"Can I tell you something?" Conrad asked.
I only nodded.
"You're the strongest person I know."
To this day, I still think he lied to me. I should be the least strongest person he knows. How did he consider me strong when I could list dozens of peop...
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AGE: NINE
I GUESS YOU COULD say that I have always known my dads status here in the United States. It wasn't something that was new to me. I knew that he was born in Mexico and he did everything he could to get here, but not really a why, not that it mattered. Again, it wasn't something unknown to either me or everyone else in my life. Well, there was an extent to what they knew. Much didn't know he had come here the "wrong" way. He had always told me that it wasn't any of their business.
To clarify, I don't think there is such a thing as the "wrong" way. I think that people have the right to fight for themselves and their family, even if that means going against something that isn't "correct". The whole wrong or correct is a complete bullshit thing to say because it's not real. There is no correct way when it's a matter of life or death. There is no correct way when it comes to family. Family is and will always be first, now that's one valuable lesson my dad has come to teach me more than one time.
I have always seen my dads status as something normal, but taught that it's something that should be kept for me to know and my classmates to wonder. It wasn't that my dad was ashamed, because he wasn't, he's the proudest man I know, but everything I knew was led by, uno nunca sabe. You never know. I used to roll my eyes at that. I mean, who would care about that sort of thing? He must've been paranoid, right? Wrong.
I believed it, I believed that it was something no one would ever really care about, well until I heard someone, it was at a school event, talking bad about a topic I held close to my heart. It was my history, my story. Everything that is now, it was led by that moment. I tried convincing myself that she must've not meant it, but being nine years old and hearing the things she was saying about my people, it stuck. It stuck until I finally went to my dads the next weekend, until I finally had the chance to ask him about it.
We were in our small kitchen, I was doing homework on the table fit for one—we did our best to make it work—while he was cooking Flautas. "Why did you cross?" I said, writing down my answer for number five. I spoke to him in English, somehow ashamed.
He looked at me confused, not understanding my question. So, I repeated myself, only this time in Spanish, "Porqué cruzaste?" I wanted so badly to roll my eyes... but just then, I wanted to kick myself for thinking something so stupid because I knew how hard he tried.
"No entiendo," His confused look still remained. I understood why, one second he was making sure he didn't over cook the taco, the next I was asking why he had crossed the border.
"Por qué cruzaste la frontera," I clarified.
He paused and turned to me, stunned. "Y eso de donde salió?" Where did that come from? I shrugged, not feeling like, or rather not wanting to admit the real reason why I was asking this in the first place. I might've been nine but I wasn't stupid, but sometimes I wished I was.
