What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez

by Claire Jiménez

If a thirteen-year-old girl screams in the middle of a cafeteria but nobody hears her, does it really even fucking matter?

(From Matt, I learned that truly smart people did not walk around constantly insisting on their intelligence, because there was nothing to prove; Matt knew he was a genius, and it was a fact that mostly bored and embarrassed him, a fact that had gotten his ass kicked enough times growing up in Newark, New Jersey, for him to learn not to show off.)

It’s okay. I’m not judging. I strongly believe that we all should be able to choose our own ways to be ashamed.

Was there an alternate universe where all of these girls were actually friends, co-conspirators, in which the ultimate joke was on us, the viewers sitting on our bored asses at home?

I had always been afraid of my mother. I had always been afraid of my mother making a scene. Not only the way her emotions would swing from zero to ten at any given moment, but also and especially the way she overperformed being a mom. For so many years, it had felt like she was trying to overcompensate, for having kids so young or for growing up poor or for being Puerto Rican.

“Dude in there is a self-hating Latino,” I told her. “No way we’re getting in.”