Imagine that disaster has struck your home. Your home is gone. There is no bread. No water. No life. People are saving themselves in any way they can. Your family is taken in, by a relative, by a friend, or by a neighbor. He gives you shelter and food; educates your children in schools and universities; and helps you master a new profession, find a job. All he asks in return is to also behave in a becoming way, in a way that matches the behavior of your host.
However, you quickly figure out what in this house isn’t nailed down and try to swipe things, to put it mildly, behind your host’s back. You determine where you can cheat, steal, and bend the rules. And you destroy the peace that had reigned in the host’s home for many years.
“Ugh—disgusting! Shameful ingratitude towards your savior,” any normal person would say, including an immigrant. However, if that immigrant will look closer, he will see right in front of him a parallel between this ungrateful neighbor and many of our former compatriots who came (running!) to America, saving themselves from thousands of disasters at home.
They took us in as family. We felt this firsthand, in the peace of our old age, in the confidence we felt for our children’s futures, in pensions, in scholarships, in free medicine, food stamps, student privileges, thriving businesses.... You could add to this list forever. And the longer the list, the lower one wants to bow to this amazing country. Though here is what bothers me: how much do we relate to all of this?
We, like this same ungrateful neighbor, figure out right off the bat what isn’t kept track of on a daily basis in America; how much they will take your word for. Just try to verify whether a car accident was accidental or intentional. And the money you can get from an insurance agency is quite substantial. Where it smells of money, one can occasionally forget about honor, dignity and gratitude. And for certain newly arrived refugees, “wreckers of their own cars” is becoming a first occupation.
Is that really the extent of it?! Our descendants of the unforgettable Ostap will find 101 ways to take over that which isn’t nailed down.
Not long ago, an elderly neighbor asked to have a letter from Medicare read and translated from English. The letter begins: “Help put an end to fraud.” Later in the letter comes the question for my neighbor: was she in the office of such-and-such a doctor on such-and-such a date? I translate it for her. She thinks it over for a second and then answers: no. She spent the entire summer with her grandchildren in the Catskill Mountains, so there is no way she could have been in Brooklyn in July. And furthermore, the doctor’s name is unfamiliar to her, and she never went to this address for treatment. The old woman looks at me with fear in her eyes. As one who has lived her life honestly and is filled with gratitude for everything she has received in America, it is very unpleasant to see her name next to the word “fraud.” It is difficult for me to explain to her the things that go on here with our people. Indeed, it is sometimes difficult to understand it myself.
On the street I run into a friend who has an unusually festive, puffed-up, sprayed hairdo.
“Are you going to a family celebration?” I ask.
“No, I was at a restaurant yesterday with all the Medicare patients....”
“???!!!”
“Our doctor’s office takes all the patients out to restaurants. So that we don’t switch doctors.”
“So you think the food and atmosphere there are suitable for old, sick people? A special diet, clean air, quiet, calm?
“No, of course not. There’s music and noise and spicy seasonings...but it’s nice when you’re invited out.”
Such invitations end badly. Especially when the most active “innovators” of untraditional rehabilitation measures are ultimately invited by investigation agency employees. And “our people” are figuring into such cases more and more often. Just a few months ago, all the press was writing about a criminal group that faked accidents, leading to false treatment but taking entirely real money from the insurance companies. And guess who was at the head of this criminal ring? Of course, it was our people.
For many, including myself, it is unpleasant to hear “our people.” “What do you mean, they’re ‘my people’,” an honest person will cry indignantly, “I live an honest life, I rely only on my salary or pension. I don’t take what’s not mine.”
Yes, the majority of immigrants lives honestly, feeling grateful every day to this country and to those who invited us and took us in. Unfortunately, though, the faint odor emanating from one or two members of the community envelops the entire space and for Americans who are not used to such goings-on, it is difficult to see that it is only certain people who do these things. Which is why a general opinion has formed that all of us are underhanded, and are just looking for more ways to steal or someone to swindle.
All of Brighton Beach got a whiff of this odor recently. Not in the figurative sense but in a very literal, putrid sense. As usual, I had gone to the hairdresser’s to get my hair cut, but I had to bolt. I was right behind the other clients, who couldn’t stand the horrible smells issuing, apparently, from the basements of the neighboring fish store. Guilty of nothing, but penalized by a loss of clients, the hairdressers explained, “The fish store owners hadn’t paid for their utilities months. They cut off the store’s electricity, water, gas and telephone. Rather than paying, the fishmongers disappeared, leaving their perishable goods in refrigerators that aren’t working. The result is on hand. Rather, it is in the noses of all of Brighton, all nearby businesses, residents, and passersby.”
“Why are you so surprised? Lots of our businesses do that,” people in the know explained to me. “They don’t pay any bills until their utilities are cut off. Then they change locations and open a new business under a new name. And everything starts over again.”
...Brighton Beach, Little Russia, the Great Migration...No matter what you call this cozy place on American soil that looks better by the day, it is our home now. And everything will be fine at home when it is clean and rid of bad smells. And then the hospitable Americans won’t regret for a second that they gave food and shelter to our kindred brothers and sisters who fled across the ocean.
