Don't Get Too Comfortable Read Free Page A

as the mohawked young “anarchist” I once watched walking up Third Avenue on a Saturday evening. For some reason the streets were choked with limousines that night. My young friend spat contemptuously at each one that sat unoccupied and parked, while letting the peopled vehicles go saliva free.
    To lead us in singing the national anthem for our first time as Americans, we have a choir. Not a real choir, but a group of employees who come up to the front. We sing and I cry, although I'm not sure why. I'm clearly overcome by something. It's a combination of guilt over having shown insufficient appreciation for my origins, of feeling very much alone in the world, and—I am not proud to say—of constructing life-and-death grass-soup scenarios for the immigrants standing around me. Strangely, no one else that I can see sheds a tear. Perhaps it is because they are not big drama queens.
    One of the women on the dais addresses us. “There are many reasons each of you has come to be here today. Some of you have relatives, or spouses. Either way, you all know that this is the land where you can succeed and prosper. You've come to live the American dream and to enjoy the country's great freedom and rights. But with rights come great responsibilities.”
    Shouldering that great responsibility is primarily what I came here for today. Question 87 of the citizenship test is “What is the most important right granted to U.S. citizens?” The answer,
formulated by the government itself,
is “the right to vote.” As we file out of the room, I ask someone who works there where the voter registration forms are. I am met with a shrug. “A church group used to hand them out but they ran out of money, I think.”
    I don't go to the post office to then have to buy my stamps from a bunch of Girl Scouts outside, and if the Girl Scouts are sick that day, then I'm shit out of luck. A church group? Why isn't there a form clipped to my naturalization certificate? It is difficult not to see something insidious in this oversight while standing in this sea of humanity, the majority of whom are visible minorities.
    Sarah presents me with a hardbound copy of the United States Constitution and we head back to the station. We have half an hour to kill before our train. If I thought the lack of America-related decor in the main room of the citizenship facility was lousy public relations, it is as nothing compared with this port of entry: the town of Hempstead itself. Sarah and I attempt a walk around. My first glimpse as a citizen of this golden land is not the Lady of the Harbor shining her beacon through the Atlantic mist but cracked pavement, cheap liquor stores with thick Plexiglas partitions in front of the cashiers, shuttered businesses, and used car lots. The only spot of brightness on the blighted landscape is the window of the adult book and video store, with its two mannequins, one wearing a shiny stars-and-stripes bra-and-G-string set, and the other in a rainbow thong. Just like dreamy former New Jersey governor Jim McGreevey, I could comfortably dance in either of these native costumes of my twin identities.
    MY FIRST INDEPENDENCE Day as an American comes scarcely two weeks later. I mark it by heading down to the nation's capital to celebrate with my old friend Madhulika, also newly American herself. Washington, D.C., is a sultry place in July. We stay indoors, hanging out and preparing a proper July Fourth meal of barbecued beer-can chicken and corn on the cob. In the evening, once the heat has broken, we head off with her husband, Jim, and their two daughters to see the fireworks. In the past, we might have lain out on the vast lawns of the Mall, but they have been fenced and cordoned off for security, so we park ourselves in a group of several hundred, sitting down on the pavement and grassy median in front of the DAR building.
    The fireworks are big and bombastic and seem much louder and more aggressive than those in New York. Then again,