Land of Dreams

By Jeanna

1889

The cool breeze through the night was enough to take Brian back to a different time as he sat on the lodging house roof, a smoke clenched between his fingers. Bumlets, was what they called him now, even though he just ignored it and chuckled, shaking his head when they did. As he leaned back against the cold brick he watched the smoke waft up towards the moon with an almost sad smile, though he was right there on the roof, his mind was a million miles away.

Bitter winds still nipped at his angular features, but the young man didn’t bother to move inside for warmth. He liked the night as well as he missed the fire, and the cold he felt couldn’t disrupt his memory. Taking another slow drag from his smoke, Bumlets felt another cold night. Like watching a moving picture in his mind, comfortable even against the cold stone in the cold air, the young man tipped his head back and let his eyes slide shut.

The boat had rocked and creaked, it wasn’t as warm as he’d wanted to be. But his father had told him he was still young. They were cramped into the small quarters like sardines into a can, smashed together to where at times there was no place to move let alone do anything in private. It smelled, to the point that he found himself up top more often than below decks during the crossing. His sister’s normally lively and happy face had become a putrid color.

“Mama,” he’d asked, a boy just shy of seven, his eyes on his mother’s face. It was full of worry in a way he’d never seen it before. She was normally laughing and teasing his father, or scolding the massive amounts of cousins he had. But here, there were no cousins, not the sense of family in numbers that he was so used to. Just his family of five on a boat headed for America. “Mama, is Rosalina going to die?” His big eyes fixed on his mother’s face, and she looked almost shocked at his question. They knew death well, the gypsy life was not an easy one even though it was one she’d loved. After all she’d been raised to it, her husband had been raised to it, and she’d wanted to raise her children too it.

But her husband had the heart of an adventurer and though it was what she loved about him, she had felt this crossing was going to bring more challenges than they could face. “No, mi hijo.” She murmured, wrapping a slender arm around his form and drawing him into her warmth. She didn’t really smell like mama, she smelled like everyone else on the boat. In need of a good bath, clean clothes and a better place to go to the bathroom. She wrapped around him still, her face upturned. “When we get to America everything will be alright.”

The young boy had thought everything was alright in Spain, with grandmother and all the others. Here it was cold and cramped, and the boat swayed to and fro. There was water everywhere and the small stove that they used to heat the ship did nothing for anyone. He missed the great fires and the sound of his grandmother’s voice. The way she would smile at him, her wrinkly face offering him some kind of assurance that everything would be fine as she puffed away on her long steamed pipe.

“What is in America?” he asked with a murmur, small enough to crawl into her lap where his little brother was snoozing away. At two, Domenico didn’t bother to move much more than get adjusted, leaning into his mother more and making room for his older brother. “Why does Papa want to go so badly?”

His mother sighed heavily, her beautiful dark eyes more wary than he had ever seen them before. Touching a gentle hand to his oily hair she pressed her nose to his forehead and spoke quietly so as not to wake the other child snoozing against her. “Your father says there is all the adventure we could ever want, in America. More opportunity, more dreams, bigger dreams. America is the land of big dreams, Benito.”

As uncomfortable as the trip had been his mother’s warmth was still his mother’s warmth, her voice was still her voice, and the seven year old child in her arms snuggled to get more comfortable. “What if I don’t want adventures, mama?” he asked. Benito had always been happier listening to his grandmother’s stories than running off to explore. Learning things had become something he had enjoyed more than he would let on, especially to his papa. But his mother knew his mind and she smiled softly, almost sadly.

“Oh, mi hijo, “ she murmured again rocking her body back and forth as she attempted to give him some comfort from the smells and the sickness, to try and comfort his young mind with something positive. America was a goal to have, it was positive, it was a dream. And though she was born nothing but a Galino, a romani from Spain, and she had lived her entire life in the world of the traveling caravan. Going to America was a new adventure, but a dangerous one. She’d been all over Spain, France and Portugal but she’d never dreamed she would be on a boat sailing for the new world. They said it would be a new life for them all. She wasn’t sure. “They say that there is so much space you can ride a horse bareback for miles,” she began with her eyes slipping closed, rocking the child back and forth. “That there are places to be, things to see that no one has ever seen before.”

The young boy smiled in her arms, soothed by her voice and the way she was rubbing his back to calm him. For a moment, the entire boat fell away and just his mother’s words were leaving imprints on his young imagination. Riding a horse bareback through miles and miles of open fields, seeing new things, and seeing his mother smile. Because he hadn’t in weeks. As he began to doze the woman let out a sigh and lifted her head, “America is the land of dreams, mi hijo. So many dreams.”

As the child began to slumber the ship tipped and someone came scrambling down the steps, “I can see it!” someone called out, causing many people to rise up from their seats. “The statue! The lady! I can see it!”

People scrambled around them and Benito’s mother moved him from her lap, touching his cheek gently as she got to her feet with his younger brother, holding out her hand. “Come, Benito. Let’s go and say hello to the lady, shall we?”

The sleepiness was gone from the boy’s eyes and he grabbed her free hand, moving with the crowd up the creaky steps to the upper deck where they could see the shoreline come into view. She was just a speck now, people told him. But in a little while she would be as big as life and they would be in America. America, it sounded like a magical land to the little boy. Everyone spoke of it like it was made of fine jewels and gold. He wondered absently if it were true, if it really was paved with golden stones.

Nudged up to the front of the group near the banister, the young boy looked at the growing shoreline with wonder. He wanted to see the great lady that everyone was talking about. The Lady meant that they were in America. He didn’t know what that meant really, did they cast a spell to make you an American? Was that how it happened? Was it magic like abuela told stories about?

Once they docked at Emigrant Landing Depot they were lined up and taken off of the boat. It was loud and noisy, there were many people. He didn’t know what was going on as there were so many languages being thrown around from this person and that. He looked back at his sister, whose color had come back to her cheeks as they began to walk quickly towards where the men were working over ledgers.

The little boy was shocked at so much chaos, yet the kind of man that thrived in chaos, his father, herded them all where they needed to be. His arms wide as he spoke briskly, “Come, come, mi hijo, mi hija, quickly, over here.” The excitement in the man’s voice could not be contained; giddy as he’d been when they left on the boat in London, as giddy as he’d been a week into the journey. Benito didn’t know where his father got all that energy from. He was getting tired again, his legs burning from all the standing; his feet from being nearly ran over by men running about. He wanted to be held, but that place in his mother’s arms was already occupied by his little brother.

Rosa frowned, her dark eyes were always lively but she still looked as if she did not feel well. Yet, she looked better than she had, “Papa I never wish to see a ship again,” she responded as he kept her moving quickly. She was fourteen years old, barely a woman and yet if she was feeling better she would have been smiling and laughing same as the rest. But she just looked tired, as tired as his mother looked, and as tired as he felt.

“Well we won’t have to take another for a while yet, Rosalina,” their father responded with a bright grin, showing off the fact that he did in fact still have all of his teeth. How he managed that was a mystery even to his wife. He’d been punched in the face enough times that one would assume he wouldn’t have such a handsome smile. He pulled the bill of his cap more over his eyes as he walked to where the man was doing the books.

“Last name?”

“Russo.”

After handing over his papers, Brian missed everything that had happened as he did not understand English very well. His father began to speak quickly, stunning the young boy that he even knew that language. And then he was handed papers and shoved forward. “Papa?”

“Yes, Benito?”

“Who is Brian?”

“You are, Benito.”

The shock written all over Benito’s face was clear, he narrowed his eyes at his father, sharp direct eyes before folding his arms in disagreement. “But my name Is Benito, Papa.” He didn’t like this game. How could his father not know what his name was?

“To us, you will always be Benito. But in America, you are Brian.”

The young boy gave his father a strange almost defiant look before folding his arms grumpily. His mother’s hand on his hair calmed him and he looked up at her, giving her the big brown eyed look, asking her to change their minds. “I like my name, mama.” His big eyes pleaded, don’t take my name please, I like my name.

“I know, Benito,” she murmured, her smile soft as she didn’t seem to agree either. But it was what was on their American papers. Pah, papers. How they’d managed to get papers at all she’d never know. “But you know? Brian has a nice ring to it.”

He frowned again but sighed and continued forward. “We’re here,” his father said with glee, hugging his wife and daughter to him as they continued forward towards the real city. “The land of never ending dreams and opportunity!”

“Bumlets!”

Brian sat right up, his hat falling off of his knee as he heard his name, he sighed and looked down at his smoke, burned the embers. A light smirk crossed his face and he shook his head as he got to his feet, he’d fallen asleep without realizing, though he didn’t think he’d dream about that day. It had been a long time since he’d thought about it. Nearly eleven years.

“I’m comin’,” he said as he crossed the roof to the fire escape, tossing his smoke against the wall, he braced his hands against the ladder bars and bent over. He wasn’t afraid of heights or of falling so he smirked at his friend with his head out the window looking back at him. “What do you need?”

“Your sister is here,” the other remarked with a shrug, motioning him to come inside before his head disappeared into the house once more.

With a sigh and a shake of his head, Bumlets descended down the latter. America may not have been the land of dreams and magic that his mother had told him stories about, but it did give him an interesting kind of life.