Out of the Shadows

“Never show them what you are. Never. Do you understand me?” she asks, her grip tight around my shoulders. She’s squeezing so hard that it hurts, but I can’t tell her that. I can’t tell her because I don’t know how she’ll react. I don’t recognize this woman. This woman with wide eyes staring at me, pleading with me to agree, to promise that I’ll keep silent.

I’m scared of her.

For the first time, I’m scared of my mother.

“Never, Daniela. Never. No matter how hard it is, never show them. Tell me that you understand what I’m telling you,” she whispers through gritted teeth, her already tight grasp getting tighter and it’s almost unbearable.

“Yes, mami,” I say, trying not to cry, “I understand.”

I wake in a sweat, my mother’s eyes already fading back into the safety of my subconscious.

“Get up, mija. It’s time,” my dad says from the doorway. 5am and already showered, dressed, ready to go.

He always lets me sleep in a little bit longer.

“The young need their rest,” he says. “The young need their strength.”

I want to tell him that he’s the one who should sleep. He’s the one who should rest. He’s the one who deserves it. But he’ll never. “Too much to do,” he’ll say, “You’re the one going to school. You’re the one who’s going to go places.” I want to tell him that I’m not sure if I’ll go anywhere. That it may not matter how hard I work, or how many A’s I get. That they work just as hard to push us down, to keep us in our place. But I don’t tell him any of that. I don’t tell him anything, because I don’t want to be the cause of even the tiniest crack in his hopeful dreams. He believes that I will go places. So, I let him believe, with the hope that his positivity will rub off on me. “Your brain needs rest,” he always says, “My body is fine.” Except his body isn’t fine. I see the way he winces whenever he has to pick something up off the floor. The amount of calluses on his fingers- so rough they almost cut me when I hold his hands. But he still goes to work every single day, putting his body through as much as it can handle. For me.

So, I get up. Brush my teeth. I stare in the mirror and one moment I’m looking at myself brushing my teeth, and the next moment, I’m looking at my mother. Her eyes wide and pleading, and her mouth open, open wide, veins popping in her neck-

I scream and drop the toothbrush on the floor.

“Hija? You, ok?” my dad yells, rushing into the room.

I stare at the mirror and see only my reflection.

It must have been a trick of the light, I think.

“Fine, papi,” I say, “Almost ready.”

He looks at me and I can see that he wants to ask me more. He opens his mouth. Closes it.

“Papi? You, ok?” I ask.

“…Are you ok, mija? Are you…feeling ok?” he asks, tentatively taking a step toward me and putting his hand on my forehead.

I step back and laugh.

“Yes, papi. I’m fine. I…I thought I saw a mouse. That’s all.”

His brow is furrowed, and he knows I’m not telling the truth.

I want to tell him the truth. I want to tell him what I saw. I want to tell him that it’s not the first time. That I’ve been seeing her everywhere since last Friday. Ever since I turned 15. In windows, in doorways, and always the same panicked, expression, like she wants to tell me something. But if I tell him all that, he’ll think I’m nuts. He’ll look at me like he’s looking at me now. Like I’m something that needs to be taken care of and watched over and my father doesn’t need that stress.

And I don’t want him to look at me like that.

Like he’s scared of me.

So, I smile at him.

“I’m fine, papi. Really. I’m fine.”

He gives me a small smile back, his face relaxing a bit in relief.

“Ok, hurry. It’s almost time for school,” he says.

I nod and watch him walk away.

I look at the mirror.

I put my sweater over it and finish getting ready.

I am seven years old.

I wake up and my mother is standing over me.

I open my mouth to scream but she puts her hand over it.

“It’s ok, mija,” she whispers, using her other hand to caress my face.

“Are you going to be a good girl?” she asks.

I nod and she slowly takes her hand from my mouth.

She is quiet for a while, just looking at me, caressing my face and hair and arms.

“I love you so much, Daniela, you know that, right?”

I nod.

“Good. Remember that, ok? No matter what happens, remember that. And never, never, ever, tell them what you are, ok? You understand?” she asks me, her caresses getting faster, more desperate.

I nod frantically, afraid she’ll grip my shoulders again, and hurt me. I nod, even though I don’t know what she means.

She leans down and kisses my forehead.

And then she stands and walks away, and I’m scared for her. So, I follow her out of the room and down the hall, all the way to the front door.

She turns and smiles at me and then leaves and shuts the door behind her.

I run to the door and am about to open it when I hear a loud zapping sound.

I scream.

I slowly open the door and stare down the empty hallway.

She’s gone.

My father comes out of their bedroom asking me “What is it, what’s happened?”

But I don’t know how to answer because I don’t know what’s happened.

I run up and down the hallways of our building, my father at my heels.

We look everywhere.

We look on every floor, ask every tenant, we run around the building and drive around the neighborhood.

But she’s vanished.

My father pulls in front of my high school. I’m about to get out when he gently pulls me back.

“Hija? Are you sure, you’re ok?”

“I’m fine,” I tell him. I reach for his hand and gently squeeze it. “Really, papi. I’m ok.”

He nods and stares out the window, watching the other cars pull up to drop off their children. He looks at me, tears pooling in his eyes.

“Papi, what is it?” I ask.

He shakes his head, “Your mami…I loved her you know.”

“I know, papi,” I tell him. My chest constricting. Does he know? Does he see her too? But I wait. I wait. Holding my breath.

“I loved her,” he repeats, “And I love you. And I…I knew what she was, you know. I knew and it was ok. But it got to be too much for her. She couldn’t handle it. She couldn’t handle them in her ear all the time. It was too much. And you…are you…”

He trails off, looking at me, pleading with me to fill in the gaps, to complete his sentences, but I don’t know what he means. I don't understand what he's trying to say.

“What do you mean, papi? What she was? What was she?”

He lets out a sigh of frustration and shakes his head.

“Papi, what do you-

Suddenly, there is the sound of screaming coming from behind us.

We look and there are six large vans parked nearby and out of them come men in ICE gear. They are masked up, carrying guns. They start to snatch parents and kids from the parking lot. Teachers start running toward us, everyone is screaming.

I feel my heart rise to my throat.

My father is undocumented.

So am I.

“We need to stay in the car,” I tell him, trying to keep my voice as calm as possible.

I hope that the teachers will stop them. I hope that the crowd will push them back.

My father stares at all the commotion with wide eyes.

I grip his hand.

There is so much running and screaming and it’s hard to keep track of where people are, but I’m praying that if we just stay in the car, if we just stay in the car, we’ll be safe.

I go through the Know-Your-Rights list in my head. I repeat it to myself as I watch my classmates get thrown into vans.

And then glass shatters to my left.

I scream as a large ICE agent reaches his arm through the window.

Glass is everywhere.

Blood is pooling on my arms and my father’s face is cut to pieces.

The agent starts to drag him out of the car.

I scream and hold onto my father’s arm, his body being pulled in two directions.

There’s another ICE agent on my side of the car, trying to get the door open.

There are agents in front of us, behind us, we are surrounded and everyone else is surrounded too and there is nowhere for us to go.

My mother’s face flashes before my eyes.

And I begin to hear voices in my head.

I can’t make out what they’re saying.

They’re speaking in languages I don’t understand.

And there’s so many of them.

And they keep getting louder.

And from somewhere deep inside I can feel a hum in my body. A vibration. And it’s also getting louder and louder and louder, and the hum and the voices and my father being pulled and the people screaming around us mixed with the voices screaming in my head is just too much, it gets to be so much that I can’t hold it in anymore and I SCREAM.

I scream and can feel the veins popping in my neck, energy bursting from my body, my limbs vibrating, my body floating, levitating, spreading across the sky.

And the world goes white.

I slowly open my eyes.

My father is looking at me, tears streaming down his face.

The agents, all of them, are on the ground, their heads gone, blood everywhere.

Everyone is staring.

Everything is still.

Everything is silent.

Everything is quiet.

Everything is so quiet that the only sound I can hear is my father’s breathing.

And mine.

And I look in the review mirror and there are so many faces staring back at me. I recognize my grandmother and great aunts. So many women, their faces close together blending and blurring and all of them looking at me. And in front of them all is my mother. Except there’s something different. Something that makes the hairs on the back of my neck rise. It’s my mother but not my mother. And instead of her wide eyes and open mouth, she is relaxed. Her eyes glowing.

And she is smiling.