He then explained how the debate would work. We would argue for or against these quotes. Simple. Hands flew up left and right. Not mine! One kid said, “Who can’t get in? You mean immigrants? Look, we’re all immigrants. Seriously, we should just give the country back to the Native Americans.” I nodded. I mean, she had a point.
“Yeah, but… then what happens to all of us? There are like, half a billion people in the United States. Where are we all supposed to go, huh?” a girl in the front row asked.
Another student raised his hand. “Well, those quotes you showed kind of raise a good point. If people think they can just, like, keep getting in, then yeah, it’s never gonna stop. You know what? We should build a wall.”
A guy in the back—I’d seen him hanging around with Dustin—jumped in next. “Well, I don’t know about the wall. And I’m not against immigrants or whatever, but they should come educated, and like, without any diseases.”
Diseases?!? Wow. Dustin had some whack friends.
“Totally,” two other guys joined in.
“That’s totally unfair. Didn’t Europeans bring over smallpox or whatever?” a guy by the door asked.
“Whatever. We’re talking about today,” the girl beside me said.
“Don’t whatever me,” Door Boy said.
All the voices started to blend in, and I couldn’t tell who was saying what. I just know that the next comment was from the kid in front of me. “I’m sorry, but this is just… wrong. You can’t deny people their human rights. They go through all that trouble to get here, and then what? We spray tear gas on them when they’re steps from the border? Or we’re just going to send them back?”
If I slouched any lower, I’d fall out of my seat.
Then Mr. Phelps did something I abhorred (vocab word). He called on me directly. “Miss Cruz, do you have anything you’d like to add?”
Oh crap. “No,” I said fast.
“You sure?” He was so aggy. I dug my nails into my thighs.
“Yup.” Now everyone was staring at me.
Mr. Phelps squatted beside my desk like he was my personal coach. Gahhh! “The class may seem hard now, but stick with it,” he said in a low voice. Then he stood up and clicked to the next screen, some pie chart with statistics. Humiliation complete. I flipped up my hood.
Hard? I was used to hard. Like two weeks’ worth of laundry in one day because Mom never left the couch anymore. Like standing over Christopher and Benjamin until they brushed their teeth and flossed. But explaining my perspective on immigration to a bunch of white kids in a richie-rich school? That wasn’t hard. Nah. That was just annoying.
11
Okay, to be totally honest, it wasn’t just annoying. And okay, maybe it was hard. But hard in the sense of, why did I have to talk? Be the one to make like, an official statement or something? God. I didn’t know everything. But—but, but, but—I did want to be there, in that room, part of that discussion. It’s just that, well, I wasn’t used to being the only brown person. At my old school I was in the majority. Besides Missie, the minority consisted of like one Irish kid named Casey, who everyone called Casper.
Was it like this for everyone in METCO? How would I even know? It wasn’t like the other METCO kids were exactly winning awards for going out of their way to be helpful. Well, except for Rayshawn. But he was always surrounded by other kids, or at basketball. And there was Genesis. She seemed to weave in and out of groups—METCO, theater club, Honor Society—like it was nothing. She fit in. I bet she didn’t get asked for her perspective. But she was always mad busy. Then again, she was my buddy.
Time to buddy up.
* * *
I asked Genesis to meet me in the library during study hall, and by “asked” I mean “begged” over text: PLEASE, GIRL. I found her at the round table by the window. She had just added a second blue streak to her hair and was taking selfies, messing with the filters on her phone, adding all sorts of graphics and whatnot. I stood there waiting for her to, well, acknowledge me. She didn’t. She was swiping away at her phone. Finally I couldn’t help it, and butt in, “Look, I need to ask you something.”
“Sure. What?” She sucked in her cheeks. Press.
“So how do you do it?”
“Do what?” Now she was pouting her lips, holding her phone at arm’s length. Press.
“Like, go back and forth? You, like, cruise around, acting like yourself, but also, at the same time, kinda white—and then what? You go home and eat arroz con gandules and plátanos fritos and call it a day?” There. I’d asked it. She was the first person I’d ever spoken to like this, could speak to like this.
Her eyes softened suddenly, went younger, despite the fact that she was wearing fake lashes.
And she put her phone down.
“Lili,” she started.
She nodded to me to sit.
“Listen, girl. And I mean, hear me. You have to get this right.” She tapped the table with a fingernail. “So… this school right here is like the world. What I mean is, you have to act a certain way. Or, more like, you have to carry yourself a certain way—in order to get what you want, and what you need.” She looked me head-on. “When I first got here, I was all ‘This place is whack. I’m going back to Boston.’ But even after a whole bunch of shit happened, I realized that I didn’t want to go back. What for? I had so many more opportunities here, and I’m not bullshitting you. I really did. You do too.”
She paused at last, but before I could even open my mouth to respond, she went right on. “What I’m saying, Liliana, is that you have to stick it out. It’s not perfect, and yeah, some kids and sometimes even some of the teachers say racist shit, but just take it all in stride or whatever. Get yours. Do you. They have this many AP classes at your old school?” She didn’t give me time to answer. “Don’t get it twisted. I love being Latina. I wouldn’t trade my identity or my situation for anyone else’s, and that’s facts, girl. Here, it’s actually an advantage to be different.”
“It is?” I wasn’t quite following.
“Yep. Think about it. There are like twenty METCO students and a thousand resident students. There are only like three other Black kids in the whole school who aren’t in METCO. And everyone thinks they are anyway. So, look. Work it. Raise your hand in class. Speak up. Do your assignments. Don’t give them an excuse to say that you’re just another lazy blah, blah, blah. You get up at what, five a.m?”
I nodded.
“How many non-METCO kids start their day that early? Lazy, my ass.”
I nodded again.
“And the other thing—you have to get involved. Join a club at least. Rayshawn said they mentioned a ton at the gym the other day. There has to be something you like. It really does look good on your college applications; they love that shit. And volunteer for something. Like, last spring I went to Guatemala to do Habitat for Humanity.”
My mouth literally fell open. “You’ve been to Guatemala?”
“Yeah. It was tight.”
I was speechless. Genesis had been there? And I hadn’t? And that’s where my dad was. I felt some kind of way. I really did.