The Undocumented Americans (One World Essentials)

by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio

what happens is, let’s say I go out to dinner. If I’m having an anxious day, I will send my parents take-out dinner. If I see a brown person in the kitchen at the restaurant, I will think that every kitchen in America probably has a Mexican in it and it will make me feel proud but sad—RIP Anthony Bourdain, a homie who got it—and then if my server is brown, if they are either in my opinion too young or too old or seem too tired for the job, I will leave a crazy tip—for what I am, which is a freelancer. Now. I do not have the kind of money to be leaving people crazy tips. But I remember every person who ever left my dad a really good tip when we lived off his tips, I remember every one, you don’t understand, I have been thinking of those nice Puerto Rican executive assistants for the past fifteen years, it was always the Latina executive assistants, very rarely the white people in power, and I remember how he felt for the rest of the evening when he came home. It was like having my dad back from the dead. He would dance to no music and he’d make jokes, and he’d come out of his shower looking like a teenager. I know what a good tip feels like for a poor family. Every good tip feels like Simon helping Jesus carry the cross.