Inspired by Goldy Moldavsky‘s childhood as an undocumented immigrant, Just Say Yes is full of heart and laugh-out-loud humour, while also tackling important themes related to immigrant issues with honesty and nuance.
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Goldy Moldavsky‘s Just Say Yes, which releases on January 30th 2024.
Jimena Ramos had no idea she was undocumented.
Now she’s seventeen, and she needs to figure out a way to stay in New York City, the only home she can remember. There’s only one possibility that will get her a green card quickly enough: Jimena is going to find an American to marry her.
She’s got one excellent candidate: Vitaly, her next-door neighbor and friend, the only person she trusts with her secret. But Vitaly’s got his own plans for the future. He’s a definite no.
So Jimena tries online dating. She decides to approach this marriage like a business transaction. She figures out a plan that just might save her and make her a citizen at last.
But of course, she can’t stop thinking about Vitaly.
CHAPTER 9
MY BUILDING HAS A LAUNDRY ROOM ON THE basement level. It’s pretty drab—fluorescent tube lights, a pair of shoebox windows up by the ceiling that hardly let any air in—but I have the kind of very exciting news that will brighten up the place.
“I’m going on a date!” I announce, bounding into the room.
I’m surprised to find Mrs. Gorky sneering back at me. “You think I care about your date?” the old woman says. “You kids these days, you overshare everything, screaming from the mountaintops! When I was your age, I went on a hundred dates. You think I shouted the news at everyone I saw?”
If I had to guess? Yes, I think Mrs. Gorky shouted everything, all the time. But the announcement was never meant for her, it was for Vitaly, who sits in one of two folding chairs, hiding a laugh behind a paperback. I knew he’d be here because the only standing date he has is with his weekly load of laundry. My mom washes my clothes because if she didn’t, everything I own would be pink. And also, I’m lazy. But Vitaly knows what fabric softener is, hence his very boring routine.
“Sorry, Mrs. Gorky. I didn’t know you were in here.”
“Sure, sure, why would you assume somebody who lives in the building would be in the building. Idiot.”
I nearly crack my jaw biting back my words, because my mom taught me to respect the elderly. Thankfully, Mrs. Gorky’s clothing is folded and waiting in her pushcart. She trudges out of the room like she’s in a race with a hare.
When we’re alone, I plop into the seat beside Vitaly and cross one leg over the other as I turn to him, spine straight, smile at full wattage. “As I was saying, I have a date.”
“So? You date all the time.”
Gasp. “Did you just call me a slut?”
Honestly, I only joke with him like this because the color his face turns is my favorite shade of pink. But I’m not here to make the poor boy suffer (that much). “I’m joking, Big Rally! This will be the first official potential suitor on my path to marriage-slash-citizenship.”
“Congratulations?”
I ignore the snark in his tone, because this news is too exciting to be overshadowed by him or anyone. After a few backand-forth messages over the course of two days, Keith and I have decided to officially meet. Vitaly thought I couldn’t make this work. But here I am, proving him wrong. I’m so excited I can hardly sit still, so I jump out of my seat and try not to bounce in place.
“Someone from school?”
I smile because while Vitaly is keeping his tone casual, his question suggests that he’s deeply invested in my plan. “I’ll have you know I found him on a dating website.”
Vitaly groans. “This is a bad idea.”
“He’s a mature—terribly hot—young gentleman—”
“Such a bad idea.”
“—whose interests include fitness, finance, and spirituality—”
“Maybe the worst idea.”
I cock my hip and spike a hand on it. “Why are you being such a sourpuss? I’m getting things done, setting things into motion, things are moving along swimmingly, et cetera, et cetera.”
“Because dating websites are practically the Wild West. The people on there—you don’t know their motivations. You can’t trust a person’s profile. Especially not when he’s a guy. Trust me, I know—I’m a guy.”
I snort. “You’re not a guy.”
This, more than anything I’ve said yet, makes Vitaly stop to really look at me. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“You’re not a guy guy. I mean, you’re not the type of guy who’s going to be on a dating website. You’re not even the type of guy who dates. Why don’t you date, anyway?”
“Because dating would pull focus from my schoolwork.”
“But you’ll have schoolwork in college, too. Are you not going to date then? And what about when you have work work? How will you ever meet anyone?”
I’m pretty sure I’ve just punched a bunch of holes into Vitaly’s entire “pulling focus” philosophy, because he takes so long to answer. Finally, he mutters something about “finding a good work-life balance” by the time he’s an adult or some other nonsense.
“You can’t always have your nose to the grindstone, Big Rally. Wasn’t it Shakira who said, ‘Life happens when you’re making other plans’?”
“I’m not sure that quote is accurately attribu—”
“But she’s right.”
DING. The dryer stops spinning, and Vitaly is all too happy to end this conversation with me and tend to his laundry. He leaves his paperback splayed facedown on his seat. I peek at the cover. Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close? I can do that.
Vitaly opens the round door while simultaneously grabbing the room’s one cart. We both take a deep breath as the tiny space fills with the fresh smell of Downy. He rolls his dry clothes a few feet to the counter against the wall to begin folding. I watch him for a bit. He is so precise in his movements, smoothing a shirt over the scratched and dented Formica until there is not a single ripple or ridge in the fabric. He folds like it’s meditation. So he doesn’t notice when I swipe some clothes from the cart.
“I’m going to give you another shot,” I say. “Will you, or will you not, marry me?”
Do I feel ridiculous wearing a pair of Vitaly’s boxers on my head like a wedding veil? No, they’re freshly clean. And the bouquet of loose socks in my clutched hands really completes the whole look. Vitaly turns as white as one of his newly laundered sheets, though.
He swipes his underwear off my head and shoves it into the bottom of his cart, where he can pretend it doesn’t exist. “Never,” he says.
I really shouldn’t torture him (much).
“You’re driving me crazy,” Vitaly says, eyes firmly on his next fold.
“In, like, a sexy way?”
“In, like, an annoying way.” He stops folding so he can give me his full attention. “Did it ever occur to you that you’re not mature enough to be getting married?”
“Rude.”
“Well, it’s a big commitment. It’s kind of the biggest commitment there is. I guess I just find it strange that you’re so thrilled at the prospect of making a huge life decision like that when you’re not even eighteen yet.”
“I’m thrilled about a date,” I clarify. “Not marriage, per se. I mean, yeah, I’m young, but if this date leads to love and that love leads to marriage and that marriage leads to citizenship, then that’s awesome, isn’t it? It’s romantic.”
Vitaly turns back to his clothes. “‘Romantic’ is not the word I’d use for your immigration scheme.”
“You call it an immigration scheme, I call it a girl on a quest for freedom.”
At this, Vitaly has the audacity to snort. Actually snort. “What?” I say.
“Nothing, it’s just ironic. Freedom through marriage.”
“What do you mean?”
His sideways glance tells me it should be obvious. “Marriage is a cage.”
“Damn, boy. Tell me how you really feel.”
“I just wonder if anyone can truly be happy and married at the same time.”
I stand there, lips parted, just watching Vitaly fold for a minute, because I really never knew he was this cynical. “But love and marriage. They go together like a—”
“Love isn’t a theme song,” Vitaly cuts in. “Love can mean heartbreak. It can be unrequited. It can feel like torture. Love makes you think with your heart instead of your head, which leads to terrible decisions, which could then lead to your life spinning out of control.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, you don’t want to fall in love because it’ll make you spin out of control?”
Vitaly shakes his head like I didn’t hear him right or, probably, like he didn’t mean what he said. “I’m sure that, one day, the feeling of spinning out of control might be something I want to experience, but for the path I’m on right now, it would be too big a risk.”
I lean my hip against the counter, right between him and his cart, closing the gap between us. “‘Risk’ isn’t a bad word.”
I can see him doing some risk assessment right now, mulling over my words as he crisply folds a pair of cords at the knees, then the thighs. He pats the fuzzy fabric into roughly the shape of a three-ring binder. “I’m talking specifically about contentment,” Vitaly says. “Happiness. I just don’t think I’m going to find it within the confines of a marriage.”
He reaches past me to grab more clothes and pointedly ignores the shocked look on my face. “Okay, but marriage can equal friendship,” I say. “A partnership. Someone who’s there for you through everything.”
“Marriage can equal resentment. Settling. Someone who holds you back and makes you miserable and keeps you trapped.”
My lips have nowhere else to go, so I bring them back together in a closed line. I don’t think we can possibly be coming at this from two farther ends of the spectrum. What he’s saying shouldn’t be that shocking—he is a seventeen-year-old boy, after all. It’s only rational that he wouldn’t want anything to do with marriage right now. But he’s not just reflexively recoiling at the thought of marriage—he’s clearly given this a lot of thought.
My parents were a bad model for love and marriage, seeing as how my dad skipped out on us. But Vitaly’s parents are obviously a bad a model for love and marriage just by staying together.
I’m seeing Vitaly in a new light, and it’s not just the blinking fluorescent tubes above us. I had to know that this boy—who does his own laundry and takes meticulous care folding it—thought about more than just courses and exams. But I never considered that those inner thoughts might veer toward something dark. Well, not dark, exactly. Sad. It breaks something open in me, something that longs to reach out and show him that not everything ends in sadness. And even if it does, well, there are always beginnings.
But we’re not those kinds of friends. No matter how close we may be standing, or how much of his intimate apparel is on display. There’s no hiding the stark expanse between us. Certainly not under this harsh lighting.
Vitaly keeps folding his clothes, but the method is haphazard now, his T-shirts looking more like rhombuses than perfect squares.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I don’t want to be a downer. People get married all the time and they’re probably not any worse for wear. I just want to make sure you’re looking at this from all the angles. Do you think, honestly, that you can get married right now? And make it last? While you’re this young? Without long-term relationship experience?”
Every question he asks feels like an added plate on a weight stack at the gym. But he doesn’t see me struggling under the bulk and just keeps piling.
“And can it really be true romantic love if you also have an ulterior motive? How can you trust someone from a dating site with your freedom? How will you trust your own feelings about him when you stand to benefit so much?”
The conversation feels dangerous. It’s too close, the kind of existential stuff I would only ask Sof, and only when we’re really high or after I’ve had a good cry. Frankly, it’s giving me a headache. I push off the counter.
“It’s just a date,” I say. But I can’t muster quite the same enthusiasm as when I first walked in here.
