Part One – Here
(Western Hemisphere)
CHAPTER THREE – GETTING USED TO A NEW LIFE: STUDY AND WORK
The chapter “Getting used to a new life”, like a potpourri, actually consists of several motifs, connected and mixed over period of time – sometimes small, and sometimes quite significant. I still can’t decide how to recall them – linearly – one phenomenon at a time, or all of them, mixed together. Well, for now I’ll catch the memories, and later during the editing of my pages, I’ll may rewrite them in a form that I like best.
It seems to me that the first important thing was to move into “our own” apartment, but perhaps this was not the case.
As you remember, I began to describe settling into a new country with housing. A cheap but good apartment turned out to be the main support of our new life. All our friends were amazed that we paid so little, but the trick was in following. According to local rules, the owner cannot increase rent of an apartment in a multi-story residential building as he pleases, but only by 2-4% per year, depending on the level of inflation. It was possible to make major repairs, replace all equipment and raise the rent by 20% only during changing tenants. But when people were paying a bribe to a manager to move in, they agreed that the price would not rise, as if they were staying with relatives. And the repairs were only hygienic, without changing appliances.
In the very first days after our arrival, we applied to NYANA and began receiving monthly financial assistance. I can’t say exactly how long it lasted, something like six months while we studied English in courses. Probably, the process of learning a language is interesting to describe, although it is not new at all. Thousands, if not millions of people all over the world have completed it with greater or lesser success, with or without interest, with ease or stress and other “or”. However, the process is multifactorial and therefore difficult to comprehend. It all depends on whether you are familiar with the language or not, whether you have more or less ability, a persistent or “under-hand” desire to learn, and on many other factors. I think that it was more difficult for those who studied Hebrew in Israel – most were previously not familiar with either the language or the script.
Someone says, “How could I study a language when I had to earn money to live in a new country?”
And another is perplexed, “How could I not learn the language when I had to earn money in a new country?”
I admit that this was also a heterogeneous process for us. I went to the courses with pleasure; English was not a new language for me. My wife studied French all her life, it was more difficult for her, but she tried her best and achieved significant success. Perhaps the most difficult thing was studying language for our daughter. Although she went to school and absorbed the new language there, she was at first “absolutely mute” like many children, and then suddenly began speaking. And then life became easier for her…
The teachers on the courses were different, mostly university students. One guy became a writer and is now a professor at the same university where he studied many years ago. Another girl died from a drug overdose. She was an emotional person. I remember during class she sat on the edge of the table in front of us and, spreading her legs, said: “The topic of today’s lesson will be sex and everything around it. Go, look. What do you see?”
“Tights!” answered the bravest ones. “Right. And what do you imagine?”
“Fima! Let’s leave!” one of the women exploded, “These are courses in debauchery, not English.”
“Sit, Fima!” the language teacher commanded, “If you can say this in English, then go. Otherwise, you are obliged to learn everything that is taught to you in our courses where your free education is paid for by my taxes!”
Both Fima and his active wife stayed and learned phrases for communicating with a pharmacist, gynecologist, urologist, a bunch of common street words and expressions and in addition to it, the theory of reliable memorization caused by “emotional stress.”
I remember that there was a break for lunch after one and a half to two hours of classes. The immigrants unwrapped their sandwiches prepared at home and chewed them on the same desks. Some, like me, went out to flex themselves.
On one of these outings, I noticed that the cafe on the first floor of our building had a salad bar. That is, if a visitor bought something, for example, a bun with sausage, he could take some chopped tomatoes and pickles, pour milk into his coffee or tea and add sugar – all these from the bar for free.
After this “discovery”, I began to buy a glass for a dollar, into which I could pour as much coffee as I wanted (repeatedly) with any amount of milk and sugar, and also take for free vegetables from the bar for my sandwich. I was having breakfast, sitting on a comfortable chair in an inexpensive Manhattan cafe and thinking,
“What a magnificent country! How great that we’ve finally moved here!”
I liked to move independently in a new city, in a new country, where even the subway passengers were a completely heterogeneous mass. Some, dressed very well and officially, were hurrying to their offices and companies in Manhattan, others, in more modest clothes, obviously not having a prestigious job, went about their equally important business: to work in the service sector, to classes at universities and colleges, numerous courses (of anything), to get government benefits and privileges, or maybe just rode around the city.
In terms of national, or as they say here, ethnic origin, the diversity of passengers was much greater than in the southern, most multinational cities of the former USSR. One day I was struck by a picture – a black passenger, the spitting image of the great Russian poet A.S. Pushkin, with a blissful smile on his face, was hanging out over comics with Superman and half-naked girls. I even later included this image in a song about two countries: There and Here.
For Lilya, traveling by metro was far from pleasant. She had to hold her purse tightly to herself and stay away from possible exhibitionists, frotteurists and the like. In fact, most of the suspicious individuals were simply unfortunate mental patients who did not have their own home and did not want to live in government shelters. The warmth of the subway gathered them there in the cold months, where they spent the night, moved, ate and defecated, in a word, showed all the signs of living beings, regardless of the attitude of other, no less living citizens and guests of the giant city.
My daughter rarely used transport. We walked a lot: to parks, to buy groceries in stores, to visit friends and relatives who lived nearby. One day my daughter and I went to a bank branch located half an hour away. I just wanted to try a new method for myself – taking money from my account using a card. After all, nothing like this existed in the USSR in those years.
We went to the machine at the bank, I inserted my card into it, entered the code and ordered twenty dollars. The bill came out of the slot of the machine straight into our hands.
“How was it happen?” my daughter was amazed. “I asked for a machine, and it gave me money,” I explained.
“Go ask for more!” demanded the smart child.
Sometimes we took a bus. First, I found out how to pay there. Just upon entering, I asked the driver to show me how the cash-machine works. The driver turned out to have a sense of humor. He announced to the whole bus,
“Ladies and gentlemen. There is a new American among us who has never bought a ticket on a New York bus in his life. Let’s welcome him!”
All the passengers have started applaud. Then the driver explained to me that the machine used to accept any bills and give change. But small bills quickly ran out, and the machines now only accept coins, and you need to change them in advance, or, if you don’t have them, as a last resort, ask passengers for help. In honor of my first trip, I was quickly given a bunch of coins to change. In general, the mood of the people was very friendly, incomparable to Moscow gloominess and detachment.
Ana was enrolled in the local elementary school (first five grades), in a class according to her age. This is a typical American practice – first they are enrolled a child to a class appropriate to his or her age, and then, when the child masters English, he/she can be promoted forward if a child is so capable and knowledgeable… in mathematics.
Oddly enough, children begin to speak a new language very quickly, and they can be transferred from English (second language) for newcomers, to English for children born here. As a rule, there are no problem with this. However, the problem is when tension arises in the relationship between children.
Ana complained to me that one boy named Mike, during lunch in the cafeteria, throws pieces of a wet napkin soaked in milk at her. Ana demanded him to stop, but it didn’t help; it was forbidden to fight, and I have a very disciplined daughter, so she came to her Dad for advice on what to do. I couldn’t think of anything better than sending my daughter to warn the class teacher that the boy was bullying her, and if this didn’t stop, she would deal with him herself. The teacher apparently did not attach any importance to her warning and wrote off the problem as unimportant.
During the next lunch, Mike continued the shelling. Then Ana took a whole napkin the size of a small towel, dipped it into a glass of milk, made a lump like a snowball, and slammed it into Mike’s face with all her might. Of course, the “snowball” got to his eye. There were screams and shouts, “Call the nurse, call the director!”
The teacher honestly told everything to the director. Ana was not punished, and when the new boy tried to attack her the next year, she made only one warning,
“Watch, otherwise it will be like with Mike!” and it turned out to be enough.
NYANA’s help in finding a doctor for Ana was very important. The fact is that the initial insurance, which legal immigrants receive, is usually meager, and many doctors are not willing to accept it, so you need to find a doctor accepting the patient for free. This requires knowledge of how to search right doctors and make frequent calls, which is not easy for beginners. Therefore, the organization’s help is invaluable!
Soon we received a call from NYANA and were given the phone numbers of a pulmonologist and a dentist. Both began treating Ana for free, and then she remained a regular patient of theirs for many years. It turned out to be interesting with her teeth: they restored her broken teeth from plastic that polymerizes in ultraviolet light in one session… But that’s not all; the doctor owned a children’s summer camp (like a pioneer camp) in the mountains, where Ana was taken for free in the first summer. It turns out that such charity pays off quite well. In addition to a tax reduction for lost income, the camp receives a grateful family that buys vouchers for several years, and also attracts the children of friends and relatives as company for their own child.
One of the main aspects of life in a new country is work and earnings. In the beginning, learning the language was our main job. And later we took on what we thought was necessary, regardless of whether it was right or wrong. As always, there can be many decisions in life, and which of them is the best becomes clear only many years later, and even then only conditionally.
I undoubtedly wanted to restore my specialty as a doctor, and Lilya began working as a bookkeeper in a medical office. Who could have known that my studies would drag on for several years? I sometimes joke that I took Ilyich’s call to “Study, study and study!” too literally. Not only did I receive two degrees, but I also moved and again studied all subjects in order to pass the American exams for a doctor’s license, this time in English. It took me five years. Why not the third university? One thing was certain: those who study hard will pass exams and sooner or later regain their medical specialty.
NYANA also helped emigrants with employment. It sent doctors to courses for medical technicians: phlebotomists, radiologists, pathologists, laboratory technicians, ultrasound technicians and the like. About thirty of doctors were gathered at NYANA office and was given a lecture about all these possibilities. They didn’t interest me. I said, “Thank you very much for the information, but I will persist in taking the exams.”
The instructor smiled with understanding and noted, “I don’t know what this man’s fate will be, but he will definitely become a doctor.”
Apparently she has already seen a lot, and, looking ahead, I will say that she was right. But, my God, how long it turned out to be!
Nick Neim's Stories 