What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez

by Claire Jiménez

but because it hurt too much to see up close what had happened to us over the years. And sometimes, during those rare holiday visits, the gravity of our situation was so strong it felt like being pulled into a black hole.

There in her arms, I realized, to my surprise, that I felt shy. In front of my own sister. My mother.

you might be able to dupe the boss, but karma is elegant, and God sees everything.

One moment you could be sneezing or laughing or screaming out in pain for more meds, and then the next second, how was it that everything inside you could just disappear?

We can’t ultimately decide who we are or the people we become.

She was all the good parts of me, and sometimes I felt the heftiness of the fact that she had materialized inside my body, from scratch—like she was always waiting to happen, a girl from me, of me, but untouched by my past.

Yes, I am the oldest daughter, but I am also human.

Well, I guess you don’t have to imagine because you’re God, but you get the point.

Like they always tell us, there is no saint without a past, no sinner without a future.

I stood there and just looked at her. I’ve had girls who’ve talked back before. I am aware that the secret is to not be rattled. You can’t let that shit faze you.

And it’s not that I didn’t feel for the girl, but if I’m not strict enough she’ll never learn. Worse, the other girls will start getting ideas in their heads: coming in late, smoking before class, taking advantage.

It had bothered me that they spent more time asking us questions about our family, as if our parents were somehow at fault, than actually really investigating what happened to Ruthy.

“Trust and believe. I don’t care how much money you have or who’s your fucking mother, or what school you went to, I treat everybody the same, no matter what.”

God, please, I thought, not the quinceañera. I hated the quinceañera. But of course, my mother had imposed all of her missed opportunities and broken dreams onto our lives, as if she were forcing the pieces of one old puzzle onto a completely different other one. As a child she had surmised that the only thing needed to change her life was money. And she would find a way to make it, no matter what. At thirteen years old, after getting her first job, she promised herself that she would never be poor again.

Look how beauty and subservience had so much more currency in this world than a bachelor’s degree in biology.