For the Couple Who Became John and Mary Madden Keroff
My name, at least for the moment, is Nikolai. I don’t have an amazing reason for why I chose it. It was there on one of those baby naming websites and it sounded Eastern European, which is what my family is, at least historically. In America now, no one seems to be anything. My Grandpa’s father was a little boy when his parents caught the boat to Ellis Island in 1913. Then, because my family isn’t exactly known for having the best of luck, their only possessions were taken–which, to be fair, was only a sack of dried fruit–and they were turned away. Can you imagine how depressing that would be? You risk it all, you carry your babies and your fruit across the ocean and then it gets taken away and at the end you feel lucky to be still holding your child. Though, they didn’t separate the children too often then… Did you know that people used to be turned away a lot? I didn’t. And I guess I still don’t. I found sources that said that there’s no evidence of a lot of people being denied entrance to Ellis Island. All that I have to say that my family was denied entrance is the story that no one’s supposed to talk about. But let’s be real, the greatest country in the world turned away how many Jewish people during the Second World War? Anyways, that story that no one is supposed to tell says that, after my family was rejected from Ellis Island, they ended up going to Canada and sneaking down over the border into North Dakota–”accidentally,” of course. Doesn’t that ever happen to you? Don’t you ever accidentally travel close to 200 miles more than you needed to on foot? While carrying all of your meager possessions and your children on your back? That’s believable, right? Yeah… I never found it that believable either. Of course the family claims that they lost the papers to prove they came in legally. This is a very lengthy way to say that my father’s family may be hypocrites when they’re shaking their head about “those damn illegals.” Maybe this is an even longer way to say that maybe being queer and trans in the Midwest isn’t the life I’d pick.You’d think that I’d have picked a different name than Nikolai when I finally decided not to be my mother’s little girl anymore. And yet I specifically went to all those silly baby name websites and searched “Russian baby names,” “Bulgarian Baby names,” “Eastern European boy names.” I suppose on the one hand the name sounds cool. I suppose on another I do not wish to pretend that I am not what I am. I am white. I am the grandchild of immigrants. I do benefit from the hellish systems in the United States. When I walk down the street, most people will simply believe that
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