Middle of Everywhere - Mary Bray Pipher [3]
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.
Then she said proudly, "A Jewish woman, Emma Lazarus, wrote that poem."
We docked at Ellis Island and walked under sycamores into the same central hall immigrants once entered. A poet described this hall as a haunted ballroom where people danced their lives away. She was referring to the ghosts of those quarantined and IQ tested, then sent back home. Or perhaps to the twenty thousand people who died here in one month during an influenza epidemic.
Today the park employees were friendly. We had all the fresh water and food we needed. People were clean, polite, well-rested and well-clothed. Jugglers entertained us. Still, children cried as they grew tired and thirsty, and old people looked for places to sit. All of us, wandering around or standing in lines, created a resonance with the past.
As we explored Ellis Island I remembered a trip I'd made with my husband, Jim. It took thirty-six hours to fly home to Lincoln, Nebraska, from Chiang Mai, Thailand, and on the way we'd stopped in Bangkok, Tokyo, and Chicago. We took our picture in each of the airports. At Chiang Mai we were fresh, alert, and smiling. By Lincoln, we had rumpled stained clothes, bags under our eyes, and spaced-out expressions. If we looked like this after thirty-six hours of business-class travel, what must have become of people in steerage for three weeks crossing the North Adantic?
Jane and I walked first to an exhibit of languages, a tree whose branches were countries and whose leaves were words. On the Spanish branch hung the words VAMOOSE and HOOSGOW; on the Yiddish, KLUTZ and NUDNIK; on the German, OUCH and CATALPA; on the West African, JUKEBOX and BANJO; on the Chinese GUNG HO; and on the French, PUMPKIN and one of our most beautiful words, PRAIRIE.
We joined a tour. The historian asked if we were from immigrant families. Most hands went up and he gently chided the others: "Unless you are full Native American, you are the child of immigrants," He added that the people on the Mayflower who landed at Plymouth Rock were our first "boat people." He said 40 percent of all Americans could trace their roots to Ellis Island. At its peak, the island was bigger than many towns in Europe, and some immigrants thought that Ellis Island was New York City.
The rich didn't come through Ellis Island; they were met on the boats by customs officials and doctors who allowed them to disembark in Manhattan. The poor immigrants were mostly Italian, Caribbean, or Russian. Many had never seen electricity and were afraid of people in uniforms. The food confused them. One woman thought spaghetti was worms. Some children, seeing bananas for the first time, ate them with the skins on.
The immigrants had just crossed three thousand miles of ocean and were sick and broke. They had come to escape racial or religious persecution or because they'd heard the streets of America were paved with gold. One immigrant later said, "There were few streets, no gold, and I did most of the paving."
As the immigrants walked in, those who looked ill were chalked by doctors for later exams. Officials asked each immigrant twenty-nine questions designed to see if they were prostitutes, bigamists, or criminals. People who were mentally ill, had communicable diseases, or were likely to need welfare were not allowed in. Names often were Americanized. Schmidt became Smith, Johannsen became Johnson. Only after passing the medical tests were those immigrants who had the proper papers and twenty-five dollars admitted. One man said, "I'm not going to be afraid of the gates of hell, I've been to Ellis Island."
With five thousand to seven thousand people admitted per day, the processing was hurried and fraught with misunderstandings. One young man tried to say he was going to Houston (pronounced Howston) Street, where his family waited. The officer thought he meant the city of Houston and put him on a train to Texas. He went to Houston and never