And look at these adorable new sandals!
I got it. I got how Americans could become mesmerized and hypnotized by these vapid talking heads. I wanted to get lulled into believing them too. It probably would’ve been so much easier that way.
Only, I knew what it meant to live a lie. A lie that made me awkward and shy around people I didn’t know. A lie that made me skittish when I heard sirens or got assigned a project in school that involved personal family narratives. A lie that thrived off of all my fear.
For me, the lie started when we left Colombia.
My name is Valentina González Ramirez, but people who really know me call me Vali. I was born in a town called Suárez, wedged between mountains in el Norte del Cauca. I lived there until I was four years old, so I only remember it in blips of color and sound . . .
The orange glow of the sun seeping through our wooden door frame.
The quick panting of Papi as he hiked up a steep, muddy path, with me on his back.
The dust below me turning dark red after I tripped over a mining excavator and sliced open my lower lip.
The sweetness of Mami cooking plantains over our stove.
I didn’t understand all the threads connecting these details, though. I didn’t know that there were big corporations trying to take over our town when I was little. That people were getting death threats and being murdered as they tried to stop the corporations from taking the gold under our mountains. I certainly didn’t know that my abuela and abuelo had burned to death in their own home or that five girls had been tortured and drowned in the river where I first learned how to swim.
They were all casualties of this undeclared armed conflict in Colombia. It was no longer the fifty-two-year civil war, but instead it was a quieter war. Almost deadlier, because it was so stealthy and cruel. A war camouflaged inside the shadows of peace.
Mami only told me all this after we’d come to the United States. She said she missed Colombia every second of every day, but that the mountains and rivers were covered in blood. That was why we had to leave our home and make a new one here.
Tú naciste en Colombia pero también eres de acá, Mami told me every night before I went to sleep.
And I said it back to her: Naci en Colombia pero también soy de acá.
It was like my prayer, my plea. I would always be Colombian. Just like I would always be American. At least, I felt like I was American after living here for twelve years now.
Mami, Papi, and I crossed into San Diego two weeks after my fourth birthday. I remember that day because I saw Mami crying for the first time, and she couldn’t tell me whether she was happy or sad. We had to sleep in a homeless shelter for a while, and they separated me and Mami from Papi, which made me angry and scared. So Mami decided we would sleep in the parks instead; that way we could be together. Papi found a farm where he and Mami could pick tomatoes during the day. I had to sit behind a shed and be very quiet so no one got mad. My tummy hurt from too many tomatoes, and I got stung by bees a lot.
San Diego was beautiful and horrible all at once. The roads were wide and paved. The sun turned pink before it set every night. There was an amusement park with jumping dolphins and roller coasters. But even after I started going to kindergarten and hanging out with kids my age, I had this lonely feeling that wouldn’t go away. I knew that I was different. I knew that most families didn’t have to plan for if Mami or Papi didn’t come home from work because ICE took them away. I knew it wasn’t normal that I jumped if there was an unexpected knock on the classroom door.
I memorized the Pledge of Allegiance and tried to recite it very loudly every day in class. On the school playground, I made friends with a blond-haired girl named Rosie. She said we should be besties and that I could sleep over at her house anytime. Only, when I tried to, her dad asked me where I was from and I got so nervous, I said, “Nowhere!” and ran home. Rosie stopped talking to me after that.
Mami, Papi, and I moved into an apartment of our own. It was really an office above a car dealership, so it smelled like gasoline and we had a cooler instead of a refrigerator. But it was ours. I remember that when I started the first grade, I got a laminated notebook and wrote my new address across the top of it—just in case it got lost. And because I was so proud.
I kept begging Mami to buy me zippered jeans and stretchy headbands so I could look like all the popular girls in my class. But I didn’t look like them. I never would. I was wider and darker. One girl said I was the color of her favorite kind of caramel. Another asked me why my arm hair was so long and if I could teach her to roll her r’s.
I just wanted to be done with school. I wanted to go to work like Mami and Papi. I told them that one day I would be a heart doctor or a famous singer, and I’d make enough money to buy them a fancy car from the dealership below us—at the full price. Mami laughed, and Papi said he couldn’t wait to drive it. I figured a car was the thing they needed most. They were both working their asses off at two and three jobs apiece, trying to pay for things like food, and rent, and saving up for the new baby. Mami was pregnant with my little brother, Ernesto, who was born the same day the President replaced California’s governor with a cabinet member to promote “unity and integrity.”
By this point, the deportation raids were getting more and more intense. There were daily riots and protests. The night after the President won reelection for his third term, Mami and Papi let me stay up and watch television with them. We stared at the red, white, and blue fireworks going off as the first steel columns were drilled into the ground just north of the border.
It was really happening. The Great American Wall was going up between Mexico and California.
The censorship laws went into effect soon after that. Papi threw out our TV and said from now on we only listened to independent, real news sources. But the government invaded our space any way it could. The President started broadcasting his vision through gigantic holograms, flashing and flickering like some intergalactic prophet. He talked about “cleaning up” this country so there would be no more homelessness, no more infestations, no more opioids or threats to our democracy.
What he really meant was, no more immigrants without papers. No more us.
From now on, he explained, everyone living in the US had to get an identification chip implanted in their wrist. The chips would have all of our information on them—ID number, birthplace, blood type, medical history, even allergies. The chips would make everything so much easier, the President told us. With just a simple scan, we would know who belonged here once and for all.
If you didn’t have a chip, clearly you were “illegal.”
Getting a chip put in was free and painless, but mandatory. All we had to do was show up at a clinic with our birth certificates or proof of citizenship. Each chip was small enough that it could be injected using a little numbing spray and a syringe. I watched Ernie get his when he was just a baby, and he barely squeaked. It was easy, since he was born in the US.