1. The Pilgrimage
Around Thanksgiving when you’re a kid, you are subjected to every pilgrim story in the book. I don’t remember most of them very well, but I do remember that when I was about nine, my daycare teacher read us one story with an entirely new take on the idea of pilgrimness. The main character was a little girl who had to make a pilgrim doll for class, and for some reason that I don’t remember anymore, she was having a hard time with the assignment. On the night before it was due, when it seemed like this girl wasn’t going to have anything to turn in the next day, her mom helped her out by constructing a curvaceous doll with soft yellow hair wearing a long full skirt. The daughter protested that it didn’t look anything like the skinny drab pilgrims whose pictures she’d seen in books, and the mom said no, that this was what she had looked like when she came to America from Germany as a young woman. The daughter took the doll to school, scared it would be scorned as not a real pilgrim, and this was in fact just what her classmates did. But Miss Stikley, the teacher, understood, and told her students that pilgrims come in all shapes and sizes.
I’ve met immigrants since hearing that story, but never thought I’d become one, a modern-day pilgrim myself, much less in Europe where the “original” pilgrims came from. But here I am, here we both are, having gone east to start over. The fact that Izabela is originally from here doesn’t stop us from being pilgrims together. We may not have come to Poland for religious freedom, but we both came here to do what we couldn’t easily do at home -- find jobs that would enable us to have a nice life together. Of course there have been challenges -- crazy heating stoves, overbearing plumbers, goofy banks, and other bizarre surprises. But ever since Izabela started teaching Polish students about the concept of the American Dream last spring, we’ve realized how much those same ideas apply to us.
2. Declaring Independence
For a queer lady, getting a two-year stay card in Poland isn’t so much a straightforward affair as a process resembling a computer game. For a straight girl it would have been easy -- just get married -- you’ll be approved for sure. But as part of a gay couple and someone not enriching the Polish economy on the level of a business tycoon, you have to be a little craftier. At first, Izabela and I thought that if I opened my own small language school, the situation would be solved. But even once I became a Fulbright scholar, out plan didn’t turn out to be a guarantee of success. My little business didn’t generate enough cash flow to impress the emigration office, and the Fulbright scholarship would only last a year. Our sense of control over the situation was rapidly dwindling. We had labored over starting the business, put painstaking effort into my Fulbright application, and even though both plans had succeeded in their own ways, my visa was causing us some suspense.
The most important factor in the visa process is the caseworker. Izabela and I, with our wild imaginations, came up with all kinds of personalities for the man before we met him. “I hope he’s not a sectarian,” I said. “What if he has a disability too? Or what if he’s gay?” But our first encounter brought us to panic. We had just spent a month collecting all kinds of documents, beginning with my fingerprints and ending with the criminal background check from the Oakland Police Department. Most of these documents had to be translated and the fees mounted up. We managed to meet the deadline only to receive a letter from the immigration office with a long list of documents they still needed to see. In response, we wrote a letter of complaint and faxed it to both the governor and the immigration office. What followed was a heated discussion between Izabela and our caseworker.
“The rental agreement for Miss Lamar’s school that you signed appears fraudulent,” he said. “The 5 zł total for the month is neither realistic nor comparable with what’s on the market.”
At our last visit to the office we discovered that because we weren’t blood relatives, we were required to sign an official rental agreement. Izabela, exasperated, put in 5 zł, equaling about 2 dollars, as my monthly payment. Our caseworker thought this ridiculous.
“Of course, it’s ridiculous, “ said Izabela. “I’ll tell you why!”
“I’m not interested in your opinions unless Miss Lamar signs yet another document adding you to her case.”
“You will allow me to tell you anyway! We are a gay couple, and you want us to sign a document that pronounces us strangers to each other. If anyone is at fault, it is the state that obliterates our living situation.”
“Do I know you from somewhere?” He interrupted Izabela. “Aren’t you this writer I’ve seen lecturing recently?”
In the end, we couldn’t believe our luck. Pan Zaremba was exactly my age, a doctoral candidate in law, a huge fan of Izabela’s work, affiliated with our favorite publishing house; he spoke English and had all the vibrancy of a theater actor. This quality explains his embodying the role of a mean official. When he discovered that this really was the same Izabela Filipiak he had read, pan, or Mister, Zaremba was thrilled, and together, he and his boss came up with a plan.
In the history of gay partnership in Poland, our relationship is unique. Many gay Polish couples leave Poland -- not the other way around. Since I’m not a citizen of the European Union, I can’t stay here based on its immigration laws. Essentially, the chances of a non-EU citizen and a Polish person advocating for partnership rights in Poland are minuscule. According to Izabela, no one from any country outside the EU would dare come here seeking such a thing. Still, pan Zaremba and his boss utilized one particular EU law to process my visa, which states that families (key word) of Polish citizens, have the right to remain in Poland. When Izabela explained this, I was bewildered. “I can’t believe we’re getting away with being called a family,” I said.
“We’re only able to because pan Zaremba found this interpretation when he studied the rulings of the European Tribunal in Strassburg,” Izabela said. “In another caseworker’s hands, that law could be interpreted quite differently.”
Our job now was to declare, in front of pan Zaremba, that we would legalize our relationship, the thing that made us a family, as soon as Poland would allow it. But first we each had to answer a series of questions, separately, to prove that we really were together. I was required to have a translator, and for this task we invited Marek, our boss at the university and close friend, to come along.
Going through the test that is the emigration office is a process from which every couple could benefit. Dorota, the interrogator, took us into her office one at a time, asking us an almost identical series of questions. Her voice was gentle and steady—the voice of a kind pastor. She wanted to know the hard facts—how did we meet? Where was Izabela living then? And she wanted the story filled in too—did I know I would stay in Poland the first time I came? How did we address each other? What did we do on our last birthday? And she had a few extra questions for me—would I have less time for Izabela and for myself once I started teaching at the university? Since I had a disability, did I go out alone, or did someone go with me? Both she and Marek apologized for the last question, but I didn’t mind.
Adair Lara, my favorite writing teacher, said that the purpose of a memoir was to express the emotional truth, and this was what the questions on Dorota’s list had really brought into the light. The surface of our life had been pealed back and here was our story, fragile and surprising even to me and with a life all its own. I just wanted to keep talking. Marek had translated sentence by sentence, with the exception of my whispers “I wonder why she is asking this?”, and not until some time later did I learn that even without his help, she’d understood every word. I was surprised, but I knew that having a translator was the rule.
After the interviews, Izabela, Marek and I returned to Dorota’s office together. Dorota seemed happy and a little nervous. “I’ve never done this before,” she said.
I didn’t know what she meant, but Izabela did. “Marek, you do it,” she said.
Marek cleared his throat. “Izabela. Do you promise to marry Lilly-Marie whenever gay marriage becomes legal here which will hopefully be soon?”
“Yes.” Her voice was steady and excited at the same time.
“Lilly-Marie. Do you promise to marry Izabela whenever gay marriage becomes legal here which will hopefully be soon?”
“I do.” And that was that. Independence was on its way.
3. Revolution
Up to now, the visa process had remained a solitary experience. We were thrilled to be considered a family by the emigration office, but we hadn’t thought of what a revelation this would be to someone else. It was our new friends, Marta Konarzewska and Piotr Pacewicz, who helped shape our most recent adventure into its own story. Marta and Piotr were working on a book titled Forbidden Loves. The title referred not to the Madonna song, but to a classic Polish movie, Forbidden Songs, which showed how people risked their lives to preserve songs forbidden by the Nazis. The stories in the book may not have sounded forbidden to us, but to the average reader here in Poland, stories of a Catholic priest and a woman from a small town, a mixed-race couple, a relationship that included transgender people, and even ladies like us, might be considered examples of forbidden romance.
When Piotr and Marta heard about the decision by the immigration office, they were fascinated, and asked if they could include the story in their book. We were pleased -- honored even. But this news was significant for reasons that were more elusive, harder to pinpoint at first glance. Until now we had been the newcomers, strangers, displaced even though we had jobs and a home. When we first got here, I didn’t know that you aren’t charged for calls received on a cell phone, Izabela didn’t know the price of vegetables, and neither of us had friends. For a year we had listened, observed, and tried to comprehend what felt like a new culture even for Izabela in many ways. But now here we were, accounted for on paper, a part of someone else’s project. Gazeta Wyborcza, the national Polish newspaper where Piotr was a vice editor-in-chief, wanted to publish an article about my visa adventure. Everything was becoming possible all at once.
The only person we were worried about was pan Zaremba. He was an important part of the story, but we weren’t sure whether he’d be able to have his name mentioned in print. It was only after telling him about the book that we realized how big a risk he would take by publicly associating himself with the decision about my visa. Apparently, not everyone in the emigration office was so sympathetic. Not only could pan Zaremba and his boss lose their jobs—they could have their reputations so tarnished that neither of them would be able to work in government anymore. Izabela worried about his doctoral exams because some of his professors might not be impressed with his stroke of genius. Still, when pan Zaremba asked us not to write about the decision at all, I felt like gritting my teeth. I wasn’t angry with him—he was the one who had made my visa happen at all. But that didn’t stop me from being frustrated. “I feel like a little kid who’s been given a really cool toy for Christmas but can’t show it to her friends,” I said to Izabela. “I don’t mean to sound like a six-year-old, but it’s not fair. What’s the point if we can’t help create change for other people?”
Apparently, pan Zaremba must have been processing along the same lines because soon he got in touch again and said that yes, we could publish the story, but not to include his name. We understood this and were even relieved to know that he’d be able to safely keep his job and spare his doctorate after he’d been so kind. It was around this time that Izabela and I became friends with him on Facebook, and that was when we discovered that he too was gay. We were euphoric! We had a gay caseworker. How could we ever have thought he was mean? We’re just relieved he isn’t risking his job.
But the next thing we knew, pan Zaremba had a conversation with the authors of Forbiden Loves. “He sounded like a warrior,” Piotr said. Pan Zaremba had told him to go ahead and quote him in print.
“Pan Zaremba,” I wrote on Facebook, “please don’t feel like you need to do this for us. We’d love to have your name next to ours in this book, but we want you to be okay. I hope you’ll think about it really carefully before you make your final decision.” But pan Zaremba stood firm, and even Dorota, our kind interrogator, agreed to be mentioned as part of the story.
4. Homesteading in the Land of Opportunity
Last week pan Zaremba called to let me know the 2-year stay card was ready. He’d rushed it to make sure that nobody could get the chance to halt the process once Marta and Piotr’s book came out. So now I carry a California ID in the back of my wallet, and in front of it, a pink and blue striped card that explains who I am now. My passport can stay hidden at home, waiting for the next adventure, the way it used to in America.
Once, when Izabela was telling her mother about wanting to move to America in order to get ahead, her mother said, “But Poland is America. This is the place with room for chasing dreams.” It didn’t make sense at the time, but since then we’ve come to realize the truth of my late mother-in-law’s words. It’s true that in America, a child from a disadvantaged background might grow up to become a doctor. But this can only happen within the highly regulated guidelines of the American social structure. In Poland though, there is room to carve out your own niche because the country is still being transformed. Izabela and I are privileged to be the first gay couple recognized as a family, even if many people here still consider us an example of “forbidden love.”
On Thanksgiving, about 30 people will somehow squeeze into our apartment. We’ll get the chance to thank Marek and pan Zaremba, and everyone else who has shown us that we can claim a place here too. And if you want to know what pilgrims really look like, search out the famous caseworker with his boyfriend, and the two ladies holding hands, one carrying a pink and blue striped card.
Photo © by Agata Kubis
