Story Title:Elizabeth’s StoryDepartment of Homeland Security Form 194: Proof of Legal Entry into the United States
Even now, I sometimes dream that we are all together. Before Dad and Mom and I left. I was the youngest of five, but my big brother and my sweet sisters stayed behind. I never saw them again. In my dreams, we are still kids, laughing and playing. I wake up and cry.
I was thirteen; I was a child. I didn’t want to leave the only home I knew. My parents said “We are leaving. You’re coming with us.” And that was that. I didn’t choose to be an “illegal alien.” I wasn’t a Martian on a spaceship.
The journey here was one long nightmare. Sixty-six days. We got lost. More than once. Grown men were crying and begging to turn around. We were all piled on top of each other like a load of fish. Inhuman conditions. No privacy. So cold I was either numb or aching all the time. No clean water or bathroom or laundry facilities. Of course, everyone got sick. Hunger. Fever. Diarrhea. Infections. A baby was born during the journey. No stopping. No medicine. The constant reek of dirty clothes, sweaty bodies, rotten teeth, vomit, excrement. A human being died right before my eyes. We just kept going.
Finally, praise God, we made it to America, the Promised Land, the Land of Opportunity and Open Doors. But things were no better. Everything was unfamiliar and strange: the language, the weather, the food, the people. We were still cold and sick and hungry. And unwanted, shunned.
When people talk about us, all you hear about are acts of violence or someone wanting a handout. And I’m sad to say there was some truth to that. But most of us were good people. Doing the best we could.
I can barely speak about what happened next. My father died. And then my mother. I was an orphan. Completely alone, abandoned in a peculiar, terrifying world. My parents left our home country for freedom and a better life. When I was thirteen, I thought only about myself, but they did it for me. They died for me. I miss them every day.
I was now the neediest of the needy. I had nothing. I was desperate. Two of my fellow newcomers were good people. They were “aliens” to some. I called them angels. They took me in. They gave me a home. They saved my life.
And there were some good people in the community who welcomed us. They saw beyond the differences, gave us food, taught us how to live in this bewildering place. They saved our community, even at the expense of their own.
So I survived. I made it through. I’m telling you my story from across the years, so I have to let you know that things got worse again before they got better. Those wonderful people who took me in? A few months later, they died too. My community was being decimated.
This isn’t just a survival story, though. It’s also a love story. Did you guess that already? There was another man, a really good man. John worked for the couple who fostered me. He was a bit older than me, but we’d been through all of the same hardships and tragedies. Under the circumstances, I had to grow up fast.
We were married two years later. We had a baby girl, and then a son. We worked hard. Doors began to open. We became citizens and homeowners. We had a big family - ten children in all. I had my last child, our son Isaac, when I was forty-two years old. We were so blessed. All of our children lived to adulthood. Many we knew were not so fortunate.
All ten of our children married. They gave us eighty-eight grandchildren.My husband lived a good, long life. We had many happy years together. When he passed away, I went to live with my son.
I died, fourteen years later, in 1687. My husband and I have over two million descendants. Among them are three U.S. presidents, a Nobel Prize winner, and scores of others who have made the world a better place. For two frightened undocumented immigrants on the Mayflower, I think we did okay.
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