How a Queens Kid is Born: Part One
For most of us, it's a tale of immigrant love, loss, and hustle.
Can A24 or NEON jump on some immigrant love story scripts, please? I know they’re out there. Until then, here’s an abridged version of how this Queens kid came to be and some recommendations on where to meet a future fling in the borough.
Eighties baby with a bracelet and her rested Papito and very tired Mommy.
Papito
Proximity to a major international airport, affordable studio apartments, and the TLC Commission made Queens, my father’s home when he arrived from Valparaiso, Chile. Manhattan was where he worked, picking up business suits and dropping them off at martini dinners. Manhattan was also where he sometimes danced. He rarely repeated stories, collecting enough material to keep our conversations fresh during our bi-annual visits. But he did tell me this Manhattan dancing story twice, as if he never wanted me to forget that he was once cool. He parked the cab to grab a quick bite in midtown before heading back home on the 59th Street Bridge. “Come, come,” this guy was yelling, waving him down. My father liked to play coy in his retelling. “Me?,” he said. “Karina, te lo juro, I did not know why he was calling to me.” Apparently, he hadn't noticed the gilded frames around the black art deco number five and four, behind the guy gesturing for him to come in. Papito liked to go on and say, he was in this den of excess and danced, but only for a little, before making his way back to his cab and eventually back to Queens. After his death when my youngest was five months old, I learned some things about my father that makes me think he thoroughly enjoyed himself at Studio 54 and dove into the debauchery head first. For Roberto, Manhattan was for work, for quick bites, and the occasional disco, but Queens was for living.
Me at 5 with my father. My brothers and I never located photos of him in his youth. Either he never had any (a very real possibility since it required a parent/guardian which he didn’t have) or they were lost in his many moves.
My father lived in a studio apartment in Forest Hills. He subsisted on a diet of palta y pan for breakfast (the OG avocado toast); empanadas for lunch bought in bulk from Eddie, a fellow Valparaiso native and owner of San Antonio Bakery; and roadside dinners of foods he’d never find in Chile, curries and tacos and knishes, oh my. Roberto was not nobly fleeing Pinochet’s Chile, but rather a failing business. Maybe an angry loan shark or two. He was married, had two young boys, and yearned to be his own boss in a place where working hard was marketed as the only requirement for success. His stint as a taxi driver made him a quick study in the needs of the city, which in the late seventies and early eighties were aplenty. He longed for an office without wheels, but to be a legitimate business owner, he had to be a ‘legitimate’ American.
Mommy and Mami
Mommy keeps this photo, one of few from her childhood, in her front porch.
My mother was technically born an American but like most people of color in this country, never received the red, white, and blue welcome wagon. She moved from Manatí, Puerto Rico to Los Sures, Brooklyn at 16, trading domestic work for a sophomore seat at Eastern District High School. Three years later, she would fall hard for a local ‘numbers’ guy and right after her 20th birthday give birth to my sister. Throughout that time and till this day, she worked, she worked hard and with dignity, never missing a moment to tell a boss to go f*ck themselves if they spoke to her disrespectfully or in her words, “got fresh.” A factory job where she had to glue purses together, another factory job with doll heads, hospitality gigs, and all this while she cared for my grandmother. Mami, as the grandchildren called her, was in and out of hospitals suffering with what so many Puerto Ricans continue to endure, complications from type-2 diabetes. Mami was losing her eye-sight, needed constant care and medical intervention. My mother, Elba, was living in Queens and with an unreliable G train, needed a car to transport Mami to her appointments.
By the time my sister was approaching double digits, Elba was an administrator at the advertising agency that would let her go twice, the second time after more than 20 years of work. There she met a coworker who wanted to introduce her to a friend in need of someone to marry, “pa papeles,” she said. My mother, was at this point, a single mother, had never married, and saw this as an opportunity to buy a car. I think the offer amounted to $2,000 which today would be roughly $7,000, not a ton of money, but when you’re straddling the poverty line, anything helps. My parents’ meet cute was one of convenience, one that is not unfamiliar to many living in this borough. In my twenties, working two jobs with an 18-credit course load, I received a few of those offers. $20,000 being the highest and the hardest to turn down. “My brother would take care of you,” the lady threading my eyebrows reassured. I was tempted, but at the time I thought I would never marry, faux or not.
The Arrangement
When my parents finally met, their beauty got the best of them. They were instantly attracted to one another. My mother never made it through the doors of Studio 54, but she easily strode past the velvet ropes of other nightclubs. She was stunning. He was handsome. Instead of aging them, their collected trauma positively enhanced their features. Strong brows and piercing dark eyes for my father and these full lips around teeth never braced for my mother. While I’ve never believed in it for myself, I do think this was a case of love at first sight. This was a real relationship but the reality included an arrangement: a car in exchange for marriage. Questions? Yes, I have some too.
Age has softened my mother and she recently confessed how in love she was with my father, but this photo encapsulates much of their relationship.
Wasn’t my father still married to someone in Chile, my brothers’ mother? So, here’s the deal, I’m not quite sure how it worked out. As a child, you don’t ask these questions, because you’re a child and don’t want to be on the receiving end of a bofetada. As an adult, you have a fractured relationship with your father so you never ask him and then he dies five months after reconnecting for the sixth time. I have asked my mother and she claims she didn’t know and that legally, at the time anyway, it didn't matter. From arranged marriages to marriages where there’s a significant age difference or kids from previous relationships, confusing stuff will inevitably come up. What I know with certainty is that Elba and Roberto married in City Hall vowing love and a car in exchange for “papers.” Roberto eventually received legal US citizenship. My mom is still waiting on the car.
A Queens Kid is Born
Many of the photos that I’ll share here are because my mother sought to document memories for both my sister and I. The photo on top of this album page was probably a result of someone telling her to smile and her saying, “aye, please.” The ‘Karina’ cutout was from a chocolate bar she found, cutting the label and gluing it to my baby album.
Two years after they married, I was born. My father wanted a daughter, my mother wanted a sibling for her daughter. I arrived on a September morning in Flushing Hospital to an exhausted mother; my father was asleep in the apartment they shared. Papito did have a name ready for me, inspired by his favorite novel, Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. I can’t make this shit up.
I’ll eventually expand on this abridged version of how my existence came to be and how unoriginal it is. This story has been duplicated hundreds of thousands of times and is simply one of immigrants finding comfort in one another on this strange land. Without these two, I don’t have my very own Queens kids, a story I’ll work on one day as well. Until then check out some of my favorite spots to hang with friends in Queens.
Favorite Queens Hangout Spots
I had my club days as a teen and twenty-something year old in the city and I’m totally okay with never going to club again, but I do love me some dancing and I do love me some socializing with a cold beverage in hand, de vez en cuando. Here’s where I do that in the borough:
Socaerobics at the LIC YMCA
I love this class. It’s kind of like Zumba but with Soca music and provides a great workout. Plus the 70+ year old ladies I take the class with, offer up some good longevity tips. It’s my very own Blue Zone.
Forest Hills Stadium
I’ve seen a show here for the past 5 years and it’s always a good time. The food and bev can be pricey so I make sure to bring a water bottle and eat before I go.
Max Bratwurst und Bier
Austrian fare plus cold glasses of beer. Since Oktoberfest falls near my birthday, I like to come here and participate in their stein holding competition. One year I beat out the ladies and my husband placed 3rd.
Terraza 7
This place is home to me. You’ll see some of the best musical performances in the city here and it still feels very much like a Queens secret.
beautifully written, you captured the queens experience so well 🌀