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Because a place can do many things against you, and if it’s your home or if it was your home at one time, you still love it. That’s how it works.
I felt the way I often felt in this country—simultaneously conspicuous and invisible, like an oddity whom everyone noticed but chose to ignore.
We’re the unknown Americans, the ones no one even wants to know, because they’ve been told they’re supposed to be scared of us and because maybe if they did take the time to get to know us, they might realize that we’re not that bad, maybe even that we’re a lot like them. And who would they hate then?
No one here wants to admit it, but the United States is part of México’s problem. The United States is feeding the beast,
But it was only a word—justice. It was only a concept, and it wasn’t enough.
What I didn’t understand—what I suddenly realized now—was that if I stopped moving backwards, trying to recapture the past, there might be a future waiting for me, waiting for us, a future that would reveal itself if only I turned around and looked, and that once I did, I could start to move toward it.
Maybe it’s the instinct of every immigrant, born of necessity or of longing: Someplace else will be better than here. And the condition: if only I can get to that place.
People do what they have to in this life. We try to get from one end of it to the other with dignity and with honor. We do the best we can.
