Boundaries (21 page)
Rita sits forward in her chair. “You have nothing to worry about, Anna. You and Tim will work out just fine. Just fine. He admires you.”
“Admires me?” Anna’s temples twitch. “Don’t you think it was a little underhanded the way he came in the office?”
“Through the back door, you mean? That’s the way business is done here, Anna. They wanted him to see the lay of the land, to see if he fit, before they made the big announcement.”
“They had already decided he fit. They had decided that before he put a foot in the door,” Anna says drily.
“What if there’s a pay raise in this for you? Don’t count that out, Anna.”
Rita’s Pollyanna cheeriness begins to get under Anna’s skin, but she resists the temptation to direct her anger toward the woman. Rita is well intentioned, she wants to be helpful; she wants to prepare her for the changes to come. It makes no sense to lash out at her. Anna presses her hand. “Rita, you are one of the kindest people I’ve met here.”
Rita blushes.
Paula is not so sanguine. Anna has invited her to lunch. She has chosen a table in the back of the restaurant where their conversation will not be overheard. If anyone can help her come to terms with the trick Tim Greene has played on her, it would be Paula. But Paula has news of her own that won’t wait for Anna to unburden herself. She sails toward Anna, waving gaily, calling out her name, her face lit by the midmorning sun usually obscured by towering buildings but today pouring down from a clear blue fall sky. The air is crisp, the humidity of summer evaporated. Generally circumspect, though always ready to assist if asked, Manhattanites are greeting each with unusual exuberance, with an openness rare in a city that has learned to be guarded. Paula is wearing a soft tan pantsuit and over it a raspberry-red cape draped fashionably across her chest. One end flutters over her shoulder, the other flows past her waist, bouncing with her stride. For an ample woman in times when ample women are ignored, if not criticized, for being overweight, she exudes a sexiness that turns more than one head as she approaches. She kisses Anna on both cheeks. “It’s days like this when I love New York. Everybody seems to come alive as if from the dead.”
And when they sit down to lunch, she tells Anna her tale of a young male student, Roy, she has helped rise from the dead. He is the son of a single mother who became embittered when Roy’s father left her. Roy was withdrawn in class, unapproachable, Paula says. But this summer she managed to convince a young black lawyer in her building to take an interest in him. “He’s become a surrogate father to Roy, and all I hear from his teachers now is how well he is doing in his classes. It makes it all worthwhile, teaching. One student turning his life around and I know my time here is not wasted.”
Anna is happy for her, happy to wait until Paula winds down. Paula told her once that she had given up hope for a meaningful career in an educational system where her job seems to be policing the students rather than teaching them. It does Anna’s heart good to know she has not despaired.
“So tell me,” Paula says when the waitress finally brings their meals, “how are things going with you and Paul?”
Anna tells her about the flowers Paul has sent her and the card. Her spirits still high, Paula claps her hands. “I told you,” she says. “It means he loves you. A man doesn’t send flowers and cards to just any woman.”
“He has given me flowers before,” Anna replies curtly.
“And we had just met.”
“What kind of flowers?”
“Daisies.”
“And this time?”
“Tulips. Orange ones.”
Paula strains her head forward. “Did you tell him you like tulips and that orange ones are your favorite?”
“Everyone likes tulips,” Anna says.
Paula brushes away Anna’s cynicism. “It’s a sign, Anna. You two are a perfect match. I hear wedding bells.”
In Paula’s mouth that assertion sounds downright silly and Anna is struck by how easily she had succumbed to a childish fantasy, as if the tulips were a magic wand she could wave in a fairy tale and make her dreams come true. She thought she was more sensible than her mother who believed that all it took for a woman to be happy was marriage. She had gone to graduate school, she had pursued a career, she was a professional, and yet that small token of Paul’s concern for her had set her heart beating wildly. As if to reprimand herself, she announces to Paula, “I’ve been demoted.”
The contours of Paula’s face change. She has been teasing Anna, halfway joking but halfway serious too, pausing only between mouthfuls of chicken to prod Anna into admitting that her relationship with Paul has become serious. Now she sets down her fork and leans across the table. The smile is gone, her lips are drawn tight, furrows gather on her forehead. “I warned you, Anna,” she says.
“Well, not demoted. I have my job, but the company is being reorganized. Tim Greene is going to be the new boss.” Anna gives her the details of the changes in the office.
Paula does not seem to be surprised. “And what did Tanya Foster say about that?”
“She hired Tim Greene for the job. She pretended he was to be my assistant, but it’s clear it was always her intention that he would be my boss.”
“We build; they rule,” Paula says flatly. “There should be a sign at the entrance of JFK,
You build; we rule
, not that promise at the foot of the Statue of Liberty about giving me your tired and your poor. Your poor, yes. They’ll take the poor, but they won’t take the tired. They expect us to work. That’s our job. That was your job, Anna. Your job was to build Equiano. They wanted to see if it would succeed before they moved to the next phase. They were already thinking of merging with McDuffy when they put you in charge of Equiano. It was their plan. If you made Equiano profitable, they would expand. But, of course, they can’t let you rule. They rule.”
They
. Paula conflates Tanya Foster and Tim Greene with all the theys in America. “That’s the bargain they make with us,” she says.
“That was not my bargain.”
“I keep reminding you, you are not them.” Paula shakes her head. “Suppose two people were vying for the same job, both equally qualified, one an immigrant, the other a born American, who do you think will get it?”
Anna focuses on her salad.
“Who, Anna?”
“Where a person was born should have nothing to do with whether or not she would do a good job,” Anna says, gritting her teeth.
“But who
should
get the job? Let’s say on your island back home, would you think it was fair if the immigrant got the job?”
“The English always did,” Anna says.
“You’re talking about colonial times. Would you think so now?”
“I worked hard.” Anna’s voice is barely above a whisper.
“That’s not an answer. What would you do?”
Anna butters the bread roll next to her plate. She does not respond.
“I’m not saying it’s right, or it’s fair. It’s just the way things are,” Paula says. “I’m sorry to hear this is happening to you, but you should have been prepared.”
“Don’t, Paula.” Anna tries hard to keep her voice even. “I need you on my side.”
“I am on your side, but you insist on believing in all that stuff about assimilation. The ancestors of all Americans may have been born in another country—except, of course, the Native Americans—but they all suffer from collective amnesia. Well, assimilation is for the next generation, not for us.” Paula grimaces. “And even the next generation gets amnesia in a heartbeat. Soon they too expect the new crop of immigrants to work while they rule, because now they are speaking with American accents, now they have American birth certificates. Do you remember when I taught part-time at that college in Brooklyn? There it was in the heart of the Caribbean community, but the feudal system was alive and well. Everywhere you went in that college you’d hear thick Caribbean accents, and you’d think:
Wow! Things are different here
. But they are not. Yes, the majority of the people at the college are Caribbean immigrants, but they are the workers, the serfs at the bottom of the feudal pyramid, the laborers, the janitors, the people who clean and repair the buildings, throw out the trash. Then higher up the pyramid are the security guards, then comes the clerical staff, almost all of them speaking with Caribbean accents. Of course, there are the students and the faculty, but among the tenured faculty the accents become American. When you reach the top of the pyramid where the administrators sit, there is hardly a Caribbean accent to be heard—and yet I’ve never taught a class where at least 70 to 80 percent of the students weren’t speaking with thick Caribbean accents. You choose to live outside of the Caribbean immigrant community, Anna. If not for me, you wouldn’t know where to shop for West Indian food.”
She has stirred up Paula. She has invited her to lunch expecting sympathy, but all she has managed to do is bring up an old quarrel they have never settled. It isn’t that she has not had regrets, that in the cold, dark, drab, leafless winter months she has not berated herself for turning her back on blue skies, turquoise waters, sun-filled days, and green-leaved trees. She sometimes wonders if she had been foolhardy to sever herself from the comfort of people with whom she shares history, culture, myths. What or who she would have been had she never emigrated is a question that keeps immigrants tossing and turning in their beds at night.
“It’s not fair what Tanya Foster did to you,” Paula says, her voice calmer now. “It’s not right, but without a ghetto—”
Anna cringes. She does not want to live in a country within a country; she does not want to be limited to a ghetto. “Let’s not start that again,” she admonishes her.
Paula rephrases the sentence Anna has not allowed her to finish. She chooses a more anodyne word. “Okay, not ghetto. A community, Anna. Without a community to fight for you, you’re going to be exploited. You need to understand that.”
“I don’t think everything has to be about politics,” Anna says.
“Everything
is
about politics. That’s the way of the world. Even in that college with its feudal system, immigrants serve a political purpose. We swell the ranks of black people. We make up the numbers when a case has to be made for more support for black people. We are black people then, but after the prize is won, we become Caribbean immigrants again. We are not allowed to be ambitious. You, my dear Anna.” She points her fork at her. “You are not allowed to be ambitious.”
Anna does not remind her that she predicted she would be a vice president. She does not say,
Where is your prediction
now?
Paula is her friend. She will not chastise her with recriminations Paula cannot be responsible for. How was Paula to know that Tanya had no plans for her to be vice president, that her position as head of Equiano would be under the supervision of a man who was once her subordinate?
But Paula notices Anna’s frustration. “When you told me that Tim Greene was to be your assistant editor, not your office assistant, I had my suspicions, but I still thought they had big plans for you. I see now I was wrong. You may deserve to head Coffee Press—”
“TeaHouse Press,” Anna corrects her.
“You may deserve to be the head of TeaHouse Press, but you don’t have a voting block behind you. You don’t have the political power Tim Greene has. They’ll give the position to a Tim Greene.”
“
A
Tim Greene?”
“An African American.” Paula puts down her fork. “Don’t ever forget that here you’re a Caribbean immigrant. Stick to your own people. You can rely on them.”
S
tick to your own people. You can rely on them
. Alice cured her of that romantic conviction grounded more in nostalgia, a longing for home, than in reality. They will promise you anything so long as your need is remote, says Machiavelli, the ultimate pragmatist. How many immigrants discover too late they should have heeded that warning!
Anna believed Alice. Was she grasping at straws? She didn’t think so at the time, though she had felt she was drowning, swept deeper and deeper to the bottom of the ocean by currents she thought had long subsided. England still ruled. Little had changed since the island won its independence. But such was England’s power that even today, in the most powerful country in the world, the clipped cadences of the Queen’s English opens doors and is often enough to admit one to the most exclusive echelons of society, or at least give one an advantage as a newscaster or host of a TV show.
She thinks back now and realizes she had been depressed, her confidence stripped, when she ran into Alice outside a store on a busy street back home on the island. She couldn’t find a teaching job, not one that recognized her American degree. Alice held out a lifeline to her. “Come to New York,” she had said. “You can stay in my apartment in Manhattan.”
It was not Anna’s intention to stay permanently. Her plan was to find a job and in a few weeks move to her own apartment.
Weeks!
Alice would not hear of it when Anna told her of her intentions. It would take months, she said, to find your footing in Manhattan. Anna was welcome to stay with her for as long as she needed. She could stay for months. A year if necessary. She would love her to stay for a year. She could show her around. “You can get in a lot of trouble if you make the mistake of believing all you see in the movies,” Alice warned. “In America everybody is nice, but only if you pay. I have seen a lot of West Indians fall into the trap of believing that every time someone says
Have a nice
day
or
Thank you
or
Come again
they mean it. Then they get confused and upset when all the smiles are gone if they don’t tip the waiter, or the taxi driver, or the man in the airport who helps them with their bags. It’s not a bribe, but without greasing palms, you don’t get anywhere in America. Pay and doors open for you. Don’t pay and you could be bleeding and the hospital will turn you away if you don’t have insurance.”
Alice promised to help Anna avoid the pitfalls. Anna had been sheltered in that Midwestern small town where she went to college. New York is the big time, the real place. It would be a pleasure to be Anna’s guide when she comes to New York, Alice said. Anna was the only one who had made life tolerable for her in that awful secondary school they attended. Anna was her only friend, the only one who helped with her homework, who sat next to her in the cafeteria. It would be the least she could do to pay Anna back for her kindness.