First day in the promised land.
A series of unknown circumstances began to multiply like bubbles of champagne at the very moment when my life, twenty years ago, stepped energetically and joyfully into the streets of the Big Apple and into the multidimensional and supernatural zone of destiny, a destiny that also came to live with me in New York, a destiny with which everyone signs an apparently irreversible contract whose clauses are forgotten the day we touch this world.
When I arrived in New York I thought that everything was going to be very easy since my life had passed smoothly, with some ups and downs that never took away my enthusiasm of living intensely, although many times they made me feel bad and shed some tears. Well, ladies and gentlemen, everything was about to change to push me to fight for what I really wanted, to appreciate what I had and to learn what I did not know. There is a Higher Being that tests us before granting us our desires and sometimes this makes things in life a little more difficult. The achievements of humans resemble those of an apprentice of magician who must rehearse every day before he can pull out of the famous black hat the dove, the deck of cards, the coins, the colored scarves and, occasionally, a rabbit until he gets the audience to applaud him and not laugh at him. Success requires that we learn the tricks of life as if we were an illusionist on the stage who disappears his partner after putting her in a small box to finally make her reappear in the back of the performance hall to the surprise of the audience that does not understand how he did it. In other words, we can all be magicians and illusionists, but we will need discipline and training to achieve our goals.
Billy, who was romantically attracted to my great friend Liliana, had promised to pick us up at JFK Airport and to let us stay at his place in Long Island until we rented an apartment in the Manhattan area; he arrived a little late with a very modern and youthful black Wrangler jeep open and with no top in which we hardly fit our luggage. Billy and Liliana sat in the front and I found myself in the back sitting on the suitcases with the damp wind sticking to my hair and body as we drove along a five-lane expressway; I prayed that the police wouldn’t stop us and give us a ticket or take us to jail because, like typical Colombians, we were a danger to the safety of American drivers if one of the suitcases flew out and fell in the middle of the road where the cars were moving at astonishing speed.
The unconditional admirer of Liliana whom we later nicknamed «our guardian angel» was a charming, hard-working, and very caring man with a nice presence and a very attractive personality. Her mother had arrived illegally in the United States and thanks to a presidential amnesty, the woman who had a very determined character managed to become a resident and bring all her children to live in the land of opportunity.
When we approached Billy’s residence we were impressed by its beautiful exterior, but when we entered the gigantic house, we were shocked because on the outside it looked like an unoccupied mansion and on the inside, it looked like a motel with a pool where a battalion of relatives lived. I will never forget Billy’s mother’s face when he announced to her that Liliana and I were going to stay with them for at least a couple of weeks. The lady smiled politely and kindly invited us to have an iced tea with lemon while she poured herself a rum to relax. She was a strong and fearless peasant woman whose ambitions and intelligence had taken her from the poor neighborhood of the town where she lived to the city and from there to the humble apartment of an older man with savings and pension who fell in love with her and proposed marriage. After her husband’s death the young mother went to the bank, took out all the money left in the account, paid for her husband’s funeral, left her children in the care of the grandparents and bought a plane ticket, a tourist visa and few dollars and came to the United States to work tirelessly for fifteen years until, with the help of a lawyer, she was able to bring her children to live in the land of Micky Mouse forever.
The landlady beckoned her son to go into the kitchen and gave give him a lecture, which we all heard, forbidding him to bring back to her full house rich-looking women with money to pay for a hotel. Billy asked his mother to turn the voice down and agreed to help us find an apartment in two days. As he left the kitchen our friend, whose skin was a natural dark color, was pale and embarrassed by her mother’s show. He stumbled upon a toy lying on the floor and the tray with delicious sandwiches that his mother had prepared to satisfy our appetite were shot through the room crashing into the carpet. The sandwiches ended up inside a trash can together with our chances of living in New York without paying rent for the first three weeks.
As Liliana and I were starving we decided to invite Billy and his mom to dinner, and our jaws dropped when a row of kids and some adults paraded to the exit to go with us to the nearest restaurant. It seemed like a movie scene of the Three Stooges. We had no choice but to agree to invite the battalion because we wanted to thank Billy and his mother for giving us hospitality for the next three nights. Finding a place to dine became difficult because satisfying the taste of so many guests was almost impossible. The crowd finally agreed to go to the Burger King a very popular fast-food place with reasonable prices, they said. The food feast included milkshakes, soft drinks, hamburgers, fries, onion rings and apple pies for everyone.
I almost fainted when the smiling cashier dressed in a beautiful blue uniform and a cap of the same color gave us a kilometric receipt whose total was equivalent to the minimum monthly wage in Colombia. As the banquet cost us an arm and a leg, that was the first and last time we invited the whole family to eat. I also felt very grateful to the universe that our new friends had not chosen a sophisticated restaurant, as the early intention was, since it is mandatory in all bistros to pay a service tip of 20% for groups with more than six people. From that time on, converting the price of everything I bought from dollars to pesos became a painful mathematical exercise that I continued to do for two more months.
When we returned to Billy’s house his mother gave me a pillow and a sheet and took me to sleep on the floor of one of the girls’ bedrooms. Liliana went to another room. As I was exhausted from the trip and the running around, I collapsed and slept like a baby. The first day of my stay in New York was full of mixed emotions and unexpected commotion, but I would blissfully live it again without any hesitation.
