i brought my wife-to-be here to LA from indonesia on august 3, 2001. we had met on the lovely island of bali a little over a year before in the early summer of 2000. we e-mailed each other for several months, she in “broken” english, and i went back to visit her for almost a month around christmas time and new years. we traveled across the island of java together, taking night buses through the drenched green rain forests for ten hours at a haul, touring the great buddhist temples in borobudur, riding small horses up into the active volcanic crater at gunung bromo, watching the traditional ramayana dance-stories and shadow puppets in yogakarta, and getting to know each other just a little bit. it wasn’t easy, with the tri-chasms of language, culture, and age, almost thirty years, between us.
yet by the time i came back to LA, we had decided she would move here if and when i could help her get all the paperwork in order. still months before 9/11, i was able to persuade/brow beat the american consul general in surabaya, a rare, sensitive and responsible career diplomat, to grant her a five-year multiple entry visa. this was quite a feat, since we didn’t want to get her the standard tourist visa for just six months, nor a “fiancé” visa, on the condition that we would marry, also within six months. although it was the fiancé visa which was constantly suggested to us by immigration lawyers and experts, it being the document which could both expedite the waiting period, as well as give the authorities a shorter, more specified time period in which she would have to leave the country after having been granted the privilege of entering. as i said though, after many e-mails to the consul general in surabaya, all arguing against the time pressure and commitment of getting married within six months to a woman i hardly knew, i think my persistence and sincerity just wore the poor man down. so that after five months of nagging correspondence, when my lovely wife to be finally managed to get her passport in bali, the visa was granted, and i was able to buy her a round trip plane ticket from denpasar to los angeles. the round trip ticket, something the INS also required.
i remember waiting for her at the tom bradley international arrivals terminal. i held a huge, hand-lettered sign in my arms with her name on it, “wati” (meaning “girl” in bahasa indonesian). i was nervous as hell, having never been married, and now, for some desperate or unknown reason, having invited a woman to live with me for the first time in almost twenty years. i could only imagine how she felt, flying for the first time on an eighteen hour flight from bali, the little jewel island in the third world, to big bad, wonderful los angeles. giving up everything she knew of comfort, language, and familiarity to take a risk on this old “panjang boulay”, i.e. long-nosed gringo.when i use the word “privilege” to describe the ability her visa gave her to enter the country, i’m not being facetious. for what i re-learned and rediscovered, much to my surprise, in this relationship adventure now going on six years, was that “america” still was, and is, the land of opportunity. this is saying a lot, coming from a dyed in the wool american ex-pat wannabe. someone who not only turned on, tuned in, and dropped out of middle class american culture in the 60s and 70s, but who is also absolutely infuriated and ashamed of his government’s policy in the middle east and around the world at the dawn of the twenty first century. american empire, capitalist hegemony, war on terror, definitely a “not” in my book.
to say wati arrived in LA with minimal english speaking skills would be an irrefutable understatement. looking at our first e-mails to each other, way back in 2000, make us both laugh out loud today. “helo, eric trules. enjoy meet with you. when you come agan to bali? well, bye bye. luv, wati.” this, with the help an english-indonesian dictionary and many hours in the internet shop. sure, she had taken a few required english courses back in high school, but not in many years, and whereas her vocabulary was extremely limited, her grammar and writing skills were virtually non-existent. she had never dreamed of or aspired to come to america, so although english was a well known supplement to every forward-looking person on the planet, in her case it was not essential. but now, by some unforeseen and synchronistic twist of fate, here she was in Lala land.
enter “evans community adult school”, the largest ESL (english as a second language) school in the country, and fortunately for us, right down the street on sunset and figueroa, about five minutes from our home. evans was a miraculous discovery for us both. for her, it was a free english-teaching school right down the street with seemingly terrific teachers, which offered classes from six in the morning to almost midnight. it fit anyone’s schedule. for me, evans was a free english-teaching school that offered classes to immigrants and non-english speakers, regardless of nationality or proper legal identification.as i said, this came as quite a surprise to me. i mean, how could this country, this city, offer free classes to students without proper, “legal”, immigration papers? doing so sounded illegal in itself. too generous. too socialistic. too outside the government’s knowledge. i mean, who did pay for it? well, as i soon discovered, with just the barest amount of inquiry, the los angeles city school district paid for it. it paid the teachers from six to midnight. it paid for the rental of the building. for the administration and advertisement of the classes. it paid for student services, college counseling, citizenship preparation and training. all without cost to the student, excepting six dollars for a student picture ID. amazing, no? certainly, yes. the theory being one of inclusion: teach the non-english speakers coming to this country, legal, illegal, how to speak the language and become productive members of the city and society. teach them to become citizens.
teach who? teach the doctors, nurses, dentists, and accountants coming from china, russia, israel, brazil, armenia, and japan. the professionals who came here for marriage, political asylum, opportunity, and freedom. teach them to speak english so they could take the licensing exams in their respective fields. become doctors, lawyers, dentists, nurses, accountants – here in america. teach the illegal immigrants from mexico, ecuador, el salvador, and guatemala. teach them to speak better english, to be able to enter the work force at mcdonald’s, taco bell, in the parking garages, in the hotels and restaurants all across the city, as they studied, worked, and integrated themselves into our multi-cultural, 164 language-speaking, city of angels. teach the poor, the rich, the undocumented, the illegal – teach them all – regardless of ethnicity, skill, economic status, or caste. all were welcome at evans. all you needed was six bucks and a desire to learn english as a second language.imagine this kind of inclusive governmental policy employed around the globe. in france, germany, holland, and england, where the politics of exclusion and of racial strife and division are currently and rampantly dividing the world into clashes between civilizations. imagine that right here, in good ol’ LA, city of caverns between the rich and the poor, the haves and the have nots, the beverly hillians and the east los angelenos, imagine right here – was evans community adult school, leveling the playing field and offering english and inclusion to anyone who wanted to step up and play.
as i watched wati begin with level1 ESL classes and work her way up through level 2, level 3, and level 4 IEP classes (the “intensive english program”, available to those students who could commit to a serious five day a week study routine), i also watched first hand, how people from different cultures, different lands, different walks of life – all came together at this multi-lingual, multi-cultural melting pot. i watched with joy and envy as the shy indonesian girl i had invited to los angeles to live with me, made friends with young men and young women from japan, china, mexico, armenia, brazil, russia, and vietnam, from all over the globe. educated people, uneducated people. husbands, wives, and children. doctors, lawyers, and indian chiefs – from all around the lonely planet. it was eye-opening – and marvelous. it gave me a whole new view of my city, my country, my government. come to america and learn english .for free.
a month and eight days after wati came to LA, the twin towers collapsed in shock and awe in new york, my home town. we got a call at six in the morning, still in bed, and turned on the tv. we saw the day unravel in front of our eyes. but what i saw and what wati saw were two different things. me? i saw what most of your reading this piece saw. death, destruction, terror, and the world being altered within a single hour in a way that has forever changed all of our lives ever since. wati? what she saw, i think, was more like the movie, “towering inferno”, on the tv news. shown over and over, in an endless loop of shock and confusion that she couldn’t quite understand. new york was a place she didn’t know. seeing buildings collapse, smoke, fire, and death, was something she saw in volcanic eruptions, otherwise on tv. coming from a small village in sumatra before she moved to bali at age eighteen, she never went to “the movies”. that was an extraneous luxury. her mother brought up six kids on her own after her husband was killed in a motor bike accident, and the kids helped the mother run a small all-purpose grocery store in medan, the largest city on the island in the fourth most populous nation on earth.
9/11, at first, meant very little to my soon-to be wife.still, she attended evans classes. she learned english. she studied hard. eventually, she landed a job as a bartender through one of her thai friends at evans. at first, she didn’t pay taxes. she worked “under the table”. not that it was necessary for her to do so; we had done all the paperwork, jumped through all the hoops, legally. but other girls, other bartenders hadn’t. the owners paid cash. the IRS was not part of the equation. the IRS made no visits to the thai bars, to the parking garages, where her international, english-learning friends worked. this was america 2001, 2002, still the land of opportunity, the land of taking free ESL classes, studying when you could, getting a job, sending money back to the kids or parents in your home country, and pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. and as i said before, and i’ll say again, this was a lesson in civic policy for me, a lesson in ambition and idealism, a lesson about the ability of the human spirit to aspire, to achieve, to succeed. right here in my own back yard. in the jaded and ravenous city of LA. 9/11 mattered less to this bright-eyed and ambitious community of new immigrants than did study, hard work, paying the bills, and carving out a new life for each and every one of them.
last weekend, more than five years after wati arrived in LA, and more than three years after we had married on valentine’s day of 2003, we were invited to the birthday party of one wati’s oldest friends from evans. andrew, ney “andrei” from siberia, hadn’t been back to evans in perhaps more than three years now. he was too busy working as a masseur and building a new life for himself in los angeles. over the years, we hand invited andrew to several of our parties at our home in echo park. he had met and charmed a whole bevy of our friends, from hollywood actors and casting directors, to trendy shop owners on beverly boulevard, to philanthropists in the medical field. he had voluntarily given several of them free massages in an effort to both share his passion for his work, and more pragmatically, to build up his clientele. i have never met anyone more passionate than andrew about his work. he lives it, breathes it, and works it twenty four hours a day. you can call him at two in the morning for a massage, and he’ll get out of bed, and drive over to your home with his table. he has plans, and ideas, and dreams to build up a massage practice for office workers all over the city. in my opinion, with his russian accent, his ragged good looks, and his passion for massage, andrew is ready for prime time. just point a tv camera at him, and he’ll soon be the rasputin of reflexology. the master of massage. andrew is making his way in america.
so there we are, last saturday, at andrew’s 45th birthday party – at the new “red pearl” restaurant on melrose. the red pearl has just opened two months ago, and it’s obviously a winner. it’s packed with beautiful people, offering a menu of pan southeast asian hors d’oevres, noodle and shrimp delicacies, and rounds and rounds of refillable red wine and champagne. wati and i are the only non-russian speakers there. “andrew” has apparently reverted back again to being called “andrei”, and the laughter and conversation overflow – in russian – with only occasional asides and translations for us gringos and boulays. imagine, my indonesian wife is the same outsider as i am amongst this crowd. it’s great fun. the wine flows, and the long table of russians keep trading seats, hugging each other, and swapping stories in russian. some speak better english than others, but we can understand them all when they go out of their way to include us. what is particularly striking to me is my wife’s behavior. she’s talking to everyone. sure, she’s had a couple of glasses of red wine, but she’s telling dirty jokes, immigrant jokes, to her captive russian audience. in english! around my friends, the educated and sometimes pretentious bourgeoisie, she is often mute. my friends are intimidating. they’re too old. she has nothing in common with them. they are native english speakers.
the night and dinner pour along, and after coffee, dessert, and a white wine after-dinner offering, the party is ready to hightail it over to andrei and irena’s (andrei’s new wife) apartment in atwater village. the bill comes and guess who picks it up? that’s right, the birthday boy, andrei. it’s his treat. the total? i’d guess it’s at least a thousand bucks. twenty people, at least 50 dollars a head. andrei doesn’t mention it, he just pays. it doesn’t surprise anyone, not even me, although i am simultaneously shocked with the generosity of his gesture. you see, although i wasn’t brought up in this tradition of magnanimity, i’ve been seeing it more and more often, amongst my wife’s immigrant friends. the birthday boy or girl pays. it’s their treat. their privilege of treating their closest friends to their birthday celebration. brazilian, indonesian, now russian. it’s a great tradition. hell, i challenge myself to treat sixty people to my upcoming 60th birthday party!
we drive wati’s chic black 2002 RAV 4 over to andrei and irena’s in atwater. not my car, the dirty white ‘94 toyota corolla station wagon. sure, i like my car; it’s good for clay, the dog. but wati wants to give me the RAV 4 and buy herself her a new PT cruiser. she’s got credit, don’t you know. she’s embarrassed for me (and especially herself) to be seen in the old ’94 clunker. she’s nouveau riche, don’t you know again, or would like to be. nothing but the best for her. she wants to buy and own a house, a new car, and go shopping every day that she can. it’s a woman’s prerogative, of course, as well as the immigrant’s dream — all on her three day a week salary, and her husband’s far too skimpy professor’s salary from the local private university.andrei and irena’s one bedroom apartment is modest but comfortable. it reminds me of my first rent-controlled pad in santa monica. back then in ’83, it was $359 a month, but i’m sure andrei and irena pay something more like $1500 a month in today’s market. the place is furnished modestly as well: a couch, perhaps from ikea, a bedroom with psychedelic day-glo accoutrements, and a kitchen table once again overflowing with a generous spread from the nearby local trader joe’s: mixed sushi, rolled turkey and arugala sandwiches, and russian desserts of all kinds. how could anyone eat another bite after the red pearl orgy? but eat we do. and drink some more, of course. but now we move onto the vodka. it’s kettle one, along with various bottles with names i’ve never seen, no less able to pronounce. they’re obviously russian vodkas, only the best. stolichnaya? please! that’s rot gut, not drinkable for even the masses of moscow.
we eat, drink, and be merry. the twenty of us are joined by a few more late night russians. two musicians, a truck driver, an accounting consultant, some alternative medicine types. all first generation immigrants. most here on political asylum. their tourist and student visas have long ago expired, and they have been granted political asylum visas, no doubt all working their way toward permanent residency and citizenship. my impression of this friendly and festive gang of russians is that their lives are hard. they work, go to school, scheme of ways of “making it” in america. but to me, already way too comfortable and familiar with the ravages and ruts of middle age, their lives are alive – and beautiful. america is the land of milk and honey and opportunity for these immigrants. one of andrei’s friend’s, boris, one of the few that has lived here for almost thirty years, tells me that the reason that they party so hearty and enjoy themselves so much amongst fellow russian immigrants, is that many of them feel isolated here in america. they feel, and are reminded of, their fragile immigrant status, their lack of language proficiency, daily. amongst their fellow russian immigrants, they can speak their native language, without the constant pressure of translating their hearts and minds into english. they can let down their hair, they can escape the constant grind and reality of being foreigners in a foreign land.
i think of my lovely indonesian wife. and i think of siberian andrei, the mad monk of LA massage. and i think how beautifully they fit into the fabric of this country we call america. sure, i know i romanticize their lives. i know my wife still often feels overwhelmed with her life here, with her future still being unknown, with the challenges of ESL level 5, now at LA city college on vermont avenue. and then i remember back when we visited new york over christmas of 2002, after we had recently returned from eight months of living and my teaching in malaysia. we stayed with a former student of mine in astoria, queens. ben was working for disney in a good office job on 42nd street, but he still couldn’t afford the astronomical rents of manhattan. the thing was, in 2002, astoria was still the land of first generation immigrants. greeks, puerto ricans, east europeans, latinos, it was a patchwork quilt of languages, foods, and cultures. i loved it. wati loved it. and it reminded me of my jewish-american grandparents, first generation immigrants who came to america in the early part of the 20th century from kharkov and kiev, and from places that are now called belarus and ukraine. my grandparents, who were grocers and house painters, truck drivers and tailors, working their way up the economic immigrant ladder, just like andrei and his russian friends in LA. just like my lovely indonesian wife and her multi-cultural, language-bending ESL friends at evans.
we’re going to new york again this christmas and new years. we’re lucky and privileged to be doing so. especially my wife, who five years ago had never before even been on an airplane. we’ll be staying with some of my old new york friends, some of whom live in exorbitantly priced condos and lofts in midtown manhattan, and some of whom live further out in the immigrant boonies of brooklyn and queens, and others, even further out in the suburbs of long island, where i grew up, when my GI dad came back from “the good war”, world war 2, and this country once again created an opportunity for its citizens and soldiers to go back to college and to buy cheap homes in the first suburbs in america called levittown and westbury, new york. and i know that as i wrap myself in new york’s winter wonderland of wools, sweaters, and overcoats on the steam-belching streets of new yawk, i will be sharing it all with young wati, my lovely immigrant wife from sumatra and bali, indonesia. and i already know that we will be sending a picture post card of the big apple to andrei and irena back in atwater village, who i anticipate full well, will be visiting the big apple themselves one day – very soon – and in style – bottles of russian vodka flowing, as it did with my grandparents and their warm and hard-working community of neighbors, well over a hundred years ago before.
this morning, thanksgiving day, wati and i went out for a light brunch to “happy tom’s”, echo park’s cheapest and best mexican eatery. where on weekends and holidays we can bring clay, the dog, to sit with us at the sidewalk café’s barrio-bohemian-constantly gentrifying outdoor tables. wati had the usual, huevos rancheros, her favorite, and i had the quesadillas with jamon and cheese. needless to say it was delicious. later this afternoon, we’ll be going to rancho palos verdes to eat turkey with one of my old new york friends, a marvel of a man, son of an immigrant no doubt, who every five years or so, goes near bankrupt, only to arise phoenix-like, to make another million and buy another house, palace, or castle. this one in palos verdes is supposed to be the castle.
ah…… america, there is still something to love and believe in.
