Brother, I'm Dying - Edwidge Danticat [74]
I’d sat across from an older man, a man who looked like he might be around my father’s age, who’d said, “If I had a bullet, I’d have shot myself already. I’m not a criminal. I’m not used to prison.”
The shame of being a prisoner loomed large. A stigma most couldn’t shake. To have been shackled, handcuffed, many said, rubbing that spot on their wrists where the soft manacles were placed on them soon after they made it to the American shore, “I have known no greater shame in my life.”
I’d met a young man from Bel Air. His eyes were red. He couldn’t stop crying. His mother had died the week before, he said, and he couldn’t even attend her funeral. He told me his mother’s name, and when he described her house, the house where he used to live in Bel Air, I could see it. It was not far from my uncle’s house.
“Can I speak to my uncle?” I asked the customs officer, who, it seemed, was patiently waiting for me to get off the phone.
“That’s not allowed,” he said.
“Please,” I said. “He’s old and—”
“He’ll contact you when he gets to Krome.”
Alien 27041999
My uncle was now alien 27041999. He and Maxo had left Port-au-Prince’s Toussaint Louverture Airport on American Airlines flight 822. The flight was scheduled to leave at 12:32 p.m., but was a bit delayed and left later than that.
On the plane, my uncle attempted to write a narrative of what had happened to him on a piece of white paper. He titled his note “Epidemie du 24 octobre 2004.”
“Un groupe de chimères ont détruit L’Eglise Chrétienne de la Rédemption,” it began. “A group of chimères destroyed Eglise Chrétienne de la Redemption.” He then gave up writing sentences to simply list what had been removed or burned from the church, including the pews, two padded ballroom chairs used at wedding ceremonies, a drum set, some speakers and microphones.
Once they got off the plane at around two thirty p.m., my uncle and Maxo waited their turn with a large group of visitors in one of the long Customs and Border Protection lines. When they reached the CBP checkpoint, they presented their passports and valid tourist visas to a CPB officer. When asked how long they would be staying in the United States, my uncle, not understanding the full implication of that choice, said he wanted to apply for temporary asylum. He and Maxo were then taken aside and placed in a customs waiting area.
I don’t know why my uncle had not simply used the valid visa he had to enter the United States, just as he had at least thirty times before, and later apply for asylum. I’m sure now that he had no intention of staying in either New York or Miami for the rest of his life. This is why, according to Maxo, he had specified “temporary.” Had he acted based on someone’s advice? On something he’d heard on the radio, read in the newspapers? Did he think that given all that had happened to him, the authorities—again those with the power both to lend a hand and to cut one off—would have to believe him? He planned to stay at most a few weeks, a few months, but he was determined to go back. This was why he’d gotten his police report from the anti-gang unit. This was why he had wanted the officer, a justice of the peace or an investigative judge, to go to Bel Air to witness and inspect, so he could return when things were calmer and reclaim his house, school and church. He had said as much to Tante Zi the day before.
I can only assume that when he was asked how long he would be staying in the United States, he knew that he would be staying past the thirty days his visa allowed him and he wanted to tell the truth.
Maxo and my uncle were approached by another Customs and Border Protection officer again at 5:38 p.m., at which point it was determined that my uncle would need a translator for his interview.