One cold night in December, when I was not yet four years old, my mother woke me while it was still dark, pressing her face against my cheek and whispering, “We have to leave. Right away.”Article continues after advertisement
I rolled off my mattress, stumbled blindly across our tiny apartment to pee, pulled on my jeans and sneakers, and followed her down the five flights of stairs without a word, walking on tiptoes so I didn’t wake the neighbors.
We stopped in the foyer. Outside, my father was already working under the streetlights, breath steaming through his beard as he chipped ice off the windshield and loaded our bags and boxes into the hatchback of a rusted blue station wagon.
I glanced up at my mom again. Under the bare bulb she looked pale, though her skin was still much darker than mine. Her hair, which she’d kept short and dyed red as part of her disguise, was finally starting to grow out, straight and dark, nearly black, down to her shoulders.
She stood still in the doorway, cradling my baby brother in one arm and holding my hand with the other, but her eyes kept flickering to the intersection—following each car that passed, tracing the shadows of the men outside the bodega by the corner, keeping a close eye on anything that moved.Article continues after advertisement
