Crossed Over

by Santana Knox

I was meant to be a trophy, a medal, a prize, but she couldn’t hang me on a shelf.

There was nothing better than waking up from satisfied sleep, the kind that wasn’t followed by any obligations, no alarm set. The type of rest reserved for children, that wasn’t appreciated until it was too far out of reach.

“You’ll understand when you become a parent.” “So if I don’t want to curse a child with the burden of our generational trauma, I’ll never understand you?” Words I’d never be brave enough to tell her.

My hair had been a point of pride for me. Long, strong, brown hair. The more classic the look, the more Latina I felt, which was hard to achieve some days. It was something my mother never understood, the feeling of not being enough to claim what you were. I was born in Latin America, Antônia. Do you think people in Brazil sit around debating their latinidade? No, they just are, existing, next to each other. I don’t think I even said the word latino until I moved to this country. You are just as Brazilian as I am, as your father is, and your grandparents before us. Don’t let people who don’t understand the sum of our experience try to define yours.

I’d never been brave enough to do it intoxicated, old wisdom imparted by the drug dealer I’d lived with for a short time. Something about only breaking one law at a time, and though I was sure those weren’t his exact words, the meaning was essentially the same. Only one dumb idea at once.

When you’re a woman, your anger is either childish or irrational. It’s never justified. So I didn’t care to try to explain myself anymore.

Those words meant more than anything. They were the words I was desperate to hear from my own mother, but here, right now, coming from Lonnie, they were everything, everything my mother could never give me, and I was somehow finally okay with that. Maybe that was the first step to healing this crater in my chest. I’d spent my entire life with the belief that family was blood, and no matter what, you couldn’t break away, that friendships came and went, but nobody would be there for you like your own. But these people had shown me that family meant so much more.