The Town of Babylon

by Alejandro Varela

“Sorry to hear that,” I respond, but what I’d like to say is that according to the health data, it’s too early for our parents to be so sick. Mine are only in their sixties, and it’s the twenty-first century. Three of my four grandparents, across two countries, lived into their nineties, one past one hundred. All of them died healthy, but my brother couldn’t make it to forty. Each generation in this country exhibits poorer health outcomes than the previous generation—the fallout from decades of growing economic inequality. In fact, life expectancy in Ireland is higher than it is here for Irish Americans. Same goes for Italian Americans. “Yeah, I guess they’re getting older,” I say.

Succeed while hiding in plain sight. Be better in order to be equal.

To live in the suburbs required resources and government assistance that only whites had once received freely. Everyone else made their way slowly by working thrice as hard in order to live two-thirds as well.

Luckily for Andy, the business of subsuming insecurities was addictive. There was no drug more potent than being liked by everyone.

“I ate this morning,” she says, as if my eating breakfast at 7:15 A.M. makes me an immoral sloth. “Arugula, roasted red peppers, un poco de goat cheese, a few capers, and a squeeze of lemon.” “Wow, Mom. You’re a proper chef.” “I would have made you some, but I know you don’t like arugula.” “I was like twelve when I said that. I eat arugula all the time now. I like arugula.”

¡Americanos pendejos de mierda!

We’re not Dominican, but it is, in a way, our food too. I don’t know enough about the agricultural history of the Americas, the colonial influence of Spain, or the contributions of the African diaspora to explain why we find food from the Dominican Republic as interchangeably good as food from Puerto Rico or Cuba or Colombia. But we do. Well, my family does. And in particular, my father, who doesn’t pass up an opportunity to be nearer to our people.

I don’t say anything because it won’t be anything nice. Youth, after all, is no excuse for abject stupidity.

As far as I can tell, the suburbs are where people go to preserve their ignorance, in service of a delusion they’ve mistaken for a dream.

Cuban. Wonderful. I bet she’s one of these right-wing types who want all of us to suffer through their PTSD because their parents or grandparents were wealthy landowners who lost their estancias when Castro took over.

Andy had lived under a regime of scarcity—they were a family unaware of climate change but inadvertently doing their part to slow it down.

“Everything was dinosaurs once. And poof, gone. They were here for a long time. You ever think about that?

Rows of nearly indistinguishable homes, on equal-sized plots of land. Each filled with three generations: grandparents who spoke with accents; parents who understood the old language but didn’t speak it well; and children who knew only a few exclamatory or culinary words. Every family, it seemed, occupied the same place in their American trajectory—not only a cultural and chronological intersection, but an economic one too.

If one, after all, is equal to their neighbor, what is there to fear? What is left to covet? To doubt? They weren’t plagued with the sorts of insecurities that run amok in uneven societies.

Peace be with you, said the new townspeople. And also with you, responded the older townspeople, but don’t think for one second that your son can date my daughter or that we’ll tolerate your music or the smells of your food. And speak English. This is America. Amen.

“Remember, honey, there were dinosaurs here before us. And there will be something else after we’re gone,”

Unlike earlier waves of immigrants, today’s masses are here because this country, their final destination, is responsible for their miseries back home.

Gay, after all, was dangerous. Gay was violent. Gay was unclean. Gay was abnormal. Gay was sick. Gay was an illness. Gay was a phase. Gay was a secret. Gay was effeminate. Gay was crossdressing. Gay was transvestite. Gay was one earring. Gay was the one character on Melrose Place. Gay was a late-night miniseries on Bravo. Gay was a death sentence. Gay was a target. Gay was a target. Gay was a target.

After a couple of years, I would run for the town board. Then county council. Poor kid done well comes back to give back. In the city, I have a small voice, but here I could sway the conversation: More buses! More schoolteachers! More social workers! In fact, it was around then that the incidence of gang-related crime increased, mostly in the surrounding towns, but the resulting fear had made everyone more conservative. As a pillar of this community, I could have served as a counterexample—the gangs are mostly made up of Central Americans—and contributed to more productive solutions to crime. I couldn’t go through with it, however. In part, I didn’t want to, but I also doubted how effective I could be.

Sometimes, when I come across one of the newer immigrants, I want to beg them to go back to the city. Don’t trade in proximity to your communities or to humanity for more space! You’ll die younger because of it! But maybe this is the way. They are, after all, the successful immigrants who traveled, not in a wave, but in a slow-moving brook, unaware of what had roared before. Their children will achieve enough to open doors for the rest.

If I support the land stuff, does it matter if I mess up and say the wrong thing?” It was an interesting point. Does it matter? I think so. If we’re not actively fighting oppression then we probably shouldn’t be contributing to it in any way, big or small. But how does one explain that one private comment doesn’t make a difference, that it’s the agglomeration of comments and beliefs that creates a culture that permits ridiculing American Indians and using them as logos and mascots, which then trivializes their injustices and makes political gains less likely? How could I have made my brother see that? And was that really the best use of our time together?

I worried about that too. After Henry’s death, I spent a few years blaming myself for not having been more available to him. I wondered if he’d just needed more people in his life. Someone to complain to. Someone to reassure him. I could have helped lessen the cortisol coursing through him. He had me, and I could have reminded him of that. While he was alive, I chose to believe that whatever we had between us was mutual, but I wonder now if he was waiting for me.