Fear and Loneliness in Hell's Kitchen

The oppressive isolation of being an undocumented immigrant

Licensed via Adobe Stock Photo

My parents immigrated to the U.S. in 1969. They rented a small apartment for 90 bucks a month in Hell’s Kitchen, which at the time was lousy with pimps, prostitutes, and stickup men. My mother and father saw each other just a few minutes a day.

During the day, my dad worked in the cafeteria that served the employees of Korvettes, a discount department store. At night, he worked as a busboy at the Roosevelt Hotel, a fixture in Terminal City made in the Italian Renaissance Revival architectural style that characterizes so many New York landmarks, including the St. Regis, the Cartier Building, and the Flatiron Building.

My mother worked at the Harry Levine handbag factory on the 32nd floor of the Empire State Building. She started off by stuffing cardboard into handbags, which gave them their shape, a process that would sometimes make her fingers bleed. She eventually graduated to sewing the lining into place. After she got off work, she’d meet my father on 5th Avenue, before he went to the Roosevelt, to talk about any updates they might have, like letters from family in Argentina.

The working conditions at Harry Levine were fine. My mom arrived at 9 a.m., ate the same egg and tomato sandwich every day for lunch, washing her simple meal down with water from the water fountain, and knocked off at 5:00 p.m. Most of the women who worked there were latinas, but my mom hardly understood them. They were Puerto Ricans who spoke Spanglish, a patois she’s fluent in now but mostly evaded her at the time.

One of those women became my mother’s friend, a friend who told her about a gig at a brush factory in Queens that paid better than the Harry Levine job. The catch was that the commute was much longer. My mom rode with her friend on the train to the factory to secure a spot and learn the route. On this trip, my mom divulged to her new friend that she and my dad were planning on moving back to Argentina. Her friend told her that if it snowed while they were still in the U.S., they would never move back—some sort of superstition.

On her first day due at the brush factory, my mother broke down in tears. She didn’t trust herself to remember the route, since she was unfamiliar with the subway system and didn’t read or speak the language. She was scared of getting lost and having to ask for directions, not only because she didn’t speak English but also because she was paranoid about being found out as an undocumented immigrant.

To alleviate my mother’s anxiety, my father made the trip with her on her first day. Later that week, it snowed.

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When my mother gave birth to my sister, she stopped working. My dad’s friend told my mother he could set her up with sewing work she could do from home. My mom, keen on the income and having something else to do, bought a portable sewing machine for $50. Unfortunately, the gig never panned out. She was out the 50 bucks.

She spent her days taking care of my sister, leaving the cramped apartment only to get groceries or to take my sister to the nearby park. Wanting to remain productive, my mom had an idea. She could use the portable sewing machine to make dresses for my sister.

With renewed purpose, she set out to a garment store — the Garment District wasn’t far, after all. There, my mother struggled to communicate with the man behind the counter. She could point to fabric she wanted, but she had no idea how to convey units of length. Eventually, she had to concede, “No English,” to which he replied, with apparent disdain, “No Spanish.”

My mother left feeling ashamed. She vowed to never be put in a position like that ever again. She started to learn English the only way she knew at the time: by watching General Hospital and One Life to Live, shows that to this day hold a special place in her heart, on their little black-and-white TV with the bunny ears.

Not long after, their apartment was broken into. The robbers took whatever loose change was lying around and their little black-and-white TV. My mother had nothing left to entertain her, nowhere to go, no job, no friends, and, during the long days and nights that my father was away, no one to talk to, save the infant daughter wholly dependent on her. It would get worse before it got better. For years, her life was an island in a sea of unwelcome.

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