SEPTEMBER 2011
I was in the living room when Mom answered her phone and sat on the porch. She stayed there after she hung up, alone with the sunset. I didn’t bother interrupting. She eventually came inside and spilled it. Her friend’s husband had been detained by ICE. There had been no word on him since. No phone call. Nothing.
I tried imagining what that felt like. One moment you’re working, the next you have cuffs around your wrists and ICE is dragging you to prison until your fate is decided. Sure, overstaying your visa and-or crossing the border was against the law. Some people did it to commit crimes. Others to dream. Deportation stories were like legends in my house. You’d hear about them from parents who had heard it from their friends, but they were these tales that happened to people other people knew. It had never happened so close to us.
No matter how much I wanted to pretend—how much I wanted to dream—the most fucked-up part was that my family and my best friends weren’t exempt from meeting the same fate. When it came to my friends, we lived an illegal life because other people had made choices for us when we were young. And now we had to make the best with what we got—which wasn’t so bad, aside from the whole no-paper thing.
Sometimes I felt bad about complaining that I lived in America. So many people risk their lives for a chance at the so-called American Dream. But mine was neither a dream nor a nightmare. It was limbo.
I stared at the white ceiling of my bedroom, hoping it’d turn into a canvas displaying a way out of my undocumented reality. I thought about it often. How I couldn’t have roots in the place I had spent the last ten years; how my dreams were limited to a piece of paper; how there was no light at the end of the tunnel from the place I stood. And now, I was doomed to think about this secret identity more often.
My family’s undocumented truth wasn’t something I went around advertising. A lot of people didn’t really understand what that adventure meant. Blame the movies or the media. Every illegal person had a different story, but a whole lot of people assumed we had all swum across a river, crossed a desert, and ended up here to become criminals. Little did they know that, to some, that was the price to pay to have a shot at a life beyond oppression.
I was six when the family and I left Brazil and flew over the Atlantic, tourist visas in hand. My parents sold whatever we had after we lost our store. I somewhat understood what staying here meant at the time. I hoped things would work themselves out eventually. Well, I was still hoping.
I ignored my undocumented thoughts whenever they knocked. I’d lose my shit if I let them hang out for too long. Which I did sometimes. I’d then spiral. My let-me-Google-any-immigration-loopholes obsession followed. The last time I fell down the rabbit hole, I came across all these articles talking about immigration reform for kids like me. The famous DREAM Act. Its fate had been a roller coaster ride as wild as my own. From being introduced over a decade ago to being brought to the US Senate last year and obviously failing because apparently kids like me—Dreamers, as the press liked to call us for dramatic purposes—were political pawns for whichever party. I mean, how many times can you ride the same roller coaster in a row before you puke everywhere?
My own roller coaster had a few loops and drops that led me to my big internal debate: to stay undocumented or to go back to the place that served as the setting for what I called “The Great Franco Family Debacle.”
I finally got out of bed, showered, and got dressed in the first thing I could find in my closet: jeans, boots, an Abercrombie t-shirt, and a jacket. If my mom were home, she’d tell me not to go to school with my hair wet. Fall was here and the cold could give me pneumonia—or so she’d say. Mom was awesome. I actually enjoyed our talks and the effort she made to be a part of my life regardless of how much she had to work.
I always questioned her whenever she casually mentioned the dangers of living in the cold weather. Why Framingham, Massachusetts, then? Why not Miami or LA? Her argument was that the cold would give us thicker skin. To me, she just wanted to escape anything mirroring our lives back in Fogo Dourado—even the everlasting tropical weather. Even though I was young kid at the time, I still had vivid memories of Dad rolling down the steel doors of the store for the last time; Mom crying on the sidewalk; all the gossip and criticism.
When I was a kid, I’d watch American movies where the family gathered for a lavish breakfast before the kids jetted off to school. When my parents told us we were moving to America, I thought that we’d live like that. My life couldn’t be more different. A bowl of Fruit Loops was breakfast for my sister and me most days; Pop Tarts were also accepted. No fancy pancakes or bacon on weekdays. Parents started working before the sun was out and sometimes were home early enough for dinner.
My sister was already in the kitchen, eyes glued to her phone as she whirled the cereal in her bowl with a spoon.
“We should skip,” she said, her backpack on the chair beside her.
“Laila, I actually enjoy shop week.” I grabbed a bowl from the cabinet. “That was the whole reason why I decided to go to a technical high school. It’s already Thursday, anyway. And today I get to draw shit, eat junk, and listen to music. It really isn’t so bad.”
“Mom already told you not to say ‘shit’ in front of me.” Her phone screen was still more interesting than my face.
“Like you don’t hear worse at school.” I poured the cereal and the store-branded milk into my bowl and reclined on the edge of the table. Laila was thirteen but looked much older. Her face had gone from being round and plump to chiseled and long in a matter of months. No more styling her brown hair in pigtails. Now her shoulder-length locks draped in front of her face or in a bun.
“We could tell them we got deported,” she suggested with a smirk, finally looking at me. “She got so emotional over what happened to the Moreiras yesterday.”
“What a nice thing to say before seven a.m.,” I said.
“I can’t wait until it’s my turn to go to a tech school next year.” She disregarded my comment.
“If we’re here by then.” I munched on some cereal. “I hate this whole ping-pong game they play with us. They decide to stay, to leave, to hang for a little longer. A decade later and we’re still going through this shit.”
“Ah!” She raised a finger. “There it is again.”
“Well, this situation deserves the word. It’s shit. Shitty.”
“Seriously.” She dropped the spoon on the edge of the bowl. “Like, hello, can I plan on going to high school next year or should I just, I don’t know, curl into a ball, and stay in my room listening to sad music? My Portuguese is practically nonexistent. Should I take Portuguese classes online? You, at least, speak it a little bit.”
“Um pouco,” I said. “Mas não o suficiente. Anyway, on the bright side, I did read this thing online about Obama and what they were planning for immigration—”
“Matt,” she interrupted, holding her hands in the air like a traffic cop. “Just stop. You always do this. You want to see the good in this whole thing. I get it. That’s how you cope. I cope with sarcasm. And it’s okay. But stop doing this to yourself. Let’s just enjoy today, okay?” Her brown eyes returned to the phone as she crushed her cereal with her spoon. “At least if we go back, Dad won’t be on your case about going to school for art anymore.”
“Right,” I mumbled. “Such a plus. He’ll want me to take over the business he plans on reopening after it destroyed the family. Because that’s what I’ve always wanted to do with my life. Que merda.”
“Saying ‘shit’ in Portuguese doesn’t exempt you from Mom’s request,” Laila said snidely.
The hissing of the bus pulling up in front of our house was her invitation to leave before I could contest her snarky comment.
“See you later.” She grabbed her backpack.
“Still can’t believe they pick you up in front of our house!”
“I’m one of the lucky ones,” she said as soon as she closed the door behind her.
I dumped the rest of the cereal down the drain, put on my headphones, and left the house only after pressing play on Linkin Park and Jay-Z’s “Numb/Encore.”
Things weren’t so bad once I stepped out of the house and tucked my undocumented thoughts into my secret imaginary drawer of unwanted things. I loved my friends. I loved where I lived. I loved art and Halloween and every cheesy holiday celebration there was.
A couple of my neighbors had already decorated for spooky season. Pumpkins, ghosts, and skeletons crowded the front yard of a few homes. One of the neighbors had even built a cemetery. Some would say that September was too early to decorate. I neither confirmed nor denied that fact, because if it were up to me, I’d decorate for Christmas on the first day of fall.
The bus arrived. I dozed off and woke up when we stopped in front of the concrete façade displaying the silver letters spelling out “Joseph Ferguson High School.” Our mascot was proudly displayed next to the words, a unicorn inside a triangle.
I grabbed my phone to check my messages and accidentally opened my front camera. My brown eyes gave me too much credit; people would think I was high before 7 a.m. I rustled the front of my brown curls over my eyebrows. I'm not that cool—just tired.
Three messages. Fa—or Lesbian One—had sent a quote in the chat: “Focus on the positive and your day will be brighter. See the negative and your day will be fucked.” She sent these occasionally. Ignore the ones she considered good and there’d be hell to pay.
Diana—Lesbian Two—had replied with a heart emoji.
Pedro, aka Manga Boy, simply said, “The positive today is the bell ringing at three. Bro, I already want my bed again. To com sono.”
Our chat was called the Forbidden Fortress, named after our own friend group, established back when we met at Woodrow Wilson Elementary. I was never a fan of group chats, so back when we started ours, I requested that we each have epic names. Manga Boy was a tribute to Pedro’s undying love for all things anime, manga, and hentai; Fa and Diana called themselves “Lesbians One and Two” on the daily already. They said it was a modern-day tribute to Dr. Seuss’s characters. I was Elder Wizard because Fa insisted my soul was old and my mind too complicated. She actually gave me one of those cheap wizard costumes you buy at party stores for my birthday. I had expected a second gift, but no. She claimed I needed to embrace who I truly was, and the costume was a start. I never wore it.
I was the first to arrive at our exclusive table in the cafeteria. Exclusive because, since freshman year, no one else had joined us. It was far enough from all the others but not too far from the vending machines and the food aisle. It also faced the floor-to-ceiling window that provided a view of the football field. The table had been named after our group chat.
After grabbing a bagel with cream cheese and a boxed chocolate milk, I paid the vending machine a visit, bought an apple pie, and returned to the table just in time for the rest of the members of the Forbidden Fortress to arrive.
Fa had picked a pretty modest sweatshirt today. All it said was “Magic Is Around You.” Her curly hair was up in a messy ponytail and her black jeans had holes on both her knees. She was a brown curvy girl and wanted the world to know how proud she was of her figure. “The original babe from Rio,” she’d call herself sometimes.
Diana had her hair in a single braid falling over her right shoulder. She wore classic Diana color tones. She was like a coffee mug on a foggy fall morning, always wearing browns and oranges, even in the dead of summer. Even her braces were orange. She had insisted on getting them last year to fix her front gap. I always thought the gap was her thing, like, her signature. But she wanted to get rid of it.
Pedro had his usual band t-shirt. Red Hot Chili Peppers was his choice for the day. His once-white Converses were now a mixture of mud and doodles. He’d had a shaved cut since last year. According to him, the five minutes he used to spend on his hair in the morning were now five extra minutes of sleep.
“Somebody didn’t wait for his friends.” Fa hugged me. “Sacanagem, Matt.”
“I was hungry,” I said after she let me go, my arms now around Diana. “Please tell her it’s too early for lectures.”
“She already came for Diana and me on the bus.” Pedro fist-bumped me. “She said something about…” He rolled a finger in the air, showing Fa that he needed assistance remembering.
“How you all need to be more in tune with your spiritual selves,” Fa added, rolling her eyes. “Listen, people. You all need to listen, okay? You really do.”
“Thank God I have you to realign my chakras.” Diana pecked Fa on the cheek. “Without you, my spiritual self is like a caffeine addict minus the coffee.”
“You’re lucky I’m patient, babe,” Fa added with a smile. “I’ll make the goddess of the sea an offering for all of you on New Year’s. I promise.”
“You’re too kind.” I dropped my mouth open. “Can she also bring us green cards?”
“Good one,” Pedro said with a laugh.
“I’ll ask her.” Fa clicked her tongue and winked.
They all marched their way to the food aisle. I didn’t miss Fa and Diana lacing their fingers. I wish I had enough guts to take the blow like they did last year, to own up to what I thought would be an inconvenience to people around me.
Many from my parents’ generation in Brazil still held on to their anti-queer religious beliefs like anchors. Blame religion. Blame homophobia. Blame whatever. Not that we didn’t have a lot of the same in many places in America. Fa and Diana coming out to their Brazilian conservative families who lived here was a big deal. They were sort of forced to do it after everything that happened to them.
When they posted a picture with the rainbow flag last year, Dad began bragging to some of his friends about his son hanging out with lesbians. You’d think he was doing it because of how progressive he was. That wasn’t the case. He actually asked me if I had ever considered hooking up with both of them. I’d always ignore his comments. But it was harder to ignore his questions about the girls I was seeing. No, Dad. No girls. Tons of gay porn, though.
I hoped people thought I was just picky when it came to dating. The truth, however, was entirely different. I was eleven when I downloaded an illegal copy of Brokeback Mountain on the internet after watching the trailer. Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal as sexy cowboys made me feel all sorts of things, including fear. I related to Ennis insisting they keep their love a secret. Not because I was ashamed of it. I just didn’t want to add that hard truth to the pile of another one. Who knew what could happen after I stepped out of my safe gay closet?
My family wasn’t really religious. We were Catholics, but we stopped going to mass after moving here. Some people who attended church were somewhat okay with the gays. I knew where Dad stood on that spectrum. No son of his would ever be a “viado.” He made that very clear when one my cousins in Brazil came out last year.
When he told Mom, she nodded and made no comment. She never talked about it. Not with him. Not with me. I assumed she also saw gayness as a sin. Whenever we were out and we saw a gay couple, she’d go quiet or get serious fast.
I knew who I was. I had always known, but the not knowing how people would handle my truth kept me from living it. But I was getting tired of hiding so much of myself. Whenever I saw Fa and Diana flaunting their love for the world to see, I wondered if I’d ever have anything similar. Would I ever be as brave?
“You heard what happened yesterday at that fabric store downtown?” I asked when they returned to the table.
“The ICE raid?” Pedro asked, pounding the bottom of his wrapped straw on the table until the plastic burst. “Yeah, Dad told me. It’s on the Brazilian newspaper today. They were fast about printing that story.”
“Foda,” Fa said, slicing her bagel with a plastic knife. “I got so scared for my mom and aunt. Even scarier to think we’ll join the undocumented club soon. I think I need a sweater that says, ‘Undocumented and Proud.’”
“Great idea, Fa.” Pedro shook his head. “Wear that after you’re eighteen while driving somewhere and you’ll be out of here in no time.”
“Funny to hear everyone talking about driver’s ed and college.” Diana sipped from her orange juice. “The other day, these girls in Algebra were talking about the Art Academy in Boston and how they have this amazing graphic design program. I just listened. What was I going to say? ‘Hey, this girl born in São Paulo but raised here can’t go to college because, well, tuition for illegal people costs a fortune?’ It sucks to have grown up here, know nothing but this life, and yet also know it’ll soon be taken from us. I was two when they brought me over. Two.”
“One of the people arrested is friends with my parents,” I revealed. “His wife called yesterday. I didn’t ask a lot of questions.”
The air around the table grew heavy, like we had all walked into a dark forest or got locked in some dark tower while waiting for the arrival of an imminent monster.
“This is too heavy to start our day with.” Fa clapped. “Did. We. Not. Read. What. I. Sent. This. Morning? Can we focus on the fact that today we’re doing conté drawings in class?”
“My fucking favorite,” I said. “I love when I say ‘conté’ to people and they have no clue what I mean. Then I say ‘charcoal’ as if they should’ve known what that word meant all along. It makes me look smart and trilingual.”
“I’m so glad we finished that corny assignment,” Diana said. “Coming up with our own cereal boxes? Not interested.”
“Your character did look like a stripper on a spaceship,” Pedro said. “I actually read this hentai about a dragon and a fairy getting it on and—”
“Don’t listen to him, babe,” Fa said.
“Hey, I liked the story,” Pedro confessed. “I wanted my cereal character to look like Sailor Moon holding a peni—”
“I beg you to never finish that sentence,” Diana said. “My ears are too precious.”
I never took my time with these three for granted. My childhood years in Fogo Dourado were lonely as fuck. Once I started second grade, my artistic abilities were associated with being a fag or a sissy—and no one wanted to be around one of those.
The Forbidden Fortress had been the only true friends in my life. We started talking after we realized we were all Brazilian kids being raised here. We shared the common trait of a very rusty Portuguese. Our undocumented truth brought us closer. Pedro’s thing was drawing his own mangas. Fa loved calligraphy and anything related to the zodiac and witches. Diana loved landscapes. She created these colorful pieces with colored pencils.
A lot of things brought us together. But I carried an extra weight— something unrelated to papers or immigration status. So much of who I was had to be hidden. I wondered how it would feel to let that part of me be on full display. Maybe I’d be given the chance to feel. To forget. Or even to breathe.
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