In an another effort to distract mid-term voters from the issues truly affecting the American public, the Trump Administration has placed the wedge issue of immigration front and center. I’d like to add a story to the those that have personalized this issue. I can’t call it my story because in truth, I was just a witness to it. In reflection, that’s something I am ashamed of. Not that I didn’t try. But that I wasn’t successful. That I didn’t persevere.

For clarification, I am white and the third generation of my family to be born in the United States, California specifically. I have been told the harrowing story of my great-grandfather emigrating from Poland at the age of 12. I have been to Ellis Island and proudly found his name. He was educated and knew enough English to communicate his actual last name and have it spelled correctly as he began his life as an American. Penniless and a child, he overcame great challenges to achieve the American Dream. His progeny continue to benefit.

In stark contrast to Pop’s childhood, my Sunday evenings were ritualized by pizza at our favorite Italian restaurant and picking up our live-in housekeeper at the Winchell’s down on the boulevard. One night, as we left dinner and headed to collect her, my mother prepped my brother and I. Not only are we picking up the housekeeper, but she will have her son with her. He is 10 years old (in between my younger brother and I). Up until this point, he has been living in El Salvador with his grandmother, believing her to be his mother. He was brought here by “coyotes”. He doesn’t speak English.

Door opens, cabin lights come on, mother and son get in the car. That’s it.

Over the next 8 years, the boy lived in a room in my house with his mother 5 days a week. The room was large, but off the garage. We walked through that room to enter the main house. We never knocked from the outside before entering. Our washing machine and dryer were in the room and it also functioned as our family’s makeshift office.

I remember the excitement of setting up our new Apple IIe in that room. I spent hours on that computer. In their personal space. I did ask him a few times if he wanted to try it. Instinctively he’d look at his mother. She’d sternly tell him no with her eyes. Eventually I stopped asking.

The bathroom he and his mother used was actually our powder room. The only shower available for their use was in the ensuite bathroom of my room. Looking back I wonder when he had time to sneak in a shower. It was never while I was home.

Summer breaks seem particularly painful in retrospect. My brother and I spent a lot of time in front of the tv and swimming in our backyard. I definitely asked him if he wanted to watch something with us or cool off in the pool. I remember questioning him directly, but those eyes answering us both back. And so he sat inside.

The boy was shipped off to the local public schools deemed a disservice to my brother’s and my intellect. At some point during high school, the boy was having trouble with some kids at school. To hear my parents tell the story, he was going to join a gang and my father credits himself with scaring him into staying on the straight and narrow. In piecing together the spotty details in my memory bank, I think the boy was being bullied because he was smart and a good student.

My brother and I went to university out of state. The boy went to a state school locally. I have no idea if he continued to live in the room with his mother.

What must he have been thinking all those years? Why did it never occur to me to ask? He never seemed bitter or jealous. We had cordial exchanges, but never conversations. A boy, essentially my age, lived in my home and I had no meaningful relationship to him. We both accepted the caste parameters set by the adults around us. I am ashamed that the situation didn’t bother me at the time, that I didn’t question the unspoken rules and that I didn’t stick up for what should have been his equal rights and access to kid stuff entertainment available in the house he was living. It certainly couldn’t have felt like a home to him.  

I’m sure you’re wondering what happened to the boy. During the Reagan Administration my mother helped the housekeeper and the boy become citizens. I now think about the boy being enrolled in school, an “illegal” and probably without a legitimate birth certificate. But that supposedly substandard public education, followed by graduation from state school led to a incredibly successful career at a major accounting firm. I suspect he’s at the partner level.

The boy (now a man) and I are Facebook friends. But there is still no discussion. Without that modern convenience, I would have no tether.

A boy lived in my house. He had an amazing escape from a war torn country. He lived a life on the outside of privilege. I know nothing of it.