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

by Jennifer De Leon

The United States federal government should substantially increase its legal protection of economic migrants in the United States.

Okay. If getting our brains spinning was his goal, he’d succeeded.

Diseases?!? Wow. Dustin had some whack friends.

“Don’t whatever me,” Door Boy said.

“Yup.” Now everyone was staring at me. Mr. Phelps squatted beside my desk like he was my personal coach. Gahhh! “The class may seem hard now, but stick with it,” he said in a low voice. Then he stood up and clicked to the next screen, some pie chart with statistics. Humiliation complete. I flipped up my hood.

Hard? I was used to hard. Like two weeks’ worth of laundry in one day because Mom never left the couch anymore. Like standing over Christopher and Benjamin until they brushed their teeth and flossed. But explaining my perspective on immigration to a bunch of white kids in a richie-rich school? That wasn’t hard. Nah. That was just annoying.

“Do what?” Now she was pouting her lips, holding her phone at arm’s length. Press. “Like, go back and forth? You, like, cruise around, acting like yourself, but also, at the same time, kinda white—and then what? You go home and eat arroz con gandules and plátanos fritos and call it a day?” There. I’d asked it. She was the first person I’d ever spoken to like this, could speak to like this.

“Listen, girl. And I mean, hear me. You have to get this right.” She tapped the table with a fingernail. “So… this school right here is like the world. What I mean is, you have to act a certain way. Or, more like, you have to carry yourself a certain way—in order to get what you want, and what you need.”

Here, it’s actually an advantage to be different.”

There are only like three other Black kids in the whole school who aren’t in METCO. And everyone thinks they are anyway. So, look. Work it. Raise your hand in class. Speak up. Do your assignments. Don’t give them an excuse to say

that you’re just another lazy blah, blah, blah. You get up at what, five a.m?” I nodded. “How many non-METCO kids start their day that early? Lazy, my ass.” I nodded again.

“Liliana, here’s what I’m saying. Make the system work for you. You won’t remember these fools twenty years from now when they’re calling you up trying to get internships for their kids at the TV station you’re working at, writing scripts and shit. You’ll be spinning around in your chair in your corner office, being all like, ‘Who are you?’ ”

I laughed. “Okay. What if they ask, ‘What are you?’ ” “Then I say, ‘I’m Puerto Rican. What the fuck are you?’ ” I laughed again. “For real, though. Everyone is from somewhere,” she said.

The other girls just chewed their lunches and stared, chewed and stared, until my left leg started bouncing like it does when I’m all anxious. Luckily, the others couldn’t see that from where they sat.

“Just clean it, Liliana.” My mother sounded exhausted. How could someone who slept so much be so exhausted?

there were kids, we had to play with them. Share our toys. When they left, we had to offer our toys to them—to keep. Yes. It was ridiculous. I learned not to show off my best stuff—the newer Barbies, or the bottles of neon pink and yellow nail polish. Yep. I really am a terrible person!

Luckily, Tía Laura and her husband—honestly, I keep calling him “her husband” because I forget his name, Rodolfo or Refugio or something—were childless. I mean, not exactly lucky for them, but lucky for me, because maybe the fact that she had had no children of her own was the reason why Tía Laura had agreed to take in my dad when he was little. Dad’s real parents were killed in some war. I don’t really know much about it—it wasn’t something Dad ever talked about.

Tía Laura squealed in agreement. “Liliana! You look like a woman!”

As my mother offered Tío and Tía napkins, in a no-nonsense tone she explained, “Liliana is not allowed to date until she is eighteen.” Saved by Mom! But—wait—eighteen?! Eighteen? I decided to let that go for now.

Was it a purse? A belt? A headband? “A holder for your water bottle,” Tía Laura declared.

No, no. My dad was smart. Street smart. He’d find a way to get back to us without putting himself in danger. I mean… right? But Tía had said make it back.…

Tía whispered, “Mija… he is paying a coyote to help him cross.”

Dad had hired a coyote. Normally I was not so bad at compartmentalizing home and school, but this—this was major.

“I—I mean, I don’t know,” I stammered. “My parents are kind of strict.” That was not a lie! Translation: my parents had never let me go to someone’s house besides family or family friends that they’d known for years.

The numbers all translated to money, which got me thinking about how Tía Laura and Tío R. had flown all the way to Boston to collect cash to bring it all the way back down to Guatemala for Dad, I guess because wiring the money was too dangerous.

Once in a while he went all nostalgic—telling us how the chicken tasted much better there and how people looked you in the eye more—but then he’d go back to doing whatever he was doing.

Good for you. To learn more about these people.” These people?

“Yeah. Thanks.” Enrique’s Journey by Sonia Nazario. I shoved the book into my backpack. I didn’t want anyone else seeing it. I was born here, and I didn’t have to prove it to anyone, but it was just easier for me to slide the book into my bag and not make a big deal.

Yeah, I was so worried that my pee would be loud that I ran the faucet. Even the bathroom had mad space. And no dog, thank God. Dogs basically freaked me out. Most of the ones I knew lived behind metal fences with beware of dog signs. No thank you.

When a rap song full of swears came on, Holly blasted the volume, and her mother didn’t even ask her to turn it down! My mom would have gone ballistic.

“Mom! Please stop.” Holly turned to me. “Sorry. I don’t know why she’s trying out for the

Martha Stewart award right now.” She turned back to her mother. “Can you, like, go now?” I glanced uneasily from Holly to her mother. If I ever spoke to my mother that way, especially in front of a guest, she would probably pinch my arm and lecture me about who the mother was. Instead Holly’s mother reached for a bottle of hand lotion inside a coffee-colored wicker basket—of which there were half a dozen on that floor alone—and squirted some onto her hands. Cloves. That was it. The smell was dope.

At my house, ordering pizza was something that was reserved for nights like, well, when Dad got a bonus at work, or for my birthday. It was never casual, never, Well, the pizza menu is in the drawer.

Truth, I had never been inside a house with a car garage attached to it. Holly’s house had a triple car garage. What the heck would they need a third space for anyway?

“Liliana! You were supposed to call and leave a message! I had to call the METCO office to track you down. You were supposed to call back!”

Yes, unless your name was Liliana Cruz and your mother thought the only trustworthy people in the world were your teachers and family members.

“Excuse me? This is not a joke, Liliana. You get home right now. Do you hear me?”

“You get your butt home right now. I don’t know these people. ¿Entiendes?”

“Or what if, God forbid, you all had gotten in a car accident? At least you’re okay. And who else was at her house? Does this girl have any older brothers? Older friends? You can’t trust anyone, you know.”

Just because men aren’t sitting around on their stoops in that rich town waiting for little girls to come home after school doesn’t mean they’re not lurking around somewhere else. Men are men. You have to be careful! ¿Entiendes?”

Like I was better than her, like I’d crossed an invisible line of knowing something she didn’t, and rubbing her face in it. I waited for her to let me have it. Instead she just stared past me, one single tear on the verge of sliding down her cheek. No lie—this was kind of worse. “Por favor, Liliana. Just go to your room.” “My pleasure,” I mumbled.

I thought of Mom coming to this country all alone, not knowing English, working so hard to get by and then raise us with Dad. And it wasn’t like once they’d gotten here, they stopped working, stopped striving. Hello—signing me up for METCO, which Dad didn’t even know I’d gotten into!

Christopher and Benjamin shouldn’t help. They were boys. Well, I thought, if boys weren’t supposed to be in the kitchen, then why was he there?

“Yeah. But I don’t write it that well. Actually, I take French.” “You do?” Lauren asked. “But why wouldn’t you just take Spanish? It’d be an easy A.” My jaw clenched. “Well… do you get easy As in English?”

What bothered me was that she was only going to invite me to Starbucks after she realized I could be of help to her. Ugh. So, yeah. This was a whole lot to explain to Holly, so I just said, “It’s whatever.” But of course, it wasn’t.

I remembered how one father wrapped his eight-year-old daughter’s favorite hair band around his wrist before starting the train journey north.

“You know how it is.” “No… I don’t.” “They’re just waiting on you.” “For what?” Now I was the one smirking. “See if you last. If you stay.” Whaaa? They were waiting until… Huh. I’d never thought of that! I hadn’t even remembered that METCO kids could start the program but then quit anytime they wanted. Yeah, like my parents would let me—but it was technically possible.

“Do a lot of kids leave?” Actually, I could understand why. Too-early mornings. Aggy teachers. Long days.

The streak of pink in the sky caught my eye. When I was little, Dad had told me it was the sun saying good night in sun-language. Good night, Dad. Then I sat on the steps beside my great-aunt.

“Well, it’s true. When his parents died, may they rest in peace, he was only nine. He made it three more years in school and then insisted on dropping out and working to help support the family. There was no budging him.”