Catalina

by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio

If I was left alone, I walked outside and wandered into traffic. I was promised lots of little chocolates if I stopped, but I couldn’t be bought.

My grandmother was a woman who wanted to work. She wanted to work and have her own paycheck.

I knew in my heart that anything I had done or could do in America, my grandmother would have done more and better if she had only had the opportunity.

It occupied an outsized space in my mind; alternatively, it occupied a normal amount of space in my mind and it’s everyone else who’s crazy.

Looking sad like it’s your job.

But I was not a gold-standard fighting cock. I was just a girl. That part, the fact of my being just a girl, is something my grandmother never forgot and my grandfather seldom remembered.

In García Márquez, people in love experienced bouts of vomiting, psychosomatic fevers, and real catatonia. I wanted to make boys sick, too. This is how I wanted to be loved.

missed the Catholic Church. It was like going from wearing gold to wearing sterling silver.

You can kill things by asking about them, but not by thinking about them.

The financial aid officers could not encourage me to seek out work because that was illegal and I could not ask my grandparents for money, because they had none, and without a social security number I didn’t qualify for a bank loan so the Harvard Financial Aid Office offered me a personal loan.

I liked prize money almost as much as I liked standardized tests, which was a lot.

“Yes, I will die. If I don’t find something to wear I will wilt away like a rose, petal by petal, J.Lo as Selena in Selena, releasing the diamond ring inside her hand as she dies.”

Sofia Vergara and Gloria Estefan must be personally aware,

you’re amazing, and, no, I’m not some whack-a-doo Log Cabin Republican who doesn’t want to be your friend. If anything, should you become the face of immigration reform,

I could not afford Uggs, and I hated their ubiquity. I do not know which of these came first.

“Look at this gorgeous complexion,” she said while she softly touched my bare arm. I flinched. “Are you Spanish, my dear?”

My grandparents came here for a reason and I think they want to look forward and not back.”

“One day, though,” I sighed, remembering my lines. “Maybe one day I’ll visit the homeland.”

White people have always tried to bond with me about Latin America in this anxious, insecure, and very awkward way.

was a Latina with a full professorship and she wore perfectly tailored Italian leather pants. It said something. She wasn’t here to lie low.

In every single war across the world, across history, across all time, I would have been a civilian and a girl, the victim of an inglorious death.

I believe people are allowed their secrets.

Whatever our cinematic personal fantasy was, we were almost all descendants of annihilated peoples.

Her thing, by the way, was organic chemistry.

haleyyyyy

It felt cozy to know that we were young and could always go somewhere to drink more or watch Pulp Fiction and talk daringly about cocaine but succumb to the reality of french fries from the late-night kitchen downstairs run by sophomores.

A banner popped up announcing what I already knew—the DREAM Act was filibustered, it was not going in for a vote, and my professor—almost on cue, his timing was so fucking precise—said, “If most Latin American countries were wiped off the face of the Earth, it would not cause a dent in the lives of Americans.”

“Something tells me that if I seriously pursued you, I’d be a trope in your life. And fuck if I’m going to be a trope in someone else’s story.”

This was the first time, but it would not be the last, that I would not stand to be served by men who looked like my grandfather.

Of course, we can’t always do what we want to do, especially when we are undocumented, because when police get involved, ICE gets involved and there goes your life.

I liked to eat one mango a day, thirty-one mangoes a month,

But I knew I just needed to nap. I just needed to lie down and close my eyes.

Breaking Bad was my favorite TV show but I had to read spoilers beforehand or I could not watch it.

I didn’t have a stomach for violence. I was, however, very interested in organized crime.

Maybe my parents were smart to not have dreams. Maybe they did have dreams, but I just wouldn’t find those dreams respectable. Maybe I’d cringe. Maybe my dad wanted to be a DJ.

I’d heard stories of migrants being driven across the border without money or papers or phones, dropped off defenseless in cartel-run areas. Let’s say this happens to you. What would you do? Describe your plan below. I’m dying to know.

“Not enough, and I am sure I do. Why do you ask?” “You definitely know at least one.” I pointed both thumbs at myself.

It felt like a fuck-you to someone. Not God, but someone.

I was part of the same ecosystem as the boys thrown in Rikers if they so much as looked at a dime bag of marijuana.

Counting the pieces also reminded me of the beloved rosary my grandmother gifted me for my First Communion: white, plastic, glow-in-the-dark.

I HAVE THIS ROSARY

“You make me so mad.” “Mad in what way?” “All the ways, Catalina.”

Before going into a car with a man, I look at the child lock toggle hidden on the side of the door, and I flick it off. I am never inside a locked car with a man.

There were so many of them. I knew too much to keep on walking. I didn’t know who this girl was, but it didn’t matter. The point is, someone put their hands on her.

I gave her space, but when we both got iPhones we discovered that we could just play pool over iMessage and it would feel like a hug and we didn’t need to talk.

I had suffered for so long, and I wanted to get better, just not yet.

Francisco Ituralde was the third father to leave me, and I was only twenty-one, I was three for three,

I had been abandoned, sure, I could do nothing about the fact that I had been abandoned, but I could turn this ship around, make lemonade out of lemons, I could become the most famous abandoned girl in the world. Out of all the abandoned girls in the world, I could be their valedictorian.