Like most Guyanese of Portuguese origin, Frankie DeFreitas found himself in a state of bitter-sweet agony when the Government began to target all multinational companies operating in the country for possible nationalization.
The Portuguese were just one of the six ‘official races’ that constituted the fabric of Guyanese society. Though a small minority they were highly visible. For one, they were light skinned people among a pervasively brown and black populace. For another, they were favored by the British colonists who afforded them privileges and positions in the corporate and business sectors that were not readily available to the other groups regardless of their qualifications. In the sugar estates they more often held management positions with less qualifications than their subordinates while their wives and daughters locked up all the keys jobs in multinational stores and businesses. Insulated by the English overlords life for them was like a slow dance at a party. A dance they wished would never end.

However, like all good things the party did come to an end. The day after the government announced the takeover of the sugar industry most expatriates and look-alikes bailed out from the land as if being forewarned of impending judgment. The British, American and Canadian embassies opened their doors and the Portuguese, knowing fully well that with the English gone their support system would collapse, seized the opportunity without much forethought. The fear that they would be relegated to the bottom of the social and economic ladder was perhaps founded and justifiable (but misguidedly so). But for the Portuguese the notion that servants should become masters was even more intolerable. As Frankie DeFreitas confessed to his friend Mohan Lal, they would rather be subservient to white rule in America and Canada than submit to a non-white government in the country of their birth. Frankie was one of the people who migrated with his parents to America. He was fifteen at the time. Having to leave the floor in the middle of the slow dance was the bitter part of his migratory experience.

The sweet part, and which he savored almost immediately upon setting foot at JFK International Airport in New York, was the realization that he was an invisible minority. He noticed how quickly the immigration officer processed his visitor’s visa in comparison to that of the East Indians and the handful of blacks that joined the exodus and arrived on the same Guyana Airways 747 flight. The officer asked him how he was doing, if he had a good flight, and wished him an enjoyable stay. But Jamal, the East Indian man, did not have an easy passage through immigration. The officer scanned his passport for traces of counterfeiting and asked him repeatedly why he wanted to visit America. When he said he was hoping to do some business the officer asked him how much money he brought and what he intended to purchase. Then the American officer began to grill the nervous “coolie” with questions about his family in America – where they lived and what they did for a living. After fifteen harrowing minutes of interrogation Jamal was soaked in hot perspiration mixed with cold sweat. His ordeal continued at Customs where the officers caught a whiff of the bunjal sheep guts his mother had sent for her sister in Queens and ordered it confiscated. Poor Jamal passively handed over the sheep guts, completely unaware that the black Customs officer had a long tongue for Guyana curry and that he appropriated the spoils for himself and his buddies.

Kwasi Adams, the black man from South Ruimveldt, fared a little better. Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Michael Jordan and Al Sharpton were among the blacks of note, or notoriety as in the case of the last, who in their struggles for equality made life for all blacks more bearable as whites were fearful of allegations of racial profiling and bigotry. The growing sense of privilege was evident on Frankie's visage when he saw another hapless coolie boy being escorted into a back room.

Invisible minority! How sweet those words would become to his ears. He was invisible to the ethnic perception of the white racial groups and would therefore be treated as a white person. Why, if he loses his Guyanese accent he might even fool his own countrymen as to his identity and regain the spurious superiority he once feigned back home.
The week after his arrival he enrolled in Taft High School in the Bronx. On his very first lunch break he noticed the advantages of his invisibility. There were no white kids in High Schools in the Bronx, only Puerto Ricans, blacks and Pakistanis. People from every nation in the world found themselves aligned to one of those three ethnic groups. Blacks were blacks, all Spanish-speaking people were Puerto Ricans, and every caste and tribe of the one billion Indians were Pakis. But Frankie was in a category all by himself. No one was quite sure what to make of his identity and he was ever cautious to keep it a secret. When Pablo, a Mexican kid asked him about his country of origin he had a premeditated answer.

"Spain. I from Spain," he said with a straight face.

"But you look like Puerto Rican."

"No! No! I, from Spain. I am Spanish," he continued as though being wrongfully accused by an interrogator in a prison camp.

Frankie's vehement denial of a Puerto Rican heritage had a lot to do with the daily admonishing he received from his mother.

"Son," Margaret would say, "them Puerto Rican people got bad reputation over here in the Bronx. Them don't like to work. You see them sitting on lawn chairs on the pavement drinking beer and turning up their boom-box loud when they should be working? Is that what give them bad name. They just living off the government welfare and food stamp. So don't ever say you is a Puerto Rican, or Mexican. You is a Spanish man."

"And suppose they ask me about Spain, like this Mexican boy Pablo. He is always asking me stuff like where I come from."

"Tell him you left Spain when you was baby and you never went back."
So Frankie had a ready defense for his fake Spanish origin and as the months passed he perfected his new identity to the point he became an inveterate liar. Slowly he ditched his dictionary of Guyanese slang and padded his literary repertoire with cliché and phrases specific to New York and the Bronx in particular. After his first year in High School he sounded so much like Santana that he invoked the ire of his mother. "Is how you talking so?" she would ask in consternation, "look, don't let me hear you speak like that again, you not no Puerto Rican." Frankie would smile and retire to his bedroom while she mumbled to herself in the living room.

Life for Frankie DeFreitas in the ensuing months proved to be good and he took advantage of his fortune. He graduated with good grades from Taft High School and made it to Hunter's College where he enrolled for Accounting. Frankie wanted to be a CPA and was well on his way. But there was one lingering problem. He was still an illegal alien.

His parents had arrived in America on visitors’ visas which had long since expired. But at the insistence of his uncle, and for two hundred dollars each, they were able to secure fake green cards and social security numbers from a Chinese huckster on Canal street, just two blocks south of the ramp to the Manhattan bridge. When Frankie's dad questioned the legitimacy of the card he was told by a friend that the numbers were those of since deceased citizens and with so many millions of people in America the Immigration and Naturalization Service would never be able to keep track of who is dead and who is alive. Besides, the friends said, “The INS will not investigate as long as there is no crime and the IRS gets their taxes.”

Nevertheless the issue of their illegal status in the country troubled his parents, especially his mother. She longed to return home for a visit but knew that any such trip was a one-way journey home. It was only when Frankie's grandfather passed away and his father could not go to the funeral that his parents made a concerted effort to address the problem. They explored several avenues by which they could obtain legal status but concluded that the only viable option seemed to be the route of babysitting. Young girls from Guyana, India and the Philippines, and from some other countries were being employed as babysitters by wealthy Jewish couples. After four to five years they received their green cards and were free to stay with their employers or to find other jobs. Since the majority of them were trained typists and secretaries they had little problem finding decent paying secretarial and administrative positions in Manhattan.

Manuela Ramos was one of the lucky girls. She landed a job in the World Trade Center with a view overlooking the Hudson river and the George Washington bridge. As expected she capitalized on the panoramic view and on clear days took pictures of the downtown Manhattan, some of which she included in the letters she sent to her family in the Philippines. Her mother was delighted to share the photographs with her neighbors and on a postcard that featured the Twin Towers she painstaking counted 102 floors and pointed out to her friends exactly where her daughter had her cubicle.

Margaret met and made friends with Manuela in the Western Beef supermarket at Hunts Point where West Indians and Philippinos scrounged bargains on the weekend. The door-crasher was usually a 20-lb bag of chicken which sold for less than two dollars. In Guyana chicken was like caviar, expensive and to be enjoyed only on special occasions like Easter, Christmas and other special days. But on Saturday mornings the West Indians charged into Western Beef like the pioneers during the gold rush. Margaret remembered their first encounter at the chicken freezer.

"This is a real bargain, nah?" Margaret asked rhetorically.

"Yes, zis is true," Manuela responded, "and really good cheeken."

"Especially when you deep fries it."

Then Matilda, a buxom Jamaican woman who must have overheard Margaret's Guyanese accent, interrupted their conversation with an unrequited suggestion.

"I see you all buying that chicken. You shouldn't. It full of fat and cholesterol."

"What do you mean?" Margaret asked querulously as she glanced at the three sacks already tossed into her shopping cart.

"By the time you cut out all that fat you left with so much chicken," explained Matilda as she cupped her fingers. Then Margaret asked, almost in a whisper as if she didn't want anyone to overhear, "Why you cutting out the fat? To me that is the sweet part. My son and my husband always fighting for the skin, especially when it deep fried."

"Deep fried! You deep fry chicken with the skin? Girl, you looking for heart attack! That is bad cholesterol. Must ask your doctor."

Just as rudely as she interrupted she left and strolled down another aisle, wearing a smile indicative of one who just spoiled a bright moment for someone she disliked. Margaret reluctantly returned two of the plastic bags to the freezer. Since that time she and Manuela forged an unlikely friendship for two women of such vastly differing cultural and social influences.

Manuela had since obtained her green card and commenced work as an administrative assistant at a brokerage housed in the World Trade Center. In the meanwhile the Jewish couple with whom she had labored for five years at their upstate New York residence had a second baby and were looking for a nanny. The husband phoned Manuela at her office and asked her if she knew someone suitable for the position. He was willing to sponsor them in return. Manuela called Margaret right away and gave her the news. The Jews were good people, she said, and they treat their employees very well. She told Margaret that as a live-in maid and babysitter she was able to save a lot of money in those four years, so much that she could sponsor her family, buy a car, and put a down payment on a house in White Plains.

Margaret was excited at the prospect of any job that promised her American residency even if it meant separation from her family during the week. Since their arrival in the country she worried constantly about her husband and son and every time she heard news that immigration authorities were raiding factories for illegal aliens she would plummet into a prolonged episode of depression. But Frankie's dad was fiercely proud and would hear none of her foolish babysitting talk. He pronounced that day that his wife would do no such menial work, not even for American residency. After all, he contended, they were able to make a decent life and Frankie was able to make it through high school and college despite their lack of permanent residence status. Little did he know that Frankie was in love with a girl at his workplace and that in the months to come life for his illegal son would become a little more complicated than he could imagine.

Her name was Heidi Rozanski. She was born in Poland and came over to America with her parents during the Polish trade union revolt led by Lech Walesa. She was twelve at the time and basically followed the same career path that brought her and Frankie together. Despite a long pointed nose, pale white skin and heavy thighs and legs she was on the whole an attractive girl. She was well spoken and bore no traces of a Polish accent. When Frankie first saw her she was immaculately dressed in a navy blue suit and carried a sleek stylish Bugatti briefcase. From day one the guys at their workplace preyed on her like sailors on shore leave after months at sea. But Heidi brushed them aside with such tact and politeness that they felt honored even to be rejected. Yet for some strange reason she felt a gravitation to Frankie from the first day she laid eyes on him at work in the office. Frankie also noticed her and the feeling was mutual. For Frankie, however, it was more than just attractiveness. He saw in Heidi his ticket to permanent status.
As long as he was in school, preoccupied with homework and examinations, the need for American resident status never seemed too important. But now that he was almost at the end of his chosen career path he began to think about vacations and marriage and what if his job required him to travel beyond the borders of the United States. What would he say to his employer? What if his future bride wanted a honeymoon in the Caribbean or a romantic stroll under the Eiffel Tower in Paris? How long will he be able to keep up the charade? Heidi was his ticket to freedom but he didn't want her to know, as he feared she might question the motive behind his interest in a romantic relationship. For that reason he avoided any reference to either of their ethnic identities.

As the months passed they fell uncontrollably in love with each other to the point where Heidi felt comfortable enough to punctuate casual conversations with hints of engagement, marriage and children. On the other hand Frankie was so smitten by first love that he forgot all about his illegal status. He would lie at night thinking about how Heidi had rejected advances from all the white American boys and instead chosen the lowly illegal alien from Guyana, the invisible minority. He reasoned that it must be love and for him that was all that mattered.

Two years to the day after they met Frankie got on his knees on the stone steps of the Public Library on Fifth Avenue, an area that teemed with hundreds of office workers on their lunch break, and proposed to Heidi. That lunch hour featured a group of entertaining and talented tumblers from Harlem. They all stopped to witness Frankie’s bold proposal and cheered them on when Heidi said, "Yes."

Frankie and Heidi wasted little time setting a wedding date. Heidi wanted to be a June bride but opted for August instead. June was too soon for her to complete her shopping and wedding arrangements. But for Frankie the months leading up to matrimony were not as exciting. He struggled with the issue of his legal status and whether or not he should disclose the situation to his future bride. Then again, what harm could befall him for non-disclosure? She wasn't in love with him because of his legal status in the country. She wanted to marry him because she was in love with him, and he was getting married to her because he was in love with her. Or was he?

Nevertheless, they tied the nuptials on a hot August afternoon in a little enchanting church at the junction of Jerome Avenue and 163rd street in the Bronx. The majority of the wedding guests were Guyanese friends and relatives. Heidi's family was small and for the most part very quiet during the ceremony and the reception, partially because their English was very poor and partly because the Guyanese guests were bombastic. In any event the Polish guests painted on permanent smiles as though they were clowns performing in a Barnum and Bailey's circus. That night Frankie and Heidi danced to Endless Love, a portent of their desire to always be together until death.

At 11 pm they slipped out of the reception almost unnoticed and darted off in a white limousine to the Waldorf Astoria where they had a honeymoon suite booked for the night. The room was costly but well worth the price with the complimentary champagne and stacked refrigerator. He drew the drapes slightly back and gazed at the city lights and its sleepless streets while Heidi unpacked her overnight bag and retreated to the washroom.

With such a grandeur view before him and on such a special night as his wedding night he least expected that his mind would be vised between the questions, Did I marry her because I love her, or did I marry her to obtain my residency? And if I married her because I love her then why was I afraid to tell her I was illegal? As he continued his silent monologue it occurred to him that the declaration of his illegal status was not just about marriage. It was about his life, his existence, his character and integrity. As an illegal alien he was forced to create a new life, a life based on prevarications and dishonesty. He had hopped, skipped and jumped through the system on the remains of dead citizens. He had lied about his origin, his identity, and had denied his essential being and nationality. Now he had reached the point where he lived the recreated life with such ease that he no longer had to give premeditate answers about origin and identity. The invisible minority substratum, which was once his ace in the hand, had now become the joker. He poured two glasses of red wine.

Heidi appeared ten minutes later in a sexy laced nightie and took the glass of wine from Frankie's extended hand without saying a word. She smiled and sipped, put the glass on the night table and pulled him unto the bed. Their lips touched lightly when Frankie pulled back and rolled over on his back with hands under his pillow.

"What's the matter?" she asked, "is something wrong?"

"Heidi, there is something I should have told you a long time ago."

"What are you talking about? Why now?"

"Listen, you know why I didn't want to go to the Caribbean for our honeymoon? Or Paris? Or why I kept insisting that America is a big country and we should honeymoon right here in Virginia?"

"No! Why?"

"I am sorry! I should have told you this ever since. If you hate me and want a divorce I will understand."

"What are you talking about? Did you commit some crime? Are you wanted by the police? What is going on?"

"No! No! Nothing quite like that. Well, you know how I told you I was from Spain?"

"Yes, you are not?"

"No! I am from Guyana."

"Guyana! Where the hell is that?"

"In South America, next to Brazil and Venezuela."

"Oh! That place where Jim Jones killed all those people?"

"Yes!"
"Okay, so you are not from Spain. You are from Ghana. Is that it?"

"No! I am afraid not. There is more."

"What more?"

"I am illegal in the country," he confessed with resignation as one ready to be led away to the gallows, too ashamed to look Heidi in the eyes. But with his confession he experienced something he had not known since leaving Guyana. It was like an elastic band, that was tightly strapped around his chest, had suddenly snapped. It was freedom! For a few seconds Heidi looked like her soul had taken leave from her body. Then she turned on her belly, hung her face off the bed and began to laugh aloud so hysterically that her eyes turned red and she coughed as one suffering from bronchial congestion. The tears smeared her mascara so badly she looked like Apache warrior.

"What is so funny?" Frankie asked, looking mystified, "I thought you would be angry."

"How could I be angry?"

"I don't understand. I lied to you. I withheld important information about myself from you. You should be angry."

Then she started to laugh again. She kept alternating her gaze between him and burying her face in the pillow.

"This is so funny," she said as she propped herself next to him.

"I don't see anything funny about it. What's so funny?"

Then she laughed again and asked, "What are the chances that two white people would fall in love and be married only to discover that they were both illegal?"

"Illegal? You! Illegal?"

"Sorry! I too was not totally honest with you. I should have told you."

Frankie was stunned, shocked, angry and relieved, all at once.

"I still don't understand. I thought you were born in America," he mumbled in a confused tone.

"Nope! Poland!"

"You? A Pollack?"

"Yes! My parents came over as refugees but never filed for refugee status. My dad was afraid we would not qualify for refugee status and that they would send us back home. So he bought social security numbers and worked; and here I am!"

Frankie got up from the bed and poured himself a tall drink. What were the odds of this happening to him? Of all the white girls in New York he had to choose perhaps the only one that was illegal. With that kind of luck he would never be lured into playing the lottery. Then again, he reasoned, he was no better than Heidi. He should have been open with her from the beginning. Nevertheless, he acquiesced to the decision of fate. What was done was done. It could have been worse. At least he loved the girl he married and she loved him too.

He went back to bed and wiped the smeared mascara from her face and they both started laughing again. The laughter grew in intensity to the point where he sounded like a raving madman and she like an asthmatic. After consummating their marriage they spent the rest of their wedding night joking about the shenanigans, fortunes and misfortunes of invisible minorities.

"Darling," Frankie reasoned, "at least we have the good fortune of meeting each other and falling in love and getting married to people we love."

"Very true. Had I known you were from Guyana I might never have had any interest in you."

"And had I known you were a Pollack, maybe I would not have pursued you."

"So I guess there is something to be said for being the "invisible minority."

"Yes, and of course, we can still go to Virginia Beach!"

Richard Rupnarain formerly from LBI, Guyana, lives in Toronto, Canada. He likse to write short stories.
Bazie@Rogers.com