Chapter 3
Bridie added you to the group: Tiddas chat 3
2 July 2023
Bridie:
Let us know when you’ve arrived safely sis xxx
Dotty:
Big lub x
There’s something bittersweet about the plane’s descent into JFK Airport. I thumb Mum’s yellow envelope, the paper thinner than it had been the day Chris had handed it to me. The thinness is because the visa documents she’d organised are now in a folder in my backpack, but also because I’ve carried the envelope around with me for months. It was habit to rub the paper between my fingers as I sat at my desk writing my final assignments, or basically any other time I thought about New York or Mum.
‘Have you been to New York?’ the middle-aged man sitting next to me asks. It’s the first time we’ve spoken on the whole flight.
‘No,’ I reply, sliding the envelope into the seat pocket and smiling. ‘First time.’
I see his expression change and brace for the energy of an American who has just realised they’re speaking with an Australian. In the hours since the plane touched down on American soil in LA, I’ve cleared customs, checked in for my flight to New York, bought a sandwich, and boarded the plane and I’ve also met about twenty Americans super excited to talk to a fair dinkum Aussie.
‘Are you Australian?’ he asks.
I nod. For the next year I’m going to have to get more comfortable with just saying yes. I won’t have the time to explain to every person I meet why identifying as Australian or Aussie is fraught.
‘Cool, I’d love to go one day. I want to see the Opera House, climb the bridge and all that,’ he says. ‘What brings you to the Big Apple, then?’
‘I’m on a working holiday— vacation ,’ I say. ‘Here to live and work for a year.’
Looking out the window, I see the plane is circling the airport now. Below me, spread out is Manhattan; a cluster of skyscrapers with the huge patch of green that is Central Park right in the middle. A shiver of excitement runs down my spine. Soon I’ll have my feet on the ground and be so much closer to the start of everything.
‘Moving? Why would you want to move here when you’re from Australia? You’ve got those white sandy beaches. Sydney Harbour ... Or are you getting away from all the poisonous critters?’
I shrug, not bothering to tell him that Brisbane isn’t close to the Harbour Bridge or the Opera House, that the white sandy beaches are at least an hour’s drive away from my place, and that the animals and insects aren’t anywhere near as scary as Americans always think they are.
‘So, you’re one of them.’ His brows dip.
‘Excuse me?’
‘Move to the city, chasing your dreams.’
‘Well, yeah.’ I squirm, wishing we could go back to silent seatmates.
‘You know the cost of living has skyrocketed, right?’ he continues. ‘That COVID has decimated the city?’
‘The whole world knows,’ I reply.
‘There are no dreams left to chase in this country after Trump and COVID,’ he says. ‘If you want my advice, do the tourist thing and then run away back to Australia. At least the weather’s better there.’
I look out the window, down at JFK where, as far as I can tell it’s a bright, clear summer day. I’m relieved that we’re a little bit closer to the ground, and to escaping this conversation, but in my stomach the butterflies are skittering around, my heart pounding.
This stranger isn’t the first person to tell me that New York isn’t what the movies make it, as though I’m some silly girl blinded by romcoms. I know it’s not going to be like the books, and I know that America is different to Australia—that COVID and the economy and everything else has left the world looking different—but there’s no reason my experience can’t be amazing.
‘Hey Mum,’ I whisper, face turned towards the window so that my seatmate can’t hear me. ‘I’m almost there.’
By the time I’ve listened to a few extra verses of the ‘go back to Australia’ speech, worked my way through JFK’s mix of grouchy business travellers and tourists trying to navigate the terminals, and retrieved my luggage at an extremely busy luggage carousel, I’m exhausted, and so ready for a shower and breakfast. I debate getting a rideshare or a taxi, but in the end the taxi rank is easier to find. With little patience left, I slide straight into a classic yellow New York taxi, give the driver the address of my hotel and take a deep breath.
As we drive down the highway, emerging onto the Brooklyn Bridge, all my exhaustion disappears and is replaced by complete and utter joy. In front of me—albeit hindered by the streaky perspex screen that separates me from the driver—is the skyline that I’ve seen on TV and movies. I wind down the taxi window and recreate the scene in Home Alone 2 where Kevin sticks his head out as the car drives over the bridge. But with my grin stretching so wide the muscles in my face ache, I think I look more like an ecstatic dog like Henry, who loves to surf out the window as we drive.
I’m here. New York City. It’s warm and bright, filled with cars and people, and I’m here. I’m finally here.
Though I’m excited, as we drive off the bridge and the buildings envelop us, a feeling comes over me that I didn’t expect: familiarity. It’s more than just recognising landmarks and the skyline, and it’s not that deep sense of belonging I feel when Nan takes me back to our Country. It’s a happy familiarity. This is where I’m supposed to be in this moment.
Maybe the man on the plane was right and I’m a walking cliché, but for now I don’t care. I’m here, and all the possibilities are, like the city, stretched out in front of me.
Chris gave me two going-away presents. The first is a week’s stay in the Holiday Inn near Times Square, which he hoped would give me enough time to find somewhere more permanent to live. The second is buying me out of my phone contract so that my iPhone is ready to connect to an eSIM.
As the cab drives past the towering buildings, me still gaping out the window, I start to form a plan for how today should go. I’ll shower, find food, set up my phone, and then explore. I’ll call Chris, go for a walk, and try not to give into tiredness until night.
The hotel doesn’t have a driveway so the taxi pulls to a stop on the kerb of a grey-looking city street. I take in a 7-Eleven, a liquor store, and an Olive Garden as I wait for the driver to give me the fare. I pay, thrusting a handful of bills at him, hoping it’s enough to cover a decent enough tip because I can barely do normal maths let alone fast, ‘blocking traffic on a busy New York street’ maths.
When he dumps my luggage onto the footpath, I guess it wasn’t a very generous tip. I don’t say anything, I just hope my laptop is okay as my backpack hits the concrete with a crash.
Thankfully, the reception inside is nicer and after a few minutes I’m in a small but comfortable hotel room with a view mostly obstructed by tall buildings; though if I press my face against the window just so, I can make out the Hudson River. Chris told me the hotel offered more expensive rooms with a view of Times Square, but I knew from Mum’s stories that seeing the bustling, tourist area once would be enough for me.
‘But what about Broadway?’ I asked her one of the last times we’d talked about New York. I’d been snuggled up next to her on the hospice bed, trying to block out the smell of hospital.
‘We didn’t get to go: ballet dancers didn’t really run with the jazz dancers,’ she said. ‘I would have liked to, and you should see all the shows if you can. But it was all about Lincoln Center for me.’
I think about first days in NYC while I take a long, hot shower. In the Baby-Sitters Club Super Special: New York, New York! the girls catch the train from Connecticut to the city. Claudia has too many bags, Dawn is afraid of everything, Mary-Anne becomes ‘a walking guidebook’, and when they emerge from the station Stacey claims she can smell Bloomingdales. They go to the city to take classes, babysit, and sightsee.
On Mum’s first day, she told me she was nervous and excited. A guardian from the ballet program met her at the airport gate—she’d flown into Newark—and drove her into the city, where she stayed in a college dorm room with a dancer from Boston who was also on a scholarship. They unpacked, went to orientation and then ate dinner in a group, before getting sent to bed early because they had classes the next day. All their tourist activities were scheduled around intense ballet schedules and time at Lincoln Center, watching the professionals at work. In their dormitory each floor had a guardian who was supposed to make sure they weren’t unsupervised in the big city. Obviously, since Mum came home with me in her belly, the supervision wasn’t great.
I consider these different first days as I dress in a t-shirt and shorts, unpack my suitcase, and retrieve my handbag from the bottom of my backpack. I like the idea of the touristy things—the Statue of Liberty, 30 Rock, the Empire State and Chrysler buildings, and Central Park—but I’m more excited by the idea of living life with those familiar things in the background than playing tourist. I want to call the girls back home and tell them I’m having drinks in a fancy cocktail bar with a view of the Empire State Building, rather than cramming into a stuffy elevator to look at the top of a city I’ve seen a million times in aerial shots on TV. I don’t want to spend my days surrounded by other travellers; I want to be a person who lives here.
My stomach growls. Before I become a person who lives here, I need breakfast.
Even though Chris was able to get me an early check-in, there’s no breakfast at the hotel for me today, so I go to reception to ask for suggestions. There’s been a shift change since I arrived, and a Black man with greying hair gives directions to a coffee shop where he says there will be wi-fi so I can set up my phone. He shows me on a printout which streets to take, drawing crosses over the locations with a pen.
When he’s done, he passes me the map and says, ‘Just be careful where you take that out, honey. Some folks around this area are looking for tourists to take advantage of.’
‘I’m not here to be a tourist,’ I say. ‘I’ll try not to act like one.’
I eat a quick breakfast and then wander down the street to Duane Reade, where I walk around for thirty minutes marvelling at the sheer amount of stuff that drugstores sell. I buy a few snacks and step onto the street without a clear idea of where I’m going next. I just choose a direction and walk, and a few minutes later the neon billboards of Times Square loom in front of me. So much for not being a tourist.
Even though I wasn’t planning on visiting here today, it’s exciting. The square feels a bit like the heart of the city—though I know a city’s heart is about the people who live here all the time, not so much the tourists snapping pictures of the billboards or lining up at the TKTS stand for cheap Broadway seats. I turn slow circles on the spot and feel a spark of possibility. This place is so different to home: the buildings are taller, the sirens are louder, and there are so many people. It’s as though the volume is turned up higher on every single sense.
I’m here and there’s so much that can happen in twelve months in the Big Apple. I can’t wait to get started.
Brynn’s NYC Missions
Day one: Social Security number
You’re in NYC!!
Take a second to feel proud of yourself because you did it. You finished uni: the first person in our family to get not only an undergraduate degree, but a postgraduate one. I am SO proud of you.
Today you’re probably feeling jet-lagged and I reckon you’ve probably slept in. That’s ok but now you’re up, you need to go and get your social security number. According to Shelly at Working Holidays, you need to go and do this first thing because you need it to get a bank account, jobs, and probably even to sign a lease. I wanted to mark all the offices on a map but Chris told me you’d just Google it. Make sure you take a deep breath when you step out onto the street today: you’re in NYC!
Love you,
Mum x
I wake up groggy and disoriented. I ate dinner in my room, called Chris and Matty and fell asleep early in front of a Friends episode. I didn’t even close the curtains and now the room is lit by the glow of the streetlights and another episode of Friends . I’m wide awake and ready to start the day but it’s four in the morning and I’m not quite ready to see if New York really is the city that doesn’t sleep.
I make a pot of coffee then prop up the pillows on the bed and snuggle in to read my first on-the-ground NYC Mission from Mum. I’ve read through her notes what seems like a thousand times but there’s something about pulling the stack of handwritten pages out of my bag and spreading them on the bed to work out the order I should do things.
The notes make me cry and I sit there with tissues and pages strewn around, feeling so very far away from home. I wish I could FaceTime Mum and take her with me out on the street when I head off on my mission. But instead all I’ve got are sheets of binder paper with her missions listed.
She gave me the envelope on the day before she was moved to palliative care. She was spending so much more time asleep in her armchair that Chris moved it so she could look out at her garden. Henry would curl up on her lap and she drifted in and out of sleep.
‘It’s not meant to be like P.S. I Love You ,’ she said as she handed me the thick yellow envelope over between naps on that last day at home.
I told her a story I’d heard on This American Life about a family whose mother had written a bunch of letters to be sent to her kids on their birthdays and life milestones like graduations and weddings. Letters that turned into a drama of their own when these kids decided not to marry or go to college. She laughed at me, a rasping sound that was a shadow of what she used to sound like.
‘I haven’t left any surprises for you for after I’m gone. A couple of letters for Matty when he’s older, but I promise you, sweetheart, I will be proud of you no matter how you choose to live your life. I just wanted to share New York with you as best I can.’
I blow my nose, bin all the tissues and settle back into bed with my laptop. First, I search for rooms to rent and send off emails to any that sound like they’re worth a look, then I move onto job ads.
By the time the sun’s up, I’ve applied for the only publishing job I could find advertised, sent email inquiries to a bunch of small literary journals, showered, and dressed in a light, knee-length yellow cotton sundress and a pair of sandals. Slipping laptop, phone, and keys into my backpack, I head out of the hotel.
On the street I close my eyes and take a deep breath. Nan taught me once to breathe in, open my ears to Country and introduce myself to the Ancestors whenever I visit a new place. Even though here in New York, Country is buried beneath concrete and steel, the sky only visible in patches between buildings, it is still a living place. So I do as Nan instructed and open my ears, trying to hear beyond the sirens, cars, horns and chatter of people.
‘Hi,’ I say softly. ‘I’m Brynn Wallace, a Bigambul woman from Goondiwindi. Thank you for having me on your Country. I promise to tread lightly.’
I open my eyes as a man in a suit bumps into me, ending the moment. ‘Sorry,’ I say.
‘Fuckin’ tourists,’ he curses as he passes.
Welcome to New York, I guess.
The closest social security office is in a boring brown building downtown. According to my visa consultant, this part should be straightforward. All I need to do is show my paperwork to get a little green card that proves my right to work in the United States.
Inside, I check in, am allocated a number and watch a small digital display above a row of Perspex tellers tick over from 0004 towards my number, which is 0104. I keep glancing around the people waiting on the same hard plastic chairs that every government office in the world seems to have. It’s barely even nine o’clock on a Tuesday morning. There cannot be a hundred people here waiting in front of me.
It takes almost an hour to be called and when I get to the desk, the attendant takes my passport and the paperwork and tells me to take another seat. The next wait is longer than the first and I wish I’d bought a book.
I fiddle around trying to connect my phone to a free wi-fi network, then spend a few minutes scanning through my inbox, and typing a WhatsApp message to Bridie and Dotty to tell them I’ve arrived.
I hit send just as the same attendant calls my number out again.
‘Ma’am, there’s something wrong with your visa,’ she says. ‘There’s no record that you’ve entered the country, so I’m unable to process your Social Security number at this time.’
‘But I’m here, in front of you, with my passport,’ I say, trying hard not to show my frustration. I open my passport to the photo page and hold it next to my face.
‘Yes, ma’am, obviously you’re here,’ she says in the exact sort of bored tone you’d expect from someone working in the Social Security office. ‘But you’ll have to call your sponsoring organisation and get them to check on your visa before I can issue you with a number.’
‘If I call them and get it sorted today, can I come back in?’
‘We close at twelve.’ She gives a pointed glance to the clock behind me. When I turn to check, it’s 11.50. I’ve been here for three hours.
‘You have got to be kidding me.’
‘Come back tomorrow,’ she says, putting a ‘window closed’ sign up.
‘Fuck,’ I curse under my breath and turn away.
On the way back to the subway, I stop for a snack and a coffee, and while I eat a flaky croissant and drink a strong latte, I pull the envelope of documents out of my backpack and shake them onto the café table. I run my finger over Mum’s Mission papers and then set them aside, looking through the other papers to try to work out exactly what’s missing from my paperwork.
Back at the hotel, I shower, change my clothes and plaster my feet with Band-Aids to the assortment of blisters, then rub chafing cream into my red raw inner thighs. Now I’m calm enough to get my laptop out and do what I should have done in the first place: flick an email to my visa consultant back home. She calls on Skype straight away to explain that there must be a document missing from Mum’s folder: a declaration of my current location that I need to email her every time my address changes. She emails me a copy and I fill it out online, flick it off, and less than an hour later she confirms I can return to the Social Security office in the morning.
With that sorted, I order Chinese takeout and a bottle of wine on DoorDash and fall into a jet-lagged sleep in front of the TV, exhausted but determined to keep going.
In the morning I’m at the brown building downtown armed with a coffee and a book when the doors open. I snag the number 003 and get seen in twenty minutes. The process is easy, with the attendant—a young guy this time—stamping ‘approved’ on my form and passing me my little green card.
‘Welcome to America,’ he says, and I smile, feeling much more welcome today.
I manage to navigate the subway without incident and take my approved residency paperwork into a Bank of America, where I set up an account.
Leaving the bank with a spring in my step, I consider doing something fun like visiting the Statue of Liberty, especially since I’m already downtown, when my phone vibrates. I glance at the notification screen and see an email from The Paris Review in the preview box. My heart leaps into my throat as I press my thumb to the lock screen and open my inbox.
Dear Brynn,
Thank you for your application to the Fall/Winter Paris Review Internship program. The calibre of applications was very strong and we regret to inform you ...
The bottom of my world drops out. I stop walking so abruptly that a man walks straight into the back of me. He mutters as I stutter an apology.
‘... and we regret to inform you we cannot offer you a place in our Fall/Winter internship.’
I thought that the Social Security drama was upsetting, but this is next level. Even though I’d been telling everyone for months that there were two intakes, and not getting in the first time around wouldn’t be an issue, the truth was that I’d never actually allowed myself to get too far into imagining what I’d do if I didn’t get in. My application was good—no, great even—I had it checked over by all my lecturers at uni, I had great references from the Brisbane Writers Festival and the Queensland Writers Centre, where I’d done internships and volunteered during my studies, and from the vanity press I’d worked at part-time. I’d heeded my lecturer’s warnings about not trying to get work in the US until I had a master’s degree—staying at school for an extra four years to get postgraduate qualifications had been all about this internship; and now one of my two chances is gone.
I stumble into a park and sit heavily on a bench, staring at the email. The words are starting to blur as my eyes fill. I scroll to the phone menu, choking back a sob as my finger automatically goes towards Mum on my favourites, and managing to move my way back to Chris’s name.
‘Hi bub.’ His voice sounds like home and is all it takes to make the tears that were threatening spill down my cheeks. I open my mouth to speak and let out a sob instead. ‘Brynn? What’s wrong? Are you safe?’
‘I’m okay,’ I say. ‘I mean, I’m safe but sad. I didn’t get it. The fall round internship.’
‘Oh bub,’ he answers. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘I just went to call Mum,’ I add.
‘I do that all the time,’ he replies.
‘I miss her. I know what she’d say to me right now, but far out I want to hear her voice.’
He is quiet for a moment, and I close my eyes and listen to the sounds of the city: the traffic and horns, shouts and laughter from the kids crawling over a small swing set in the park and then weirdly, miraculously, the twittering of birds. I take a deep breath and think of Nan teaching me about how Country means the city too, and just because this place is far from where I belong, Country will still be speaking to me.
‘It really sucks that you didn’t get the internship,’ Chris finally says.
‘She would have said that too.’
He laughs. ‘Yup. And she’d also tell you that all hope is not lost. She’d probably tell you a story about when she didn’t get a part she wanted.’
‘Actually,’ I reply. ‘She’d tell me about how she applied for the Tisch New York high school summer dance program twice before she got it.’
‘Ahh, okay. Similar but different lessons in determination.’
‘Mum’s favourite lesson.’
‘So ... what now?’
I sniffle. ‘On to Plan B: look for a job until I can apply for the second round of internships. It’s July third today, they open again on October fifteenth. Three months till I can reapply. And work on getting my CV looking even tighter while I’m here. So I really need to find a job in editing, writing, publishing or, in a pinch, bookselling.’
‘Or just something to pay the bills,’ he interjects, ever the practical thinker.
‘Exactly. But, like, even a job in an office doing social media would be good because it’s writing. Or copyediting. There’s lots I can do.’ I force some pep into my voice.
‘That’s my girl,’ Chris says and I can feel the love in his tone.
‘Okay, now my crisis is averted, tell me what Matty and Henry have been up to.’
We talk for a bit longer, Chris making me laugh with a story about Matty putting Henry in his doll pram and wheeling him around, calling him a baby. Henry, ever the tolerant dog, had settled in under a bunny rug and gone to sleep. Missing them is a physical ache in the pit of my stomach, but by the time we hang up, I’m focused and determined.
I didn’t think I’d be executing Plan B so soon, but here we are.