CHAPTER ONE
I grew up loving a country that did not correspond to me. The United States has been my home since I was eight years old, and for more than a decade, I trusted that everything would work out with my willpower, but countries can't correspond to people, and willpower only goes so far.
I had dressed in my street clothes and was already tossing my white chef's uniform into the basket for them to take to the laundry when Chef called me to meet him at his apartment. He was on the top floor of the house where Le Bourrelet was located, the first restaurant in Manhattan with three Michelin stars. None of the employees had ever been in his apartment, not even the manager he occasionally took to the office. I kept the invitation a secret so as not to provide more fodder for my co-workers, already jealous of our relationship. As I checked to make sure my job was spotless, I was afraid that Chef had finally found out that my Social Security number was fake. After so many years working in the restaurant and paying my taxes it was an irrational thought, but I was residing illegally, and rational thought only applies when you have papers.
Instead of taking the internal stairs that connected the restaurant with his apartment, I said goodbye like every night and left through the service door, trying not to slip on the frozen loading dock. As I rounded the corner of Eighty-third and Fifth, the harsh March wind lashed my face with shards of ice.
I climbed the narrow staircase, my winter boots barely fitting on the rungs. I expected the upper floor of the house to be in good shape, but the truth is that the white walls were yellowed and the paint on the door was peeling, as if the wood was shedding its skin.
—Entrez! Chef exclaimed when I knocked on the door. He was so proud to be a Parisian that he not only kept his thick accent, but he addressed all the customers in French, whether they understood him or not. He read Le Monde every afternoon, drank wines from Provence most of the time, and smoked two packs of Gauloises a day, which made him gasp. Apparently living abroad had only made him more French.
I pushed open the door and took off my boots before going inside. An empty glass in one hand and a cigarette in the other, Chef paced the room, shouldering the phone, the creaking of the hardwood floor muffled by several Persian rugs. Faded numbers of the Paris Match were piled on the balcony door, and light from the streetlamp across the street filtered softly through the window. He pointed to a sofa and I sat down next to a stuffed red fox as Chef walked into the other room, talking softly.
"Au revoir, princesse," I managed to catch before he hung up. Dressed in his trademark black three-piece suit and burgundy loafers, Chef looked exhausted. His forehead was covered in deep wrinkles and his eyes had lost their shine. Maybe he had that aspect for a long time and only now that he saw him away from the kitchen could he perceive it.
"Eight-thirty in Paris," he said, sitting up and looking at a grandfather clock that said half-past two in the morning. "I'm the first person you hear when you wake up, I haven't missed a matinee."
"That's good," I replied, not knowing what else to add.
Chef unbuttoned his shirt collar and loosened his tie, but he didn't take off his jacket. He retrieved a bottle of brandy from a bar cart and poured two glasses.
-How are you?
"I'm fine, Chief. It has been a busy night.
"That's what they told me." It's amazing that this cold is lasting so long.
-If very strong. Are you feeling better? —I asked because I was interested, but also to continue the conversation.
—Comme ci comme ça. Tell me, how long have you been working for me?
Speaking slower than usual, Chef seemed to be struggling to find the right words.
“Eight years in May, Chef.
-It's not possible!
-Right? I answered to prevent the discomfort from becoming apparent. I took a long swallow of the brandy and felt the muscles in my right leg cramp.
"Okay, Demetrius. I've been thinking about you a lot lately. You've already learned pretty much everything I can teach you. I think it's time for you to go your way.
He took a drag on his cigarette.
Continuing on one's own path can mean many things, but at the time it only meant one thing: I was saying goodbye. The brandy, which had passed smoothly down my throat, suddenly seared my stomach. I could feel little beads of sweat forming on my face. I turned my head and looked at the stuffed fox with its defiant teeth, its back covered in dust.
“Santé, santé, santé,” Chef said, refilling his glass.
I took a folded paper napkin from my back pocket to control my sneezing.
"What do you mean, Chef?" I asked with a fake smile, as if I didn't understand what he had just said.
“Oh, you're not fired, if that's what you're thinking. It's not at all what I wanted to say.
A nervous laugh escaped me that didn't sound like me.
"Right now, you're in charge of our dessert menu, and I can't even remember the last time I proposed something you hadn't already researched." You're one of the most talented pastry chefs in town, and it's not just me saying it, Frank fucking Bruni is saying it. If you were in Paris, it would be another story. There the competition is brutal, it is part of our DNA. Or is it DNA? Well, whatever.
He took a last drag on the cigarette before putting it out in the ashtray. Not knowing what to make of the silence, I took another long drink from my glass, burning my throat and wondering if his words reflected what he thought or if he was simply trying to make up for the misunderstanding.
—Anyway, my friend Marcel Boisdenier, one of the heads of the Culinary Institute, told me that you should apply for a scholarship. There are very few, but that shouldn't be a problem,” he said triumphantly. You would only have to fill out a few forms to receive federal student aid.
It was so quiet that she could hear Chef's breathing and the distant murmur of voices from the bar below. Looking into his eyes, I felt ashamed, small, and expendable. He had lived with the secret for so many years that there had been periods when he hadn't thought about it for a whole day, but the fear was always there, lurking in the shadows, waiting for the right moment to reappear with renewed force. Although the decision to become undocumented had not been mine, but others', I was the one forced to live with it.
At first Chef seemed confused by my lack of enthusiasm, but perhaps he thought I was overwhelmed by the news. He poured some more fire into our glasses.
"For the future," he said, raising his.
I fixed my gaze on a marble bust resting on a side table and heard how those words imprisoned in my head were slowly released.
-I do not have papers.
He held his glass up, taking his time to analyze what he had just said.
"The necessary papers," I added, as if needing an explanation. Now it was Chef who didn't understand.
-How is it possible? she said after a long pause. You've been here a long time.
He put the glass down on the table and stood still for a few moments. His face seemed to be going through a long list of options, then he said:
"We'll get you the necessary papers."
We finished our brandy bottle while I told him about a part of my past that I had shared with very few people: how I grew up on Loisaida, went to 64 East 10th Street Public School, and lost my accent watching M*A*S* h. He was surprised that I was able to attend school and that many of my classmates were also undocumented. I told him about Mr. Banks, the school principal, a local hero who helped all recently immigrated students navigate the bureaucracy of their new country and find help that didn't depend on the color of his passport. And how, trying to adjust and become Americans, we avoided speaking Spanish except when we cursed, fought—which happened more often than I would have liked—or when we cried.
Since Chef seemed genuinely interested in my past, I told him about my first job cleaning pots and pans at Rio Mar, an old Spanish restaurant on Little Twelfth West whose kitchen was permanently besieged by an army of giant cockroaches. How every Saturday at two in the morning, after the dining room emptied and the tables were set for brunch, I would buy a phone card at a nearby store and talk to my mother from a public phone, always in alleys and alleys no way out, so that when my eyes filled with tears no one could see me.
I left Chef's apartment at four in the morning, after agreeing to go see an immigration attorney, a friend who had helped him with his own citizenship process. I was surprised to learn that Chef had been naturalized, considering how often he looked for occasions to compare the United States unfavorably with France.
Thinking about my past, and reliving those moments that I rarely revisited, had left me very tense. When I opened the door of the building and plunged into the silence of the snow-covered city, I decided to walk home. The streets were so deserted that for the first time in a long time I could hear my thoughts. In knee-deep snow and a harsh, biting wind, I crossed Park Avenue, staring at the yellow light of a cab that had risked one last run and was now stuck in the middle of the road. There were only extreme winter storms every few years, but that night, in the midst of that apocalyptic picture, I realized that I enjoyed the city more when it was paralyzed.
It took me three hours to get back to the Meatpacking District, where I had lived for years. I remembered cycling through the winding cobbled streets, when it was a neighborhood of marginal people whose existence was condemned to long nights in dark and inhospitable alleys, on decaying docks or in stinking bars. The time when artists occupied abandoned buildings and turned the walls into art that years later would be exhibited at the Whitney Museum, when runaway boys sold their youth, and junkies sold what they could.
When I got home, the early morning light made the sky look like Carrara marble. The facade of my building was once again covered in graffiti. As I pushed through the heavy metal door, the chill that ran down my back sent me running up the five flights of stairs. My apartment, with its high ceilings and huge windows, gave the illusion of being outside, and on nights like this, it was almost magical. I was proud to have a house with a fixed rent because it was an earned right, the proof that one had resisted during the difficult times, when nobody wanted to live in the neighborhood.
I took off my wet socks and poured myself a glass of water. A blinking red light across the room indicated that she had a message from Chus, the only person she knew who still used landlines and answering machines. Chus was my uncle, my mother and my father. My mother, unable to support me, had sent me to live with him when I was eight years old. Chus had been in New York since 1967, after fleeing fascist Spain when his name appeared on a list of students organizing against Franco. Chus had crossed the Pyrenees into France, spent time in a Paris commune with other Spanish exiles, and from there had made his way to New York. He had been active in the civil rights movement and a member of the Socialist Party of America. He believed in free love, so almost every morning of my childhood I shared my Frosted Flakes with a different man. I had lived in the same ramshackle tenement on Avenue C for more than two decades. Most of our neighbors—Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, and Colombians—had begun retiring to Spanish Harlem, Sunset Park, and Corona in the mid-1980s.
He was one of the few left. I looked at the flickering light, that soft trapped voice, waiting to be released. I didn't want to hear any other phrase than We'll get you the necessary papers. Having already met with an immigration attorney once before, I knew that little or nothing could be done to regularize my immigration status, but lying in bed that morning with snow falling softly on the windows and blurring the lights on the other side from the street, I pretended to believe otherwise.
The city slept. The usual silence of the early morning lasted in the Meatpacking District until noon. Even though it was my day off, I called the restaurant to make sure they didn't need help. During blizzards, some cooks had the nerve not to show up for work, while cleaners and dishwashers, who were the lowest-paid kitchen staff and lived deep in Brooklyn and Queens, went to the restaurant even though they they had to walk for hours on secondary roads, bridges and tunnels.
I stopped by Florent, my favorite place for breakfast, a French diner about to close its doors after twenty years of good food and rowdy nightlife. The owner, a Frenchman and queer activist, was a huge fan of my desserts. Every year for Bastille Day, I would make her a huge, elaborate cake with Marie Antoinette's face on it, guaranteeing me free food all year long. The restaurant had long since lost its riotous energy, and now the regulars spent most of their time gossiping about rent increases, offers, and counteroffers. The closure of such an emblematic place, a closure that was rumored to take place at the end of the year, was one more sign that sooner or later we would all end up being expelled from the neighborhood.
I punctured the yolk of the egg and waited for the plate to turn yellow, wondering if Chef, who had clearly had luck dealing with the immigration agency as he owned a world-famous restaurant, could help me. I flipped through the pages of a Village Voice someone had left there, mentally replaying our conversation. The bill that slid next to my plate brought me back to reality. I looked at her knowing the total would be zero, but I left a tip that doubled the cost of my breakfast, kissed the waitress good-bye, and stepped out into the cold.
Stepping on the unswept sidewalk and kicking the snow, repeating the words We'll get you the necessary papers, I experienced a strange happiness, a distant memory from my teenage days. I walked through the Village until I felt the bottoms of my pants soaked and stuffy. Despite his reluctance to discuss our lack of papers, I decided to tell Chus about my conversation with Chef. Near Washington Square the traffic had returned to almost normal. I hailed a cab and gave the driver my old address.
I rang the bell three times, a cue I'd used for years to let Chus know I was coming up. Although I had the keys to the apartment, he often got up to close the door so he could go back to his reading. Going up the stairs and seeing it closed, I knew something was wrong. Chus rarely went out in the morning, only when he ran out of Bustelo coffee or one of the rich kids who had moved into the building stole the New York Times from the lobby. The two weekly classes that he taught were always in the afternoon. I closed the door and crept into the living room. Nothing seemed strange, the floor was covered with leaning towers of books and issues of the New Republic, the open kitchen was neatly scrubbed. I called him several times by his name and walked down the hall making noise to let him know that he was directing me to his bedroom. The door was wide open. Chus was lying in bed fast asleep, with the nightstand full of medicines. I took a book open like a bird in flight that rested on his chest, turned off the light and went back to the living room.
Two hours later, Chus came into the kitchen in his pajamas. I was reading an article about Serena Williams, and lentil soup with chorizo, her favorite winter dish, was simmering on the stove.
"There's nothing like waking up to this smell," he said, and then coughed several times as if to express that he was sick.
"I didn't know you had a cold," I told him. She would have come earlier.
Chus moved closer to me, but when he leaned down to kiss my forehead, I jerked my head back.
"Wait, I don't want you to give me the cold."
-I'm sorry. You're right, you're right.
We had seen each other a couple of weeks ago, but he seemed to have aged suddenly, the skin on his face no longer tight and his gait unsteady, as if hesitating to put all his weight on his feet. For the first time, he looked his age, a man who had already lived through his best years.
-How do you feel?
"Oh, I'm fine," he said dismissively, as if it were a silly question to ask.
"Did you go to Dr. Boshnick?" I asked, knowing the answer. Chus had been closely monitoring his T-cell level ever since he became HIV positive, and he went to the doctor frequently.
-Yeah. It won't be this cold that will take me to the other neighborhood,” she said.
He knew that colds terrified him. He was afraid that his immune system wasn't strong enough to fight them off. She had been taking antiretrovirals for more than twenty years, long before the abrasive, debilitating cocktails were replaced by a tiny pill advertised by handsome, underwear-clad Latinos.
—By the way, Alexis contacted me to write him a letter of recommendation. She's applying to Brooklyn College.
"I'll never understand why you always side with my ex-lovers."
“I don't take anyone's side, Deme. The boy is just applying for a place at the university, he needs a little help. It's not like he's moving home.
“The boy, as you call him, is a grown man who still lives with his mother. And in case you forgot, he cuckolded me. Although since all gays in this city are unfaithful, I suppose it's all good.
“You were together almost two years, Deme. He tried to be monogamous.
“He didn't try very hard.
“Not everyone wants a monogamous relationship.
-That's clear. You certainly don't. That's why you're alone.
The radiator hissed, though not loud enough to cover the edge of my words. I looked at the plate, embarrassed.
-I'm sorry. It was not my intention.
He began to serve the lentils.
"I said I'm sorry."
"I heard you the first time."
-I did not mean it. It's just that I'm still very hurt. A whole year without sex and then I find out that Alexis had been sleeping with people left and right.
-I know, I know. He should have been honest about it.
-You forgive me? I really didn't mean what I said.
"Apologies accepted," he replied, though I could tell he was hurt.
His ability to forgive always made me feel less human than him. After my overreaction, now was not a good time to bring up my conversation with Chef.
-How is your job going? Chus said.
He liked me to talk about the restaurant. At first I thought his exasperation that I wouldn't continue my studies after high school would be permanent, but it didn't last long. My dedication to confectionery and early reviews in various publications praising my desserts—although in retrospect they were premature and somewhat exaggerated—convinced him that perhaps I was not destined for the academic life he had envisioned for me.
"Crazy, which I suppose is good." Especially if you're the owner of the restaurant,” I said with a smile.
With Chus's laugh, a small opportunity opened up. I thought maybe it wasn't too late to bring up the subject of Chef. With a big sigh, I threw my shoulders back to get ready, but when I handed her the bread and saw how fragile she was, with those sunken eyes, I decided to turn on the radio. The theme song from All Things Considered filled the room. Chus moved his long fingers as if he were playing an invisible flute. We start to eat.
