Chapters (45)
- Cover
- Blame Iton Paris
- Copyright Notice
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- Book One
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Book Two
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Thirty-five
- Thirty-six
- Thirty-seven
- Thirty-eight
- Thirty-nine
They didn’t get it done that night. It took my father, three brothers, Sébastien, and even sometimes Fabien two full days of hacking through cold Georgia clay into the darkening hours of the night. It was just a good thing that wasn’t our real marriage, because as honeymoons went, I’m pretty sure Sébastien was disappointed.
I was, too. My strict Catholic mother agreed with me that a civil ceremony wasn’t a real marriage, and she made us keep sleeping in separate rooms.
Twenty-nine
This civil ceremony might have made having the right to be on the same side of the ocean possible, in some far-distant future. It did not, however, make it easy. One of the many forms Sébastien now had to file was called an I-485 Adjustment of Status application. Nothing about this form was clear, and I tried calling the INS (Immigration and Naturalization Services) number to get an answer to a question I had about it. I pressed button after button on my phone as I fought my way through a byzantine maze of automated options, heard more electronic repetitions of “America the Beautiful” and “The Star-Spangled Banner” than I ever want to hear again, and finally reached a busy signal. After I tried fifteen more times, I got through to a human voice.
“Mmbzeybex,” said the human voice.
“Hello?” I checked, startled. I had expected something more along the lines of “INS, may I help you?”
“Right,” the male on the other end responded.
“Ah . . . hello. I’m calling about form I-485, the Adjustment of Status application.”
“Okay.”
“I have a question about the medical exam. My husband is applying, while in the U.S., and I can’t tell if he needs to take a medical exam beforehand or not. In the instructions, it’s not clear.”
“You generally need to do what the instructions say.”
“Umm. Yes. But in the instructions, it’s not clear. It says, ‘If you are filing your Adustment of Status application with the local INS office, or if you are an asylee filing an Adjustment of Status application with the Service Center, one year after you were granted asylum, do not submit a medical report with your Adjustment of Status application. Wait for further instructions.’ My husband is filing with the local office, but he hasn’t been here a year. Of course, neither is he an asylee granted asylum. Does the ‘one year’ apply to all applicants or only asylees? There’s either an incorrect comma or a vocabulary error in that sentence, but I don’t know which. Does he need to have a medical exam before applying or not?”
Thirty seconds of silence followed on the other end of the line. “I’m sorry. What did you say?”
Granted, it was complicated, but that was my point. I repeated myself.