My Brave New World Happy New Year

Where I grew up everyone was in rentals, mostly two bedrooms, one bath, no washer and dryer. We made friends at the washateria, at the food pantry waiting while our moms, older sisters did their 'shopping'. Income was government assistance, food stamps. Girls with babies, sometimes two, dropped out in the eighth grade. I escaped their fate. I was a lesbian, I kept my distance from boys.

The first in my family to finish high school, a counselor helped me get a scholarship. Like me, she is a lesbian, 'we take care of our own, pay it forwards'. I went to college, an elite private college for rich girls. I worked every summer, they went to the South of France. One, a lesbian, had never been with a brown skinned girl, with dark nipples, dark dark thick pubes, dark purple inside. Pink inside was her, blonde was her, blue eyes was her, soft light pubes, large white boobs with pink nipples. The contrast surprised me, even though I expected it. I had never been naked with a white girl. She got a 'good girl' from her rich friends.

I got a degree, a job for brown girls with degrees. Everyone pretended, no one was my friend. After a year I went home, to my neighborhood. The sounds, the smell, the washateria.

After a couple of years I got a 'real' job, where what you do matters. My boss 'drove me hard', 'couldn't give a shit that I was a lesbian'. Do the work you get paid, don't do the work you get fired. Brown like me, but from a rich background, she pulled, yanked, yelled, pushed me to learn to succeed. I found out my education was worthless, words but no knowledge. Go back to school, this time to get an education. One brown girl to another, if you don't get the education you won't make it, you'll be a clerk all your life.

Then, 'lay back, I'm going to take your pants off'. Sex, for real, his breath on my neck, my face, his penis tearing into me, gasping for air, not seeing, just light, overwhelmed by an orgasm. I came to, he was sitting beside me. Somehow I knew I was going to be pregnant. I got married, a white man, a brown girl. He spoke to my mother in flawless Spanish. He was a 'white' Mexican. He wanted a brown girl, 'piel canela'. The color of cinnamon.

I learned that in my new world you have the status of your husband. Your kids have the status of their father, his 'name' mattered. They had a 'name' to grow up in. A house with five bedrooms, five and a half bathrooms, two living rooms, two dining rooms, three car garage, swimming pool, two acres in a gated community. Names mattered. Your now Mrs. Cisneros. Not Ana.

My degrees mattered, my knowledge mattered, my work skills mattered. No one cared where I grew up, that I didn't know my father, that I didn't have a name. It's who you are that matters. I have friends, other mothers, my kids have friends from their neighborhood. No one cares that I was, am, a lesbian. Some people are born with other afflictions. I happen to have been born a lesbian. Big deal. So I'm Mexican, big deal.