ONE DAY WE WILL BE LEGAL

BY LINA ZELDOVICH

The nights are the worst for me. I lay in bed with only half of my brain asleep, while the other keeps listening to the darkness. Listening for anything that may come—shouts, shots, smells. And the sleeping half on my brain never fully rests either. It keeps waking me up with nightmarish images of burning homes and people’s heads being bashed in. Even the old boiler wakes me up when it turns on. This monster chugs, churns, and roars like a tank rolling at you. It’s right on the other side of the wall where my bed is, so I can’t help hearing it in my dreams.

Lola, my sister, doesn’t suffer from these nightmares so much. I have too big of an imagination, she tells me. I should stop seeing things in my head, she says. I disagree. Lola just forgets things easier than I do. She’s better at letting go. But I keep replaying the past in my mind, hearing things that don’t exist in our quiet American basement.

That’s why it’s so nerve-wracking when Bibi breaks the silence. One moment he’s out like a light, and next he’s screaming his lungs out. Lola says it’s because he has nightmares, like I do. But I don’t get how a five-month-old can have nightmares. He hasn’t hidden in smoldering buildings, swallowing smoke and gagging himself so that the mob wouldn’t find him. He never deliberated about what was worse—burning alive inside or running out and getting shot. Unless, of course, Mother Nature passed our memories, or at least Lola’s ones, onto him. Maybe that’s why she has forgotten many of them—she just gave some to Bibi, along with her big brown eyes and long eyelashes. 

The moment Bibi cries, the banging starts. He wakes up the old lady above us and she starts banging her cane on the floor. She wants us to shut Bibi up. But banging only makes him cry harder. So she bangs louder. It’s a vicious circle that we have to break every night. I don’t know why her own roaring boiler doesn’t bother her, but Bibi does.

She just doesn’t like kids. She tells us this all time. She complains that we lied to her. And we did. 

We are not at all what she expected when she rented us this basement place a year ago. Back then we were just two earnest-looking hardworking young girls, trying to make it in this country. We seemed like quiet, no-nonsense tenants—and now look, we’ve got Bibi and all these other kids around. Well, we already knew Bibi was on the way, but we couldn’t tell her. She was the only one willing to rent without asking for credit history and bank statements and all that stuff. We had none of that because people pay cash when you clean their houses. She was fine with cash, too.

She had asked us a lot of questions. Where we came from, where was our family. And whether we were legal, too. So we nodded. We said, “Yes.” We added, “Of course.”

Mind you, even our immigration lawyer can’t answer this question for sure. It depends on a lot of things, he tells us. On the laws being passed, revoked or changed. If everything works, he says, one day the answer would indeed be yes. For now, we just say the word. But the old lady didn’t care. Maybe because she didn’t have too many takers for her small, dark basement that smells of mold and dust.

Now she wants us out. She says she rented to two young women, not to a family, not to a kindergarten. But what can we do—Lola screwed things up. She had this idea that Jay would marry her, and she’d become a citizen that way, and we’d all live together. Anyone with half a brain could see Jay wasn’t gonna do it. Lola just played a make-belief game with herself. She’s the one with an outsized imagination, not me.

Now she says that she’ll get her citizenship because Bibi was born here, but I’m not so sure.

Before Lola got big, we used to clean houses together. Now she can’t come with me because she has Bibi. So she babysits other people’s kids in the apartment all day, for other immigrants who don’t have papers or money to send them to a real kindergarten.

But the kids make noise. They scream and shout and cry. And the old lady gets mad. She yells at us. She tells us we are nothing but trouble. She wants us to leave but we don’t have any other place to go. And so I lie in bed, night after night, and think about everything. Being yelled by the old lady is still better that hiding from a crazy mob searching for you. That’s what I tell myself over and over, like a lullaby, until I lull half of my brain asleep while the other one keeps watch, checking for smells and sounds.

“Maybe now that Lola has Bibi, who is a citizen, she can convince them she belongs to this country. I have no place to go and no family left.”

It is the smell that wakes me up one night. It’s not the smell of gasoline being splashed onto people’s homes, but it’s so reminiscent of it that my awake half screams at me in terror. I sniff the dark, thick air, trying to comprehend whether I’m still dreaming my nightmare or back to the living.

Willing myself awake, I recognize the odor: the smell of gas. And it must be coming from the boiler room. I can even hear some faint hiss through the wall. I know every sound that boiler makes, and it’s not its regular clang.

I shake Lola awake, and she grabs Bibi, who weirdly doesn’t wake up, soft and warm and floppy like a rag doll, with the binky hanging off the corner of his mouth. We run outside and up the stairs, and bang on our lady’s front door. Her bell doesn’t work, and she sees no reason to fix it. We keep knocking, but nothing happens.

How can she not hear us, I wonder? She wakes up the second Bibi lets out a sound, but she sleeps through this racket.

“What if the gas wafted up and poisoned her? Or maybe it’s carbon monoxide?” I ask Lola. “What are we going to do?”

“You always come up with the worst thing,” Lola grunts, throwing Bibi from one arm onto the other. His binky falls out and bounces down the steps, but he’s still doesn’t wake up, so Lola doesn’t notice. “If it was carbon monoxide, it would poison us first, stupid! Stop being so negative!”

I think of going down for the binky, but just then the old lady finally comes to the door. “Who are you?” she screams from inside the house. “What are you doing? Get the hell out of here!”

“It’s us,” Lola shouts. “The basement stinks of gas! You have to call the service!”

The old lady unlocks the door and squints at us in the darkness, her messy white hair looking like a halo around her long face. “What did you do down there?”

“Nothing,” I yelp. “I smelled the gas in my sleep.”

She regards us with her droopy eyes. “Come in and stay here.” She shuffles past us and down to the basement, and quickly comes back up, hurrying and worried. And then she makes the call while we sit in her living room surrounded by old paintings and cracked porcelain figurines.

Twenty minutes later a utility truck pulls up and men in some sort of a uniform march down to our basement. We watch them through the front window, hiding behind the lacy curtains. She yelled at us to stay in, but she didn’t have to. We have no desire to be seen by people in any uniform. Uniforms means authority and authority means trouble.

Maybe now that Lola has Bibi, who is a citizen, she can convince them she belongs to this country. I have no place to go and no family left.

Half an hour later, just as the sun begins to rise, melting the darkness, the uniformed men emerge from down below. All but one load up into the truck. The last one stays on the porch, talking to our lady. I can’t hear it, but I can tell this conversation is making her very unhappy. As he talks, pointing down to the basement, she grows tense with his every word. She purses her lips. She clutches and unclutches her cane. “I hope he isn’t telling her we broke her boiler,” I whisper to Lola, careful not to wake up Bibi who is still miraculously asleep, as if the leaking gas worked some aromatherapy magic. Normally he’d scream at least twice already. “I hope she isn’t gonna throw us out.”

Lola grumbles at me again. “Stop with the doom already!”

“Well, you’re the eternal optimist,” I snap back. “That didn’t get you far, did it?”

“Are you gonna guilt me about Bibi for the rest of my life?”

“No. Only until we can find our way out of this mess.”

The man finally heads back into the truck and our lady trudges up the stairs and through the door. She looks beat, and it worries me. I’m used to her being grumpy. I’d prefer that now.

“Can we go back?” Lola asks.

The lady looks at both of us, her eyes narrowing. “Yes, you can,” she says hoarsely. “For now.”

“What do you mean for now?” I ask.

She stoops over her cane. “I mean you have to move out. I can’t have you stay down there anymore.”

“Why?” I gasp. I was right after all—she is going to throw us out. “We didn’t break the boiler! It just…”

“I know you didn’t break it,” she cuts in. “But I can’t have people living there. That’s what he said.”

“Why not?” Lola jumps in; her voice is suddenly small and shrilly. “We’ll be quiet, I promise! I’ll keep Bibi quiet! I won’t babysit anymore. We won’t….”

“I said, I can’t have people living there,” the old lady insists. “Not after this. It’s not a real apartment. It’s just a basement. It’s not a legal one.”

I stand there, stunned. All this time, we were worried about us being legal. We thought it was out legal status that was a problem. Turns out, we may be more legal than the place we live in, after all.

“How can an apartment be illegal?” Lola asks. “It’s part of the house, isn’t it? If the house was built, it is legal, right?”

“I can’t rent it, because it’s not up to the code.” The old lady bangs her cane again. “The city has a code, a bunch of fire and safety rules, and such. The basement wasn’t built as a separate living space. I’ve been renting it, but now I can’t. If I will, they will report me. And if anything happens to you, I go to jail. You have to move.”

 “But we have no place to go,” Lola says. I can hear tears in her voice. “That place worked so well for us. It is our home. Why can’t a basement be a home?”

“You ask the city.” The old lady sighs. “When my family came to this country, we lived in a basement too. For years we did. It wasn’t legal either, but no one cared back then. We all just cared about making it. I know what it’s like—making it. That’s why I rented to you. And that’s why I was mad that you had kids and babies down there all the time. I don’t mind adults, but this ain’t a place for kids and babies. It’s got no good light, no good air. But I knew you were trying to make it, so I let you be. And now I can’t have you. I need the money to keep the house, but I can’t rent out the basement. You must go. They will come back to check.”

“It’s not fair.” Lola’s sniffs get louder. “If the basement apartment works for you and works for us, why does the city mess things up? Why does anyone care? Why…” She stops talking and begins to sob.

I take her by the hand and lead her back to our basement. It’s still our home for tonight. Maybe even for a few more nights. Maybe I can convince the old lady to let us stay for another week.

Or maybe not. I’ve never seen her so weary. She means it this time—we have to find a different place. Only now we can’t hide Bibi so we won’t find a cheap basement with a roaring heater. I don’t know if anyone will ever rent a legal apartment to two uncertainly legal girls with a screaming baby.

Lola plops on her bed, holding Bibi like a comfort object. “I don’t understand this country,” she weeps. “They take you in, but they make you feel so unwanted. They promise you an asylum, but they act as you’ll never get it. You find a place that works for you, but it’s illegal to live in it.  It’s unfair, just so unfair. They say this country is free and fair, but it’s all just words! How is this fair?”

I don’t know why Lola still thinks the world is supposed to be fair. I don’t know how she can expect any justice after the blaze took our village, and our house and our parents. But we did expect justice in this country. That’s what everyone told us to expect. Maybe we aren’t getting it yet. We’re still learning the strange American ways. This is yet another one of these inexplicable things, just like the immigration laws.

Lola’s sobs grow quieter, devolving into soft sniffles as she falls asleep, hugging Bibi like a toddler holds a stuffed toy.

She always falls asleep, no matter what. I’m the one who’s gonna stay awake again, thinking and worrying about everything—finding a new home, getting our papers, even the fact that Bibi is weirdly silent tonight.

It seems fitting that not-so-legal people could live in a not-so-legal place, but that’s clearly not how things work. Perhaps one day these rules and laws and codes will finally make sense to us. If we are still here and legal, that is.

Or maybe we have to be legal first, to understand the legalities of everything. And the justice behind it. Right now, I don’t see any, peering into the dark. I just hear the damn boiler turning on again, roaring like a tank rolling towards me. And then I hear Bibi wailing—one thing I don’t have to worry about anymore.

(Author’s note: In my own immigrant journey I met many other refugees. It struck me how often our stories were similar, regardless of where we came from. In this story, I deliberately avoided anchoring my characters to any geographical place of origin or any specific culture. I wanted them to be universal immigrants facing universal problems and universal dilemmas.)