Cristina Henriquez

You shouldn't want to be like everyone else. Then you wouldn't be like you.

I took his razor from the shower floor, bits of his black hair still caked between the blades. I took his toothbrush from the sink counter and sucked on the bristles, trying to find the taste of him, but there was only the flavor of watery mint toothpaste....I pulled the sheets off the bed with the idea that I could gather up the imprint of him and save it. I thought, I can unfurl the sheets on our old bed at home. I can lie in the creases formed by his body. I can sleep with him again.

I wanted her to have the full, long life that every parent promises his or her child by the simple act of bringing that child into the world.

Sometimes I think I would rather just remember it in my head, all those streets and the places I loved. The way it smelled of car exhaust and sweet fruit. The thickness of the heat. The sound of dogs barking in alleyways. That's the Panama I want to hold on to. Because a place can do many things against you, and if it's your home or if it was your home at one time, you still love it. That's how it works.

Often, when people ask me what I read as a young girl, I lie. Or, I should say, I lie by omission. I tell them about my brilliant fourth-grade teacher, Miss Artis, who assigned us 'Johnny Tremain' and 'Where the Red Fern Grows' and 'Tuck Everlasting,' all books that made an impression on me. And people nod in approval.

I thought suddenly, what is the meaning of all these things? All these bags and bags I've been packing? We could take everything we have with us. We could take every single thing that every single person in the world has ever had. But not of it would mean anything to me. Because no matter how much I took and no no matter how much I had for the rest of my life, I didn't have him anymore. I could have piled everything from here straight to heaven. None of it was him.

You don__ understand,_ my dad said. __hey stop you._ __ho? What are you talking about?_ my mom asked. __hat__ why I was being cautious._ __ho stops you?_ __he police. If you__e white, or maybe Oriental, they let you drive however you want. But if you__e not, they stop you._ __ho told you that?_ __he guys at the diner. That__ what they say. If you__e black or if you__e brown, they automatically think you__e done something wrong._ __afa, that__ ridiculous. We__e lived here for fifteen years. We__e citizens._ __he police don__ know that by looking at us. They see a brown face through the windshield and boom! Sirens!_ My mom shook her head. __hat__ what that was about?_ __ didn__ want to give them reason to stop me._ __ou were driving like a blind man, Rafa. That will give them reason to stop you._ __verybody else just has to obey the law. We have to obey it twice as well._ __ut that doesn__ mean you have to go twice as slow as everybody else!_ The light turned green and my dad brought the car out of first. We cruised under the overpass, a shadow draping over the car like a blanket. __ext time, just try to blend in with everyone else and you__l be fine,_ my mom offered. __he way of the world,_ my dad said. __hat?_ my mom asked as we emerged back into the sunlight. __ust trying to blend in. That__ the way of the world._ __ell, that__ the way of America, at least,_ my mom said.

Finding is for things that are lost. You don't need to find me, Mayor.

English was such a dense, tight language. So many hard letters, like miniature walls. Not open with vowels the way Spanish was. Our throats open, our mouths open, our hearts open. In English, the sounds were closed. They thudded to the floor. And yet, there was something magnificent about it. Profesora Shields explained that in English there was no usted, no tu. There was only one word__ou. It applied to all people. No one more distant or more familiar. You. They. Me. I. Us. We. There were no words that changed from feminine to masculine and back again depending on the speaker. A person was from New York. Not a woman from New York, not a man from New York. Simply a person.