheiro nenhum...” (Oh God… so many bills to pay… I'll arrive in Brazil without a penny to my name...)
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