“My name is Cara Romero, and I came to this country because my husband wanted to kill me.” This dramatic opening line of Cruz’s latest work of fiction ushers us into the tumultuous life of a Dominican immigrant in her mid-50s in New York.
She must find new employment after being laid off from her factory job and as part of a Senior Workforce Program in New York, she sits down with a career counsellor for 12 sessions during which she lays bare her life. She talks about the frayed relationships she shares with Ricardo, her abusive husband, her sister Angela and son Fernando who has abandoned her.
That’s what therapists make you do. They make you spit on your mother
— Cara Romero
Romero’s narrative is interspersed with chapters dedicated to the bureaucratic maze — job application forms, insurance claims, lease documents, invoices — that define an immigrant’s life. Romero comes across as a fallible but irrepressible force of nature who has been dealt a bad hand in life but whose bullish self-belief keeps her going. While recounting her life story, even the grim bits turn into acerbic one-liners in the deft hands of Cruz. At one point Romero remarks: “That’s what therapists make you do. They make you spit on your mother.” She follows that with an offhand claim that her estranged son must have gone to therapy.
She loves fiercely but her dogged views often result in her straining her already volatile ties with her loved ones. The ending, albeit convenient, gives her redemption as she is able to make amends with those she has hurt.
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Cruz takes an acerbic look at the effects that gentrification, recession and racial profiling have had on the immigrant experience. She tersely sums up the heartbreak and joy of the American Dream for the majority of immigrants. “When I was a girl, I never imagined I was going to be sitting here with you. In New York. With a husband that almost killed me, and a son that will not return home.”
