Immigrants R Us

by Emma Kaufmann fromMommy Has A Headache,










Irish Immigrants arriving in the USA 1902

My husband has been out of town for the last week, and
before he left, he bunged me a load of cash, said au
revoir and left me to fend for myself. I don't mean to
imply that I am one of those followers of that weird
cult book, The Surrendered Wife, which claims that
if a woman submits to her husband's will, her
marriage will be as fragrant as a basket of freshly
baked muffins. I just, oh God, this
is hard to say... I just don't carry credit cards,
because I am not safe with them. Giving me
credit cards would basically be like asking me to fly
a plane. Re the plane, don't be surprised if it
crashes and burns, and re the credit cards, don't be
surprised if I order a lot of lingerie, books and
expensive shampoos over the Internet. So, since I'm
not yet working (no green card), my husband doles me
out a certain amount of cash per week, and when I have
spent that, that is that. Additionally, he always goes
out and puts gas in my car, in essence, making him
more of a surrendered husband than me a surrendered
wife.

So basically, I had not put gas into my car by myself
for two years (please bear in mind that I've
only been driving for four years total). And so
yesterday, there I was, making a valiant attempt to
fill up my car, but however much I manhandled the
nozzle (no innuendo intended), no gas was forthcoming.
I simply could not remember how to do it.

Well, yes, this is a little embarrassing, I thought,
so I went into the gas station shop and talked to the
beautiful sari-clad woman behind the counter, who very
graciously offered to help me.

"You are a foreigner, from England?" she said.

"Yes."

"I think you have not been here long?"

I was going to say, "Actually it's been seven years,"
but it would have been too embarrassing to say that in
seven years I had not learnt how to pump gas, so
instead I said, "No, not long."

"You do not usually pump your own gas?" she said, as
she stuck the nozzle into my car.

"No, I don't."

"I know how you feel. Back in my country, Pakistan, I
had servants who did all that. When I came to America,
I said to my husband, 'What? You want me to fill up my
own gas tank? Are you crazy?'" She chuckled.

Oh goodness me, no. I didn't want her to think I was
some pampered little housewife who had a valet to pump
her gas for her. "I don't pump my own gas because,
well, because my husband does it for me. Not because I
have servants."

And then there was a brief moment of summing each
other up, as we tried to work out the other's social
status. I thought it was pretty obvious that back in
Pakistan, she had been of a higher social status than
me. But maybe she thought that I was of the higher
class. In any case, it mattered not a jot, because us
both being immigrants was the great class leveller.

And I thought of all the immigrants that have entered
this country, and for once I actually thought, I am
glad to be an immigrant. Because when you are a
foreigner, you are equal to all other foreigners. For
example, to some people here, I am as loathed as an
illegal Mexican immigrant (not that I am saying there
is anything wrong with Mexicans, illegal or
otherwise).

I didn't ask the woman why she had left her homeland
to come here. We all have our stories. We are all
running away from something when we come to a foreign
country, and we don't always find the welcome we
expected.

And for that moment, I felt more connected to her than
I have to any born and bred American, since I have
been in this country. It was a good feeling actually,
knowing that these were my people. That all American
immigrants, past and future, were my community.