Mary Anne Rose - Chapter 5: New York City
5. New York City
Though something in Mary Anne had changed forever, she didn’t start acting like a different person all of a sudden. Besides being able to make use of her sexuality from time to time, she also had great tactical skills; she never committed crimes, but she did not mind using other people, in particular, men’s money, power and connections, to get what she wanted and that was exactly what she did next. She used the next man she met; she asked him to take her to Kingston, the capital of Jamaica and spend time together. If she wanted to do something in her life, Montego Bay was not the place; Kingston was the happening place, and it was also the place where she could figure out how to get out of here. Once she arrived there, she made excuses like going see her old friend, going see her aunt and spending a couple of hours alone just because she wanted to do these things in order to make time for her alone during the day. She stopped at a couple of model agencies and she got lucky. One agency was just looking for a model looking like her. She was hired on the spot. Once she got the job, she told her man to give her some money for shopping; she never asked a lot of money straightforwardly before, but she needed it this time, so she asked. She did that very well and he just gave her a thousand dollars; he had to stop at a couple of places to get the money in cash, but he didn’t seem to mind. She just kept it and waited for him to leave Jamaica to go back home; once he left, she used the money to rent an apartment for herself and started working as a model. The apartment was small, but it was sufficient. After she worked as a model for six months in Kingston, she got a big break. Her agency asked her to fly to New York and stay for a couple of weeks there for photo shoots for a new apparel brand. She said, “Yes.” The agency managed to get her the passport and a temporary work visa. As far as she was concerned, the visa was as good as U.S. permanent residency. She arrived in New York, stayed at a hotel and worked for a couple of weeks as planned so that there wouldn’t be any hard feelings between her agency and her; after the photo shoots, she skipped the return flight. She had some money saved for this occasion and she also did some homework before she left home; she contacted a couple of people prior to the trip and found a connection in the city. Her friend’s uncle owned a small restaurant in Queens. She obtained the address before she left, and right after the photo shoots, she went straight to that place. Her friend’s uncle, the owner of the place, was not hiring any new waitresses, but he understood that she needed a job. She became a waitress there he kindly arranged a room for her. In a couple of weeks, she got to know several people; one of them was Mary Parker and she became a good friend of hers. She borrowed her credit card, ATM card and went to a bank. She told a banker that she married recently and that was why her IDs, except for her passport that was issued very recently, had a different last name “Parker”. She also told that she decided to not to add her middle name “Anne” when he made her credit card and ATM card but she just wanted to add that this time. She also made up her social security number but the banker didn’t bother to verify. The banker felt a little uneasy but he just opened an account for her because, the more accounts he opened, the faster he would get promoted. She knew that; she also smiled pleasantly to create easy atmosphere. He gave her a new bank account number and a personal checkbook the same day. In time, she got herself her own credit card and ATM card. With those two and the fake social security number, she got a job at a clothes store several months later; the store manager didn’t bother checking her passport or her visa. She was on a proper payroll this time, and she got herself a tax paper within a year. Now did she have three different IDs, the credit card, ATM card and the tax paper; she also had the social security number. The number was a fake, but it worked; she appreciated the faulty ID system in U.S. because that was why she was able to make up something like a social security number so easily. She started going to a driving school and she got herself a New York Driver License three months later. She looked just like a U.S. citizen with that. In U.S., the driver license was the ultimate ID, not the passport or the green card. But she wanted more; she could stay in U.S. as long as she wanted with the driver license, but she wanted to see the world. She used her charm and found a guy to marry her six months after she got the license. Once she got married, she told her new husband how she got her IDs except for the passport, the only genuine ID. He did not get upset about it; there were many others like her in New York, and his new wife happened to be one of them. He arranged an immigration lawyer for her to sort it out, and the matter was sorted out within a year. Since he was a U.S. citizen, Mary Anne Rose became a U.S. permanent resident three years later.
Something like this happened everyday in U.S. It was conventionally believed that U.S. was a developing country, but loopholes in ID system, so to speak, were everywhere. If one had the will, it wasn’t difficult for her to take advantage and become a legitimate citizen given time. After all, ancestors of many, if not, most of, current U.S. citizens went through similar processes, so it was a fair game as far as she was concerned.
She got what she wanted, but her marriage had no passion at that point. Though her husband was not having an affair, she knew that he was genuinely interested in the office manager at his office; she met her once, and she was fairly attractive. She was a genuinely nice person, and she could tell that Roy, her husband and she were attracted to each other; they seemed like they were made for each other. Mary Anne casually suggested that Roy and she get divorced; he did not get emotional about it and took care of all paperwork to get that done timely. He felt a little sadness but he also knew that the marriage was over. He also knew that the marriage was really for Mary Anne to get U.S. permanent residency legally; she got it, so he decided to move on. He thought, “If nothing else, I gave her a new life.”
