In the fall of 1989, my dad lost his job at the sleep center. I’m sure it had to do with his immigration status. With one less household income coming in and the monthly bills demanding to be paid on time, my dad was desperate. That’s when he received a call from the Ecuadorian. My dad was surprised to get a call from this man because the last time he saw him, he was being hauled away by the FBI.
My dad had gotten word that a friend of a friend was hiring a full-time medical reports specialist. Since the potential employer was an older Ecuadorian (i.e., “the Ecuadorian”), my dad thought the man would be sympathetic to his situation. My dad lined up an interview for 9 a.m. on a brisk Monday morning. Excited about his new job prospect, he got to the never-before-seen office thirty minutes early. It was pretty far from Duarte and he was a little bit early, so my dad took the opportunity to get gas before the meeting at a station across the street from the office. As he pumped, he looked over at the building where the interview was supposed to take place and saw two federal vans pull up in front of it. Men wearing FBI jackets came running out. Within moments, everyone inside the building, including the older Ecuadorian my dad was supposed to interview with, were escorted into the vans with their hands zip-tied behind their backs. My dad started to shake as he put the gas pump back in its place. He got inside his car and slowly drove away without calling any attention to himself.
Now on the phone with him again, my dad listened as the Ecuadorian claimed it was all one big misunderstanding with the US government, and argued that the proof was in the fact that he was not behind bars. The Ecuadorian offered my dad a great-paying full-time job doing medical reports. The timing was crazy. My dad was skeptical about tossing in his hat with someone who’d had zip ties around his wrists the last time he saw him, but he had been applying everywhere, and nobody else would take a chance on him. Was it his broken English? Was it his lack of immigration papers? Was it a combination of both? My dad knew we couldn’t survive simply off my mom’s Kmart salary. That’s when the Ecuadorian sweetened the pot: “Your wife is a doctor, too, right? I can hire her as a physical therapist for us.” Without any good job options as undocumented immigrants, my parents accepted the Ecuadorian’s offer. My mom put in her two weeks’ notice at Kmart, and we moved to San Clemente, California, which was two hours south. I did not want to go. I cried at the thought of losing all my new American friends.
Part of Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton is in San Clemente so moving there was frightening for my parents. We were undocumented immigrants purposely moving into a military town, which also had an immigration checkpoint that my parents purposefully avoided. The town was a charming beachside community wrapped in an oversize American flag. San Clemente was very conservative, more conservative than my dad. For the first time since leaving Ecuador, we lived around a lot of people who were white. My parents smiled, were polite, and always kept to themselves. I took all my cues from them. We did not speak unless spoken to.
My grandparents came to visit us in San Clemente. I was ecstatic to finally see them again. This was the longest period I had ever gone without being in their presence. My grandparents arrived at our new apartment and they were delighted for us. They liked our new community and loved that we lived so close to the beach. In Ecuador, we always made a point to go to the beach at least once a month, so this reminded them of home.
One thing that had changed since Ecuador was I noticed that my grandma was squeaking a lot when she walked. It was strange. She did not make any noise while she sat down, but squeaked every time she got up and walked around. Curious, I asked her what that noise was. She put her index finger to her lips, and then revealed that she was wearing Saran Wrap around her belly. It was just one of the many life hacks my grandma taught me: Saran Wrap makes the best girdles. Boy, I had missed her.
My grandparents only stayed with us for the summer. When fall came around, it was time for me to enroll at my new school. I was entering fifth grade. On my first day at Truman Benedict Elementary, my tall blond teacher, Ms. Lovemark, asked me to stand up and spell the word army in front of the entire class. Like a true immigrant, I stood and said: “Armí: A-R-M-I. Armí.” My new classmates glared at me. Army, apparently, was one of the words you were not allowed to misspell in San Clemente. My classmates had been saying the word since birth. Before “mommy” or “daddy” there was “army.” The class looked at me for an excruciatingly long moment, and then broke out into laughter.
I sat by myself during recess. I wasn’t sure how I was going to fit in at Truman Benedict. I had my cousin Choli in Walnut and my immigrant friends in Duarte—I did not have anybody in San Clemente. This was going to be tricky. At lunch, I spotted some kids from my class playing softball together. I had a good swing, thanks to my cousin Raul, so I figured this would be the perfect way to make some friends. I wrote my name down on the clipboard that hung from the dugout fence. “Rafael” looked so foreign compared to all the Johnnys, Billys, and Nathans on that list. Before I could put down the clipboard, a red dodgeball rolled up to my feet. I looked up and saw Brooke walking toward me. Brooke was a fair-skinned fifth grader with long, flowing brown hair. The brown hair made her stand out in a school predominantly made up of Lannisters.
“Hi,” said Brooke gently.
“Umm… I’m signing up for softball,” I mumbled.
Brooke smiled and asked, “Can I have my ball back?”
I picked up the red dodgeball and carefully placed it in Brooke’s outstretched hands, hoping that the gesture of me simply bending over would blow her away.
“Thanks.”
Brooke then looked at the blue Mickey Mouse T-shirt I was wearing.
“That’s a cool shirt,” quipped Brooke before running back to play with her girlfriends. From that day on, I never took my blue Mickey Mouse T-shirt off.
A few weeks later, due to some miraculous twist of fate, Ms. Lovemark partnered Brooke and me up in class. I couldn’t believe it. The prettiest girl in school was now my science assignment partner. I was nervous. All I’d ever said to Brooke up to that point was, “Umm… I’m signing up for softball.” I wish I had put some Saran Wrap around my belly to make myself look skinnier. I wish I had combed my hair, or the unibrow I was rocking at the time. Brooke sat next to me.
“I like your shirt. Mickey’s cool.”
I nervously smiled to let her know that I was listening.
In an attempt to teach us about how chromosomes worked, Ms. Lovemark walked around the class and handed out white pieces of paper with big circles in the middle of them. She asked the pairs—in this case Brooke and me—to determine which of our physical features our make-believe child (i.e., the circle in the middle of the paper) would inherit. You heard right, Brooke and I were about to have a baby! The exercise consisted of us talking about which were the most common family traits between us, and to come to a consensus on the appearance of our child’s face. The problem was that I was too nervous to talk. My parents always seemed uncomfortable around white authority figures, and I had, unfortunately, inherited that trait. I started to perspire. Making babies was making me feel a little nauseous. I had barely started exploring my body at the time. It all seemed so sudden.
Brooke took the initiative and asked me all the questions: “Does your family mostly have brown eyes or blue eyes?” I simply said “yes” or “no” to everything. Brooke had brown hair and I had black hair, so our child’s hair would naturally be darker. Brooke had light brown eyes like I did, so we reached for the brown crayons. The more we drew and colored, the more our child was starting to resemble a human being. Brooke wanted a boy, so gosh darn it, we were having a boy. I figured that’s the way it worked in real life: women just got what they asked for. Historically, I was ignorantly misinformed. Our boy shared most of Brooke’s facial characteristics, which was fine by me. I liked the idea of being able to say, “He takes after his mother.” I glanced over at the other drawings in class, each hand-drawn child lighter than the next. Blue eyes and blond hair were the norm for this project. So much so that Ms. Lovemark had to bring out more blue and yellow crayons. Brooke and I were content with our plain old brown crayons. Sure, our child would be looked at funny, and probably could not spell “army,” but it didn’t matter. He was ours and we were going to love him unconditionally no matter what he or they looked like. I even made a mental note to teach our child about Peter Pan as soon as humanly possible.
Brooke put down the crayon and proudly held up our new-drawn for the first time. This was not quite the miracle of childbirth I’d been expecting, but it was pretty close. Our boy looked lovely, just like Brooke. I was one proud papa. Who knew I was so good at making babies? I mean, I was Latin American so I had a sneaking suspicion I would be.
“Oh, wait a minute,” Brooke said as she dropped our child back on the table and reached for a blue crayon. Now deflated, I looked away. I should have known it was too good to be true. Why wouldn’t Brooke want her child to have blue eyes like the rest of the class? Why would she want to have a kid with me anyway? From all the English language media I took in at the time, Brooke seemed way above my evolutionary station. Could I even afford child support? These were real concerns I failed to consider before we started drawing. This is why you should always use protection. Brooke put down the blue crayon and lifted up the drawing once more. I was surprised to see that our son now had a blue Mickey Mouse on his chest.
“Can I keep it?” Brooke asked.
I nodded, delighted that she was happy.
After school that day, I was determined to confess my love for Brooke once and for all. The stars aligned for us to draw a child into existence. I walked to the front of the school where the kids who didn’t have to take the bus like I did lined up to wait for their parents. I looked around for Brooke. I finally spotted her flowing brown hair curbside. I swallowed my self-doubt and walked right up to her.
“Hi.”
“Oh, hi.”
“Umm… we have a son together.”
“Yeah, he’s very handsome.” Brooke pulled out our child from her binder. She asked, “What should we name him?”
“Uh, I don’t know.” I looked at the school marquee behind me and said, “What about Truman?”
“No, I don’t like that name. How about Rafael? That’s a pretty name.”
I was speechless. Brooke liked my name. She didn’t want a Bradley, or Ricky, or Wyatt—she wanted a Rafael! This meant that she saw past my ethnic shortcomings. Was she as in love with me as I was with her? Like a good Latino boy, I was ready to move her and our drawing into my parents’ apartment. At that exact moment, a stern voice pierced the air: “Brooke!” Brooke and I turned to see a muscular white man with a marine crew cut. It was Brooke’s father. The self-doubt reentered my body. Brooke turned to me and said, “See you tomorrow.” She walked over to her dad, gave him a kiss on the cheek, and handed him our new-drawn. She hopped inside his red pickup truck as her dad studied his new grandson. He looked up and squinted his eyes at me. He did not seem to approve of my potential union with his daughter. If “Get off my front lawn” had a face, it was definitely Brooke’s dad’s. He scrutinized me for a second and then walked around his Dodge Ram, got inside his truck, and drove off with Brooke. That was the first time I remember feeling unworthy of something. In this particular case, it was Brooke’s affection.
While I wasn’t making many friends at my new school, my parents and I at least became closer. I became the official translator of our household. Any phone calls, teacher conferences, or conversations with the landlord included me as my parents’ official English language representative. It must have been demeaning for them to have their ten-year-old translate for them, although we all tried to make the best of an uncomfortable situation. But no translation exchange was more uncomfortable for me than the one with the sleazy door-to-door encyclopedia salesman. Before Wikipedia, there were these things called encyclopedias (or physical wikipedia, if you will), and none was more famous than Encyclopedia Britannica. The door-to-door salesman knocked on our apartment one day, and I was asked to translate as he tried to convince my dad to purchase an entire set of encyclopedias—for my sake! In other words, I was translating for this unknown stranger as he tried to ruin my life. Spanish language books in the apartment meant that my mom and dad had to read them, but English language books meant that I had to read them. I did not want my dad to buy the Encyclopedia Britannica, but I also didn’t want to alter my translation of the conversation because I knew I would get in trouble. After an insufferable hour of translating, my dad finally caved. He bought the complete set of encyclopedias from this man. Dad regretted his decision of paying for the encyclopedias the moment the door-to-door salesman left with his money. But as opposed to donating the encyclopedias to a local school or nonprofit, my dad made himself feel better by forcing me to read them. He decided to make me write book reports that he claimed he would read after work, but never did. After several weeks of book reports, I realized they were going unread, so without my dad’s knowledge, I began recycling them. This was our routine until he finally stopped asking me for the damn reports. This was how he convinced himself that he was getting his money’s worth. I know a lot of useless American history because of the Encyclopedia Britannica, including the fact that Alexander Hamilton was staunchly anti-immigrant. Good thing we don’t have an entire musical celebrating his life. Kidding! Lin-Manuel Miranda is a freakin’ genius. How do I know? Because he probably grew up with the Encyclopedia Britannica in his home!
On a warm Sunday morning, my dad decided to take my mom and me on a stroll to the beach. We lived so close, but rarely went. We were walking down the sidewalk, enjoying the waves crashing on the shore, when a man elbowed past as he ran for his life. He was wearing dirty jeans and a faded flannel, an outfit typical of the men who worked on the lawns of the extravagant San Clemente houses near the waterfront. Two men in official-looking jackets then sprinted past us and tackled the running man. Confused, I looked up at my dad and asked, “Papi, que esta pasando?” With fear in his eyes, my dad turned to me and whispered angrily: “Don’t speak Spanish!”
I went silent.
The running man did not put up a fight when he was apprehended. He knew his fate, as he was escorted inside the back of a nearby van. I, however, didn’t know what would happen to him. But I was too scared to ask after being told not to speak Spanish, especially after my mom explained that we had just witnessed an immigration raid.
When we got home that evening, we did not talk about the beach incident right away. We continued with our day as if nothing unusual had happened. My mom asked me, “Qué quieres comer?” I responded, “I don’t know, I’ll eat whatever.” She smiled, and in Spanish said she would make chicken. Later that night I went with my dad to the video store. My dad asked me, “Qué película quieres ver?” I replied, “Can we please rent Terminator 2?” My dad nodded, and in Spanish said no problem. Later at home, we watched a young John Connor teach the terminator how to say Spanish language phrases like, “Hasta la vista, baby.” Ironic, since from that day forward and until the middle of high school, I stopped speaking Spanish. My parents would speak to me in Spanish, but I would respond in English. I continued to translate for them, but even that duty died shortly thereafter. When my dad told me to not speak Spanish in front of the immigration officers, I knew he meant for me not to speak Spanish at that moment. At the same time, however, I was so unsettled by the sheer terror in his eyes that I internalized his instruction and refused to speak Spanish to anybody—even my family—for many years. This was a man I had seen save a child’s life. He was the closest thing to a superhero I had ever known. For something to cause him that much dread was enough for me to reconsider how I interacted with the world. After that beach incident, I did not feel it was safe to continue speaking Spanish.