Don't Ask Me Where I'm From (A LatinX Coming-of-Age)

by Jennifer De Leon

The guest speaker, Miss Deborah, had JUST passed out condoms.

If my mom heard me talking about female condoms, she would say that’s some straight-up Americana gringa shit. For real.

It was where students went when they were really disruptive, like when Joshua called the substitute teacher an old-ass bitch.

A girl from the church we go to was in METCO. She talked like she was white. But she did get into college, so. Oh yeah, and another kid from down the street was in METCO too, I think.

In order to qualify for the program, a student must be a resident of Boston and be nonwhite.

She was like one of three adults in the whole school who could get away with calling students “baby.”

No way was I getting into the whole Dad-stepping-out-again thing.

But what you do now—or don’t do now—can really affect your future, and the choices you have in the future.”

Sneaky! So round two of the search began. Now they were flat-out pissed.

While I took out a pot to boil water, Mom washed her hands, then winked at me as she pulled the controllers out from her black purse. She’s super smart like that.

Truth. My dad has been MIA since the end of the summer.

I have always capital L Loved writing.

Something else I capital L Loved—and this is kinda weird, but whatever—I capital L Loved building miniatures.

Wait, maybe someone had died, someone in Guatemala or El Salvador or Arizona (about one hundred relatives I’d never met lived in these places), or hello, my dad.

But as we got to the twenty-third and twenty-fourth slots, other families—most families—began to weep into crumpled tissues.

“Sir, please,” she interrupted. “There is a waiting list, as I explained. Fair is fair.”

“Life isn’t always fair, mija,” he said.

Unlike me, Jade wasn’t born here. She was three when her parents moved to Boston from Honduras. I knew she didn’t have her papers.

The pamphlet included information about the history of the program, contacts, and biographies of alumni, along with stuff about the W towns—Wellesley, Wayland, Weston, Westburg. White towns. Towns where the schools were real good, where there were enough computers for everyone in a grade to be using one at the same time.

How could she not be upset? And I realized that I wanted Jade to be upset. I wanted her to want me to stay.

We stayed until the sky turned the color of cement.

“Mom. Chill.” I squatted to pick it all up. “What?” She glared at me. “Calm… down…?”

“You want me to calm— Do you even know how much— Do you think—” She was so uncalm that she couldn’t even finish her sentences.

Her hand flew up, ready to slap me. And my hand flew protectively to my cheek as if it already stung.

“Well,” I said, narrowing my eyes, “you’re the one who raised me, so then that’s on you.”

And now he’d been gone for twenty-six days. Yep, I’d been counting. I legit counted every time.

This time I got to thinking, What if he wasn’t just skipping town? What if he was gone for good?

It’s a scary thing, though, to get what you ask for. Right?

Plus, there was some issue with missing paperwork—something about she lost her original birth certificate and stuff in a fire when she was younger.

For years I’d tried to train her to actually knock on my bedroom door instead of barging in—so why was she finally doing it now?

Now I was worrying about snowstorms—staying with some rich suburban family sounded totally awkward!

I also saw things I knew the words for but had never had a reason to name: sprinklers, landscape truck, dog trainer. No joke—a van with the words canine etiquette and paw prints painted on it drove past us. Who says “canine,” anyway?

A teenage guy delivering newspapers. Like, real newspapers. I thought newspaper delivery people were extinct or whatever. And they were all white. Alllllll white.

A janitor—even he was white!—rolled blue bins toward a dumpster.

So, yeah, Missie was the only white girl I’d ever spoken to for more than five seconds. Some people might find that surprising, but it was true.

“Good morning, honey.” She eyed me up and down. “Where are you from?” I opened my mouth to answer (I was going to say Boston), but then she lowered her voice to a whisper. “Ah, you must be our new METCO student.”

“Welcome,” he said after asking me my name. I flipped through the book—the answers to all the problems were in the back! In Boston the teachers ripped out those sections. Huh. And this math teacher’s breath didn’t stink. Okay. Class number one, not so bad.

“Don’t ever let anyone make you feel like you don’t belong in the world. ¿Entiendes?”

I’d never heard someone like me—Latina, I mean—talk like that, like she was white.

“What are you?” he asked. I narrowed my eyes. “Excuse me?” He rephrased his question. “Where are you from?” “Boston.” I answered quickly this time. “No, I mean where are you from-from?” “What?” Did he ask everyone this, or just METCO kids? Never mind. I knew the answer to that. Jerk. Plus, by the way, he stunk. Literally.

About being froze out even by kids like me?

“Liliana. I can’t be worrying about where you are. Just… just go to school and come home. Please.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I wanted her to stop. I didn’t want her to stop.

She closed her fists, opened her fists, closed her fists, nodded, then whispered, “Liliana… your father was deported.”

Dad, he was never scared of the dark. He said you needed dark so that light could be light. One was nothing without the other. The hard times, he said, made you stronger. And, you know how you hear that stuff, and it all feels totally cliché?

You do you, Dad would have told me. So that’s what I decided to do. No matter what.

“Liliana. I hope this is fiction.” My throat tightened. I managed to nod. She squinted as if suddenly seeing me through a new lens. Just then another teacher interrupted us—thank God! I escaped into the hall. On my way out I crumpled up the pages, then slammed the wad into the nearest trash can. No, it wasn’t fiction. So what? So this happened to my best friend. And yeah, I was fearful. So I didn’t exactly follow the prompt, but I mean, weren’t writers supposed to write about the worlds they knew? I blinked hard, fighting

back tears. No way I was going to let anyone see me cry.

No way was I telling her about Dustin, hello.

One of the top stories on the news: a rival gang shoot-out at a nearby park. A bystander had been killed. We knew the gangs did their thing, and we knew not to wear certain colors in excess, but still. Knowing this happened just three blocks away wasn’t exactly comforting.