Since I lived far from the high school I attended, on the days that none of the guys could give me a ride home, I would have to wait for my dad to pick me up. He was down to one job (down from his regular two jobs), so he had the time to pick me up every other day. Did he want to? Absolutely not. And he would show his disdain by coming very late. I was upset to be the very last student at school on those days—even the janitorial staff who locked up felt bad for me. In my dad’s defense, he always did pick me up. But he was like a cable service technician: the time window would be anywhere between one to four hours of the regularly scheduled time.
Entering my junior year of high school, I finally decided that I was going to get a driver’s license. And that had to start with a driver’s permit. Napo, Tommy, and Choli were all driving by then. Why couldn’t I? I decided to sign up for the after-school driver’s permit class, and I did so without telling my parents. I was afraid they might say I shouldn’t.
The class was fun, but only because I took it with Sal. We goofed around a lot as we learned that the most important part about driving was to always be safe. When in doubt, just do the safest thing. Well, that felt simple enough. Automobile driving was one simple DMV test away.
Choli and his girlfriend, Yoko (I mean, Sandra), joined Sal, Napo, Tommy, and me. We became a tight crew inside and outside of school. Sandra eventually brought all her girls over to be part of our inner circle: Denise, Jessica, and Maria Jose. I developed a crush on Maria Jose (or “MJ” as I would call her) since the first day I saw her. A fair-skinned Mexican American with jet-black hair, MJ was a nineties girl who loved eighties music. She was like a sarcastic Snow White, if Snow White was really into Depeche Mode.
MJ and I became friends. I never told her I liked her. We would hang out and be emo before I knew there was even a word for it. We would drink, laugh, gossip, but always with one another. It was so obvious that we liked each other, but neither of us would make the first move. After school at a friend’s house one day, I was teaching MJ how to play pool in the garage. When my friend’s mom came out to check up on us, she even rolled her eyes at how obvious we were.
It took me forever to kiss MJ. We did so at a party. We were both highly inebriated. I can’t remember who made the first move—it just happened. Alcohol had always done that to me. It made me more confident than I usually was. Alcohol gave me a weird sense of euphoria.
In driver’s ed, Sal and I were shown a video of what happened to a real-life victim of drunk driving. The video was gruesome and got its point across. I was saddened by the sudden realization that I may no longer be able to drink once I started to drive. But it felt like a fair trade to me. I couldn’t wait to take MJ out on a date, just the two of us.
After our driver’s ed course was over, we were all given papers for our parents or guardians to fill out. We were one step away from getting our driver’s permits.
The evening of the big news, I walked into the house holding my driver’s permit application. I was eager to take MJ out for a drive, preferably to the top of a hill with a beautiful view. I was always a romantic at heart. I handed my dad my driver’s permit and asked, “Can you please sign this for me?”
My dad read the DMV paperwork and looked over at my mom, who stopped cooking her world-famous seco de pollo and took a seat next to my dad. Things started to feel off.
“We need to talk,” my dad stated plainly.
Concerned, I took a seat. “Is something going on?” I said. “Is Grandma okay?”
“Rafa,” my dad said, searching for the right words, “you don’t have a social security number.”
“Huh. Why?”
“Because. We told you. We’re… illegal.”
What! Illegal? I didn’t know what he was getting at. So many things could be illegal. Driving over the speed limit is illegal. Insider trading is illegal. Singing “Happy Birthday” is illegal because it’s trademarked. Drinking alcohol under the age of twenty-one is illegal. Shit, maybe I was illegal…
I looked over at my mom for clarification. She softly nodded her head. “We don’t have papers.”
“Wait… we’re illegal,” I exclaimed, now realizing what my parents were driving at.
Since no human being is illegal, I was clearly using the wrong terminology back then. But this was before the DREAMer movement. It was 1997 and all I ever heard on the news was how Get-Off-My-Front-Lawn Lou Dobbs would vilify undocumented workers. In Spanish, my parents never referred to themselves as “illegal,” which is why I didn’t understand the gravity of our situation until this very moment. Nobody I knew in small-town West Covina, home of Troy Aikman and Joan Jett, ever used that word. The most I ever heard my parents say was “No tenemos papales,” which translates to “We don’t have papers.” My young mind always assumed we would address whatever problem we had by simply… getting papers. But now my dad pointed out that we were “illegal.” That was like an end-of-the-world-comet hitting my frosted-tipped head.
I struggled to make sense of everything. “We didn’t cross a desert,” I tried to rationalize. “We flew here—and it was economy plus, if I’m not mistaken!”
My mom calmly explained that we came on tourist visas but then overstayed. She said this while making me chamomile tea. She always knew how to relax me. My dad added that they had applied for our permanent residencies eleven years ago and had hoped we would have gotten them by now. I didn’t know what a permanent residency meant, but it sounded pretty self-explanatory since I wanted to permanently be residing in the only place I’d ever known as home.
I started to get nervous. I was… illegal. What did that even mean? I didn’t feel illegal. I felt pretty damn American. The chamomile tea was delicious, but not working. How would I ever join the Campus Republicans now? That’s when it dawned on me. “Wait, how do you two work if we’re illegal and we don’t have social security numbers?”
My mom and dad looked at each other again. “Well,” my mom lamented, “we don’t have papers, but you’re the only one with no social security number.”
WHAT.
THE.
FUCK.
I was already freaked out that I didn’t have a green card, but I didn’t have a blue card either? I started to feel dizzy. My mom asked if I wanted more tea. She knew damn well I wanted more tea. But I was upset, so I said no. I got up and started to pace around the room. This made no damn sense. I knew that at sixteen and a half, I was barely legal, but this was preposterous.
“I can’t be illegal,” I demanded. “How am I going to apply for financial aid to go to college if I don’t have a social security number? Oh my God—can I even go to college if I’m not legal? I need to become legal!”
“We’re still waiting for our three green cards,” my dad said with fake hopefulness. “Maybe they’ll come in before you graduate.” The tremor in his voice assured me that he didn’t believe what he was saying. And for the first time in my life, my dad allowed me to talk back to him.
“You ruined everything!”
Moments later, I was sitting on my bed, wallowing in my own self-pity. I didn’t know of any other illegals. How could I be one without ever knowing it? I felt betrayed by my parents. I was forced to leave Ecuador for their dream of becoming doctors in the States and now was paying the price for that dream. This was ridiculous. I looked up at my poster of Pamela Anderson and for the first time thought, I’m even too depressed to masturbate.