Maryland Newsline

Cuban Immigrant Considers Herself Lucky Despite Rocky Arrival in U.S.

By Stacy Ann Jones
Capital News Service
Friday, Dec. 17, 2010

LAUREL, Md. - After months of hard decisions and quiet planning behind closed doors, 7-year-old Ada Ghuman learned that she and her 3-year-old brother, Angel, would have to fly from Cuba to Miami alone.

 

The Pan Am terminal was bustling as people trudged through inspection, piling jewelry and family heirlooms onto their children in an attempt to hide them from airport security.

 

It was 1961 and Ghuman's mother was planning to leave her husband behind to join her mother and older sister in New York City. Two years after Fidel Castro's ascension to power, the country's capitalist system had dissolved. The family was preparing to leave Cuba just months after a botched U.S. invasion ratcheted up tension between the countries.

 

But when it came time to board the plane, Pan Am staff stopped the Ghumans at the gate.

 

"You can't leave," they said. "Your kids can, but you can't. We're overbooked."

 

Even as Ada recalls the apprehension surrounding her mother's decision to send them to the United States alone, she said she now considers herself lucky to have had a relatively easy time finding her way in a new country.

 

On the plane, the children heard more chatter about overbooking and leaving people behind.

 

"It was just surreal even for a kid, and it was hard to put in perspective what was going on. It was scary because my parents weren't with us," Ghuman said.

 

But they were comforted by two nuns sitting nearby, who told the flight attendants that the children could ride on their laps. "They were very sweet, from what I remember," Ghuman said.

 

When they landed, their grandmother was nowhere to be seen. Her plane from New York had been turned around halfway to Miami, and she couldn't get another flight until the next day.

 

"They gave us the little packs of Chiclets with the two pieces of gum," Ghuman said, chuckling a little. "I remember that little gift. Then this lady comes up and says, 'I'm taking the kids.' I said no, that's not my grandmother. I'm not going with her."

 

The children, Cuban refugees in a strange country, spent the night with the woman, a family friend sent by their grandmother to pick them up. They reunited with their grandmother the next day.

 

Their mother arrived a couple days later, and within a year all three of them would be permanent residents of the U.S., according to legislation passed to accommodate people fleeing Castro's rule.

 

Ghuman said she spent a couple of years feeling as though she belonged to neither Cuba nor her new country.

 

"It made me feel larger because I was part of everything, and in another way it made me feel like I was at a disadvantage because I was part of nothing," Ghuman said.

 

Her father stayed behind in Los Pinos, a suburb outside of Havana, to make sure their home and property weren't turned over to the government.

 

A few years later the General Electric accountant found himself emigrating to the United States and taking a job in a bakery in New York City, where his wife and children had been living with his mother-in-law.

 

Grey City

 

"We arrived in November, during one of the worst snow storms," Ghuman said. "We were coming from the tropics and New York happens to be a very grey city. It was like, 'What is this? What is this place?' So immediately it was a loss. A great big loss."

 

They lived with her maternal grandmother in a third floor, two-room apartment on the west side of 50th Street. The neighborhood had already come to be called Hell's Kitchen; gentrification was years away.

 

Her grandmother had arrived in the United States in 1959 and was among the first of what would become a growing population of foreign-born Cubans. According to the Census Bureau, there were 439,000 Cuban residents in the country by 1970; by 2000, that number had nearly doubled.

 

But for Ghuman, New York City seemed a lonely and strange place.

 

The move to the United States had forced her to part with a house in Cuba next door to her paternal grandparents, who had spoiled her and her brother with desserts and taken them for walks outside.

 

That home, made of concrete blocks, had a carport, three bedrooms, a large kitchen, a dining room and a small living room. Ghuman and her brother had enjoyed their own rooms. A bicycle and swings sat waiting in the yard.

 

Their grandmother's New York City apartment crammed a kitchen, dining area and bathtub into the first room. The second room was a living room by day and bedroom that slept four by night. Going to the bathroom called for trips out into the hallway.

 

"And there were fire escapes," Ghuman said, "I had never seen fire escapes. They went all up and down. In the winter a fire escape also became a refrigerator kind of thing because you were cooking all these foods and you needed the storage."

 

Ghuman attended P.S. 111, a few blocks away from the apartment. For the first few months, she was lost among conversations in a strange language and saw math and art classes as her saving grace.

 

At home, the children came up with a game to practice having conversations in English.

 

They would begin with "Hello," and "How are you," then improvise with "Voy aqui," and "work out there," Ghuman said. "It was all broken up. But I think that helped, because we were just going for it."

 

Within three months, she picked up enough to understand what was going on and made friends with some of the Puerto Rican students at school. At home she played handball and took trips to the park with her older cousins, almost all of them boys.

 

Ghuman wrote letters to her father and his parents, missing them dearly and wanting to know where they were. When her father finally moved to the U.S., he found himself at the bottom of the totem pole and in a very different society.

 

The family moved from New York to Tampa Bay, hoping that maybe the warm weather would mend martial ties that were growing weak.

 

"I think when people come here their connection starts to frail. Not just with spouses, but with kids and with other family members. It just grows frail," Ghuman said.

 

For a second time, Ghuman's mother took the children back to New York, leaving her husband in Florida. After one more short-lived reunion, her father left to start a new life in California.

 

California Summer

 

In 1971 Ada and Angel, now 17 and 13, found themselves boarding a plane without their parents again. They were traveling to California to meet their father and his new family.

 

"He sent us the fare. It was an interesting trip because we got onto a 747 jet. It was one of the biggest planes with a second floor. We felt like we were on a different economic level," Ghuman said. "So it was really like a treat."

 

Their paternal grandparents met them at the airport. Ada and Angel hadn't even known they were in the country.

 

"So when we got to the house there was a new woman in his life, there was a child, there were our grandparents. My brother and I were like, 'Huh?' " Ghuman said.

 

Ghuman's father tried to persuade Ada and Angel to stay with him. After taking enough courses to finish his accounting degree, he had resumed his career and was living in a large house with a pool. He had a second car that he offered to his daughter.

 

At the end of the summer, the siblings stepped off a plane in New York City to reunite with their mother, who was in tears.

 

"She knew better than we did that he had a strong character, and she thought he might persuade us to stay with him. When we returned, his contact with us became minimal, because I guess he wanted it all or nothing," Ghuman said.

 

Years later they learned their father was in the hospital after a major heart attack and awaiting surgery. Later, they learned through an acquaintance that their father had passed away.

 

To Breathe in the Air

 

That fall, Ada left New York City to move to Washington, D.C.

 

"New York was beginning to feel like a place where I could go wrong," Ghuman said.

 

Her mother, reluctant to stop her daughter, sent her to live with her grandmother, who had already left New York.

 

Ghuman finished her senior year at Western High School, which would later become the Duke Ellington School of the Arts.

 

Except for short stints in Barbados and Florida, Ghuman's stayed in the Washington area to go to school and work. She considers it her home.

 

She now lives in a two-story house in historic Laurel with a backyard, but no swings or bicycle. Her home is surrounded by trees and has a large front porch.

 

Inside, the rooms have been decorated with eclectic furniture, and fresh herbs and produce sit on the counter in her sunny kitchen. Splashes of bright colors appear everywhere, especially in her paintings. She works from a laptop at her dining room table while sipping on a mug of orange-spiced tea.

 

Her early difficulties with English had made art class a refuge where she could speak with brush strokes, sketches and colors.

 

She still paints, but she makes her living working from home doing administrative work for businesses.

 

Her house is decorated with her work.

 

On one wall in her dining room hangs a large canvas with three flamingos. In the adjoining hall is a large portrait of the Statue of Liberty that she painted last year after talking to some friends about the state of immigration in the country.

 

"I think there were a lot of issues going on when I painted it, and I just wanted to remember that there is such a statue," she said.

 

Her flexible schedule has been convenient since her mother moved in with her seven years ago and occasionally needs to be taken to doctor's appointments. Her mother loves to visit the local library and read Spanish-language novels. She still talks with Ada's aunt about what's going on in Cuba.

 

They've grown accustomed to keeping an eye on Castro from afar.

 

Ghuman said she thinks she's had an easier life in the United States than most immigrants. She hasn't had to live with the fear of being deported, continually renew visas to stay in the country or wait years to have her fate decided by immigration agencies.

 

At 18 she realized that she didn't like President Reagan's policies and wanted to be able to vote for one of his opponents in the upcoming election. She admits, with a hearty laugh, that it wasn't the noblest reason to pursue citizenship, but she's glad she did it.

 

She spent about $50 to file an application and was finished with the process in a couple weeks.

 

"The ceremony was in Rockville. I remember it was a very emotional day for me. I had my grandmother and some friends there, and we went out to eat afterwards," she said.

 

Now, it costs $675 to submit an application for people under 75, and applicants often wait up to a year or more to complete interviews and tests.

 

She loves to travel, especially when she's accompanied by someone with whom she can share the memories. Lately, she has thought about traveling to Cuba. Her mother refuses to accompany her, saying she doesn't want to ruin any of her memories.

 

"I want to breathe in the air, look around at the sights and be able to say I'm part of this somehow and absorb what's there," Ghuman said.

 

"I don't know if I'll get any great understanding from anything, but I want a visual, a sense and a feeling of the place I was born."