So long, angel of Harlem

'Blinded, you lost your way

in the side streets and the alleyways.

Like a star exploding in the night,

Filling up the city with broad daylight.

Angel in devil's shoes,

Salvation in the blues.

You never looked like an angel.'

- U2, 'Angel of Harlem.'

Teresa had just finished cooking her fifth batch of Bolognese, which she’d been feeding me with for the past several weeks. Katie, Julianne, Teresa and I were all sitting around the table, talking and laughing. It was a balmy not-quite-summer evening in the beginning of September at St Mary’s on the Upper East Side.

Reluctant to emerge from the warmth of my girl pal cocoon, I stretched one arm out over the couch and yawned lazily. “Phew, look at the time. I’d better call immigration before they close.”

I’d received a letter a few weeks ago pertaining to the status of my B2 Visa application. At the time, I remember my blood going cold opening that letter, when the full weight of realization hit me, reading in black and white what the requirements of fulfilling my Visa obligations to transfer to the B2 were really going to be, and how little time I actually had left. I’d already been able to stay an extra three months in the US beyond my J1 Visa.

I’d decided to try and prolong my stay after my J1, the thing that allowed me to live and work unimpeded in the US, expired.

Things had got pretty hazy and intense after that. I’d rapidly run out of money, I couldn’t pay my rent, and in general, I thought I had seen all New York had to throw at me, but I just didn’t know how hard New York could get when you had virtually no income whatsoever.

That day, my friend Julianne had been one of first to hear the news as I held the letter with shaking hands. My cigar-smoking, scotch drinking casting agent friend shook her head as the three of us sat around a table at St Mary’s lounge. ‘There’s got to be something we can do,” she declaimed, pounding her fist on the table with the typical American brand of optimism and pig-headed stubbornness.

 Sam was still in denial, and honestly, so was I.

Julianne bought me an ice cream and we wandered, ‘lonely as a cloud’, over to the West Side. As we crossed through Central Park, everything I looked at seemed to spark emotion; the buildings, the people, the shouts and noises, the light on this sun-soaked day, were all singularly of this one place, and I couldn’t hold back the tears.

The tears came again as I walked with my adopted Australian sheep dog, Zisou, through to the duck pond, and with Katie, and we racked our brains for ways to stay in this town. How could I ever leave you?

If ever I would leave you,

It wouldn’t be in summer.

Seeing you in summer,

I would never go.

I walked back to the convent. Although I’d experienced mice running out of my closet, the early morning garbage trucks waking me up, the ‘Sister Mary Claire please call the office’ 6am intercom, I loved living here, and life continued. I went back and drank tea with my friends on the rooftop, and sat up laughing with them, worshipping and praying early in the morning into the night. I began to forget about the ominous threat enclosed in the letter.

Everything seemed fine. And that’s when the bottom truly fell out.

“I can’t hear you,” I said, lifting the phone to my ear over the laughter and commotion at the 10^th floor kitchen dinner. I left the room. “What did you say?”

“You have to leave,” the voice on the other end said.

“What?”

“You have to leave. If you haven’t left the US before September 24^th, there’s every chance you could be considered to have overstayed your Visa, and be accruing time illegally in the US. I don’t even know if they will extend the time of legality back to the end of your J1 Visa or not.”

The formless fear in my mind now had a date, and a voice, and a name. “What are you telling me? My B2 Visa takes me through to mid December. I have until then. Six months, from when the J1 expired. That’s right, isn’t it?”

“Right – if your B2 gets approved. If it gets declined after your deadline on the Request for Evidence (the terrifying letter I’d received several weeks earlier) you have to leave the US immediately. Any time you are in the US after that, if you are denied, you are seen to have accrued time illegally in the US.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “Hold on, hold on. Let me get this straight…”

“Look, I’m technically not supposed to give you any legal advice. But, if I were you, to be safe, and take no chances at all, I would leave the US before September 24.”

I hung up from the call. I started to walk back into the kitchen, where the girls were still laughing and eating, with each step having to force my feet one in front of the other.

“It’s bad news,” I said.

Several weeks later, I found myself in a legal clinic near Wall Street surrounded by 90 other immigrants, all desperate for answers. The day before had been Colette’s birthday, and she had shouted me lunch at Bloomingdales and paid for us both to spend the night at a hotel. We’d stayed up late talking that night. The time with her had been precious, but all too fleeting. All week long, people had been taking care of the tab, lifting me up in prayer, enfolding me. And here I was now.

I took a number and a seat. A woman came out speaking in Spanish while another translated to English. Information videos rolled in several languages, from Mandarin to Arabic. Wide-eyed, we stared up at the screen as ominous warnings were intoned about ICE. The videos they showed us declared a world we were unwelcome in, an America unfeeling to the immigrant experience. It was the Ellis Island of the 21^st Century, a holding pen for the mobilized masses of the entire globe, a sterilization chamber for our hopes and dreams.

The numbers kept being called. I was worried they might not have time to see me. “Please take a number,” they called out to the new arrivals. “Those of you we don’t see today will get a guaranteed appointment at the next clinic.” I turned over and over the deadline in my mind. September 24. There would be no next clinic for me. By then, I would already be gone.

I heard my name. I stood up and went to speak with the free attorney. I could barely hear over the noise in the cubicle directly next door. The words I had been dreading were echoed again: “God forbid, if you don’t get your Visa…”

I stepped blankly out into the streets. The choice was now mine. Would I cut my losses? If I abandoned the application for the B2, they told me, it would look a whole lot better, since I got denied on a technicality, as opposed to lack of any evidence of my reasons for trying to extend my J1 which didn’t involve simply wanting to stay in the US longer.

It turned out, I didn’t have the stomach for this kind of risk. God was closing these doors for a reason. The cold hard facts were, I’d run out of fuel. When they gave me an ultimatum about leaving, and my $2k debt at St Mary’s being forgiven, a strange lightheadness – relief? – fell on me, and I knew what I had to do.

Fast forward another week, blurry headed and red-eyed, I was rushing across town to another clinic. A second opinion, just to be sure. I had been told I would have to pay up my back rent, or leave St Mary’s. I was only sleeping about three hours a night. Things were getting worse.

I missed my 4^th street stop and ended up at Broadway Lafayette. I was running past Katz’s deli, rushing to make my appointment. I made it there in time to another friend, Lee, from church, volunteering at a soup kitchen alongside the clinic. His sympathetic hugs and promises to visit this Kiwi in London were enough to send me yet again off into paroxysms of grief at leaving Manhattan behind, just like I had in 2014. I didn’t know if I could bear being parted from the city I adored, and it being another five years before I would see it again.

Everything I’d read terrified me. I’d heard tales of Australians banned for life from America, even when visiting legally on an ESTA. 

At least New Zealand didn’t have the two-year rule, where I would not be able to step foot in America for two years following the end to my J1 Visa. New Zealand is exempt from this archaic clause.

In the clinic, a sign directly across from the table and just outside the window read ‘Jesus saves.’ A Korean lawyer told me how she’d arrived in the country on a J1, just like me. Only, hers was a three-year J1. She’d managed to secure a job here, and lived in New York now. As I sniffled and choked my way through my tale of immigration woe, the women were kind and sympathetic, offering muffins and prayers. I met more wonderful people in the office, and all expressed their sorrow that I had to leave, and their wish that there was more they could do to help.

They set me up with legal aid, and it was only a few days before I heard back with confirmation of what I’d heard at the first clinic. They were able to look through all my documents, and came to the same conclusions: I probably would get approved for the B2. But then what? I didn’t have the money for the next Visa, and would have to leave by Christmas anyway.

The Lord must have a good sense of humour, because my financial situation was about to get even worse.

My friend Yvonne would share the gospel with Richard Dawkins himself, even if she had to hog-tie him to do it. I woke up in her West Harlem apartment with a huge smile on my face. ‘Yvonne! Yvonne’s here!’ Despite my circumstances, I couldn’t help but be filled with the utmost joy whenever I was around her. I could sense the spirit of cried out, broken spirited, face-to-the-floor prayers that had been prayed in this place.

At 24, Yvonne was a denizen of the financial district, an alumnus of JP Morgan and Wall Street, now with a shiny, brand-spanking new job. Unless you knew her, you wouldn’t know the hard yards she’d put in with God to be in this position. She was already able to afford her own one-bedroom apartment in this up-and-coming area, and now here she was with me, camping out on her air mattress.

I’d now moved out of St Mary’s, and had booked my onward ticket to London, where an Irish passport would see me set up to hopefully find a job much easier than the US.

So much had happened since the end of the opera, and making the videos at W48th street, with Yvonne’s help. God had moved so quickly. That’s what happens. Yvonne had moved out of St Mary’s not much earlier, and I’d been packing up her things tearfully with her, not wanting her to go. At that time, I’d still been praying that a miracle would allow me to stay in New York. I never foresaw, or didn’t want to foresee, that in a few short months, I would be the one saying goodbye to her.

Despite everything, or the way things appeared, I knew Yvonne would walk away at a moment’s notice from all of this, should God call her to a different place or a different life. She’d walked away from her home country. She’d walked away from past relationships. She was here now because God had brought her here, and if He asked, she would follow Him to the ends of the earth.

Here I was, on the other side of the planet as far as I was concerned, it couldn’t be more different from the UES.

When I saw the stroller coming through the subway gate on W145th street, I followed right through.

I don’t know if it was the lack of money in my pocket, the thought I could get away with it, or whatever, but I was completely blind to the cop on the other side of the gate. My only thought was on catching that connecting D train to the F train to Brooklyn.

I felt a hand on my shoulder. ‘Ma’am!! MA’AM!!”

I turned around, my worst fears confirmed.

It was the NYPD.

‘Didn’t you hear me calling you?’ The cop asked.

Before I knew it, I had been written up for a civil violation. I was in yet another holding pen, this time in Brooklyn. Waiting.

I could tell you some stories. The people waiting to plead their case looked down on their luck. I felt sorry that they were here. It didn’t seem right.

One man told me he’d had his fare legally, but was trying to get involved to help out in a fight that was occurring, when six or so other men passed through an open gate leading to the trains. A woman even spoke up in his defense. However, the authorities did not listen and wrote him up anyway. He’d been trying to fight the ticket for months. What started as a $100 fine had accrued interest, and now he owed more than $2000 to the authorities, in what was certainly an unjust matter. He explained the racial abuse he’d received from the cops. “You n**gers are all the same,” one had told him.

I didn’t get let off the ticket. I had stepped through the gate, after all. I was fined $100, which I will have to pay off later.

I don’t think I’ve been treated unjustly. But my heart beats for the Americans like this man that experience injustice every day.

For my last Friday here, I took the train to the World Trade Centre for the last time in who knows how long, to see where Yvonne works at Moody’s. She bought me a pomegranate tea, and we walked to church together. She and her friend prayed over me for freedom from the past. Yvonne said she felt strongly there was a spirit of freemasonry attached to me.

I told her several years ago, I had accepted a scholarship from the Freemasons. She told me there were unseen strings attached to this, and that she saw hands around my throat. I’ve had a lot to do with cults in my journalistic work to date as well. Her friend told me that Freemasons also believe in strangulation for followers who leave the fold, although I have not been able to find verification of this belief. However, it does explain a lot.

The resulting evening was one of the most liberating of my life to date. I knew I wouldn’t leave church the same. Indeed, I felt an incredible lightness. I stepped onto the subway again (taking care to swipe my card!) but this time really felt like I was seeing the people around me for the first time.

Yvonne had been my truly just friend in Christ, my intercessor and my angel of Harlem, and it would be a long time before I could forget the things I’d seen here. But for now, I was heading into the arms of another angel – next stop, Angel, Central London.