Chapter 17
I walk back toward the subway to head home.
Ahead of me is a taxi stand, filled with yellow cabs, which gives weary and exhausted cabdrivers an opportunity to stop and get a cup of chai.
Despite my father’s disappointment that I followed in his footsteps to become a cabdriver, I wish more than anything that today were just a regular day and I were here parking my taxi at the stand, ready for a long night of picking up passengers.
My days have changed since I first started what was supposed to be a temporary job.
Taxi medallions, limited in number, cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy, so instead my father leased one for ten years.
It still was a fortune, but there was a promise of a good, reliable salary.
When driving a taxi became more difficult due my father’s heart disease that he maintained wasn’t serious, my brother and I took his shifts over until he could get back on his feet.
Thathi never got better, my brother died, and we were trapped in a ten-year lease.
It all fell on me. My parents told me I didn’t have to take this job, but I knew we’d be financially ruined if I didn’t.
Work was busier then, before other car services popped up and flooded the market.
Back then, the world was full of promise and possibility.
I would be a lawyer, and my brother a doctor.
Together, we’d be two immigrants born from poverty with infinite potential.
A cheesy image of me and my brother standing in front of fake fireworks and a faded American flag pops into my mind like a nineties infomercial.
How improbable a dream it truly was and how fully I bought into the idea that you can be or do anything in New York City.
I glance around the subway car and wish I had something to read or listen to rather than be left alone with my own thoughts.
Sometimes, on crowded train cars, there are subway performers wrapping their bodies around poles, doing feats of strength and gravity-defying tricks.
There might be people speaking in languages I can’t understand, so I make up stories for what they may be saying.
Sometimes, there are elaborate outfits—for humans and dogs.
Sometimes people sing (badly), mariachi bands play (generally very well), or someone miraculously manages to make music on an empty bucket (mesmerizing).
Like the other subway riders, I wear a frown on my face when these things happen, as if to say, “You’re disturbing my very important day.
” Truthfully, these interruptions delight me.
So much talent, or at least fearlessness, is within all of these performers, and all of them seem to have a dream.
But tonight, it’s just me and two other people trying to get where we need to go.
As the subway makes its first stop in Queens, I am reminded of a sleepover in middle school.
My parents invited several of my classmates from my fancy prep school on the Upper East Side, where I had attended on full scholarship given to just a small handful of exceptional low-income students otherwise known as the outcasts.
The parents of my classmates all canceled at the last minute: Two were sick, one had a family event that was mis-scheduled, and two others gave no excuse, just a brief apology that their child couldn’t attend.
My mother had taken special pains to find out what American kids eat and, despite her apprehension, bought Twinkies and pizza rolls en masse.
“Did you see the ingredients?” she whispered to me in the store as if she were about to feed us all poison.
The only taker for my sleepover was Alex, a lifelong New Yorker who had never visited Queens before.
Ammi thought Alex was a girl—a fair assumption for a gender-neutral name—and Alex’s nanny thought I was a boy, never having heard the name Siri.
When Alex showed up at our doorstep, Ammi didn’t have the heart to turn him away and was probably relieved that at least one parent had let their kid come to this neighborhood.
Later that day, I heard Ammi cry in the bathroom.
“Is it my accent that scared them away?” I had asked Alex.
“No. I think some of their parents were expecting they’d be dropping them off at one of those nice buildings in Manhattan. Somewhere in the neighborhood,” Alex had explained. I learned “the neighborhood” was the Upper East Side, often directly on Park Ave.
I’d grown up modestly in Sri Lanka, and social division had been a regular part of life even at a young age. I thought things would be different in America.
“Your parents are okay with it?” I asked, surprised that Alex could attend.
“They’re not home…they’re never home. They’re always traveling for work. It gets kinda…” Alex looked embarrassed.
“Lonely?” I suggested. Years later, I realized that Alex may have had all the outward trappings of a privileged life, but he didn’t have what was most important: a loving, present family and, if he was attending my sleepover, friends.
Alex looked at his feet, ignoring me, and instead returned to why no one wanted to come to my sleepover.
“Most of those Manhattan kids never leave Manhattan,” he had said with a huff, as if he weren’t one of those very kids he was talking about.
For a while, we both ate pizza rolls, of which Ammi had bought hundreds, and burned the roofs of our mouths in silence.
I exit the subway one stop early. Despite my exhaustion I want to walk.
I want fresh air and to feel slightly cold in my ill-fitting jacket, a favorite feeling as fall turns into winter.
I see the 7-Eleven where I used to buy chips and where one time I tried to buy cigarettes, only for the owner to dial my parents and rat on me.
Most of the places I pass are familiar, though several businesses are shuttered and nothing yet has taken their place.
I spot a new grocery store that proclaims to sell expensive green juices and ginger shots.
It has seemingly arisen overnight, but it is one of the only signs of gentrification this far into Queens, which is beyond where the tourists lurk for “authentic food.”
Each of the front facades in my neighborhood has been imprinted on my mind for twenty years.
It was so different moving here from Sri Lanka.
On the day we moved in, I stared at each house with awe and wonder.
Alex didn’t understand why I had been so impressed; they were “just houses” and not like the shining skyscrapers in Manhattan, which were true architectural feats.
He’d never understand how for the first time I had my own space and wasn’t sleeping in a room shared with cousins.
The power didn’t randomly shut off, air conditioners came as standard, and cable television was within reach. It was heaven.
Finally, I catch sight of my destination.
A modest home with a small driveway. The great affection I once felt for the house diminished as it fell into a state of disrepair.
I try to use the rare extra money I earn from driving for house maintenance, but it always goes to some critical problem, never anything cosmetic like new paint or plants.
Just a few weeks ago the roof leaked, and then, as if the whole world was against me, the heating broke the very next day, a problem I had to resolve quickly given the increasingly cold fall days.
Occasionally, I think that we should sell the house and move somewhere more modern without so many problems. I thought twentysomething me would only have to worry about these things when I had a family and home of my own.
My parents bought the house when housing prices in this part of Queens were next to nothing, and they got the place as part of a bankruptcy sale.
Despite the healthy profit they could make, my parents, for reasons I understand all too well, refuse to sell.
As I continue to walk, my body aches, likely from sleeping on a wooden bench in a cell last night.
I feel my age acutely now. It’s like the minute I entered my late twenties, as if on cue, my back started to hurt, and I’m pretty sure I need an orthopedic pillow.
Life comes at you fast, I guess. Now I regret my choice to walk.
I wish that I were in a cab ushering me right to my door.
But I don’t have the cash for a cab ride home, both because I’m without my wallet and because the wallet itself contains little cash and a very maxed out credit card.
It hits me hard that I can’t afford my own services.
I couldn’t bear to ask Amaya, Uncle, or anyone else for that matter, for any more money.
Somehow, they’ve all already cobbled together $50,000 for my bail. Taking another cent is impossible.