Don't Forget to Write

Intro - A Little About Out Narrator and His New Home

My mom and my sister were in the back seat. My mom was wringing her hands saying "ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod." There was no furniture or much at all that needed to be brought in. I had been moving into this apartment slowly but surely for the past month as soccer preseason was going on. The only things left were a duffel bag filled with books, my laptop, and a few homey touches like a tapestry and some posters, as well as a backpack with some other last-minute necessities like snacks and whiskey. I've never been particularly close with my parents, but I figured it'd be common courtesy to invite them up to my apartment to see where their son was living. When I asked, my mom spoke first, saying "I'm not getting out of this car. Peter, are you crazy? You really want to live here? Here? Of all places."

"Yes, what's wrong with it?"

"It's so dangerous."

"Yeah," my dad said in a low voice, "too many niggers."

"..." My mouth opened but no words came out.

Oh yeah, another thing about me. I'm white... kinda. My parents immigrated here from Portugal. Portuguese is considered a gray area in racial/ethnic circles. The first Hispanic caucus of congress was co-founded by a Portuguese man, who held the common belief that anybody from south of the US or the Iberian Peninsula (that would be the countries of Spain and Portugal, where many South Americans can trace their roots to, and was once a single territory named Hispania... hence the word Hispanic) was Hispanic. Some say that the Iberians shouldn't count as Hispanic, while others say that only the dark-skinned South American's count, and there are even those that say that anybody who can speak Spanish, regardless of their heritage, should be considered Hispanic on top of the people who hail from those areas. So, maybe I was Hispanic, depending on who you asked. I was definitely European, even though many folks don't actually know where Portugal is. I had dark Mediterranean skin, darker than the White Europeans and East Asians, but lighter than most Hispanic, Black, and Indian people. My parents lived a life that would be similar to many of their generation of immigrants from South America or Africa; they came here without any money or education, didn't know a lick of the language, were unable to go to school, and worked their ass off just to get by. It was the classic American immigrant story. English was my primary language, but at home we mostly spoke Portuguese, just like a lot of the Hispanic kids I grew up with had to speak Spanish.

I was a first-generation American with stereotypically strict immigrant parents hell-bent on making sure I got good grades and worked every day, even while in school and legally too young to be employed, because they would be god-damned if their selfish kid didn't make the most of the opportunity they had given me by relocating their whole life to this foreign land. In my youth, my mother regulated her strict rules with an iron fist, often beating the crap out of me with a wooden spoon or a sandal if I put a toe out of line. And, for her, the line was thin. Things like having a messy room or saying the word 'stupid' warranted a firm beating or at least a sandal thrown to the head. My mom was good at it, too. She would take off one sandal and send it to my face like a fastball from a Yankees pitcher, then as I was dodging the throw, she would already be on top of me with the second sandal slapping the crap out of me.

Keeping up with the work ethic of the farming village they came from, my parents put me to work immediately. I was shoveling snow, doing yard work, helping my dad pour concrete, and running odd jobs at people's houses all before I had even reached double-digit ages. I thought it was normal until I started hanging out with friends my age who told stories of their childhoods that sounded like fairy tales and dreams. Amusement parks? Camping trips? Baseball games? Concerts? What the hell?! I had never done any of those things, and young Me was incredulous and captivated all at the same time. I didn't even know those things were available to normal people. By then my young childhood had wilted and I was quickly crossing the threshold into the hormonal shitstorm we call adolescence. As a kid I wasn't allowed to hang out with the other neighborhood kids because my mother didn't like the idea of me leaving the house, especially to hang out with the "hoodlums" who lived down the street. When I grew out of childhood and into adolescence, and became big enough to put up a fight against her, is when I was able to finally see the outside world. There's a vivid memory, my first feeling of freedom, from a normal day when she was chasing me around the house, throwing sandals and calling me a son of a bitch. But, this time, when she finally caught up to me and WHACKED me with a wooden spoon, something magical happened; the spoon SNAPPED in half on my arm. The pain was replaced by pure elation as I stared down at the almighty, unrelenting, wooden spoon, in pieces at my feet. I looked down into my mother's eyes, suddenly realizing I was taller than her. No, not just taller than her, I was a thousand feet tall. And strong as an olympian damn it! The dynamics of my home life change that instant. I was taller, bigger, stronger, and faster than her. She realized it too. I walked right out the front door, knowing that I would be able to walk out as much as I wanted from this point forward. I was around 12.

The "hoodlums" down the street weren't really hoodlums. They were all A students and athletes who just occasionally got caught doing stupid things like climbing up to the roof of our middle school, or trespassing on property, or wandering around in abandoned factories. We weren't hurting anybody; we were just being adventurous kids. Initially, they thought I was weird. Understandably so. I lacked social skills. But they accepted me anyway. They taught me what friendship was, what it was like to be a part of a group, and what looking out for each other meant. We argued, we laughed, we hugged, we fought - and I mean really fought. I still have scars from the scraps we've had. There's one on my right hand from punching a friend in the face while he had braces on, the metal on his teeth dug deep into my fist and ripped the skin clean off of my knuckles. There was blood everywhere. We still laugh about that one.

In the group were a few Colombians. There's some overlap between Portuguese and Spanish languages, so sometimes we would speak to each other in a broken Portuguese-Spanish combination. White people and brown people alike were confused by the foreign language coming out of my tongue. The confusion transcended language and appearance, though. All of my white friends had parents who were engineers or doctors or businessmen ⁠- educated people who could help them with their homework. But my brown friends tended to be more like me; their parents were immigrants who held jobs in landscaping, construction, kitchens, and various other trades that might require a lot of skill, but minimal or no school. Those were the people I did my homework with. We needed each other, because we didn't have the help at home that the others had.

Surprisingly, my parents did not share my affection for nonwhite people. Since they were from Europe, I guess they viewed themselves differently from the millions of Mexicans, South Americans, Africans, and others who tended to share their jobs, their immigration story, and their backgrounds. My dad was always talking about immigrants "stealing" jobs and about how this country needs better immigration reform, which is weird because, again, he is an immigrant.

So, that in mind, I always knew my parents were a little racist. But I tried to chalk that up to the ignorance of being uneducated and growing up in a farming village where everybody looked the same, therefore not being exposed to different cultures when they were young or something like that. It's the kind of passive racism that you would probably hear your grandma slip out at family dinner; definitely a tad racist, but mostly harmless.

Then I heard my dad say the word nigger in Harlem in a way that I'd never heard; with a tone that was full of true disgust and contempt for the entire group of people. It wasn't Earth-shattering. I had long ago dismantled that childhood sense of wonder for one's parents that misguides us into thinking that mom and dad are saints with hearts of gold and only the best intentions for their family and loved ones. That shit wasn't real for me, and it probably isn't for a lot of us. So after he said that word, that racist word which wasn't disgusting simply because of the letters and the way in which they were placed - nigger - but more because of the way that he said, I was ready to leave and start my new life. Without much else to say, I grabbed my duffel bag and backpack and said "Right, well, thanks for the ride. See you."

My dad shook his head. My mom kept staring out the window and wringing her hands. My sister said "Bye Petey, I'll visit you soon!" As I closed the door I think I heard my dad say something like "You can't visit him!"

Now that the door was shut and my old life was behind me, it was time to start anew.