When my mother was twenty, she crossed the Rio Grande.
When I was twenty, I was trying to find the balance between drinking copious amounts of alcohol and studying for exams. Twenty was a blur of parties that ended with the first rays of sunlight, cheap beer, bailando bachata bien pegadito. Twenty was black heels sharp enough to stab you, low cut dresses, and a nearly empty bank account that sometimes sunk into the negatives. Twenty was Rey, Mauricio, Zacharias, and Joshua, their shapes forever marked by indents in my mattress.
Twenty was guilt, because I knew that my mother had suffered at my age.
Growing up, my mother told me to never let anyone call her a "wetback." Her argument was that she had only wet her feet when she crossed the river.
"Que me digan 'pies mojados.'"
Whenever she told the story, I imagined her cracked feet jumping from stone to stone until they touched the promised-land on the other side. My mother, twenty, war weary and shattered, made her way through the rugged American landscape until she reached Miami.
To this day, I do not know the full details of her immigration story. I know the bare outline of my mother's story.
From the moment my mother arrived in Miami, she cleaned houses. Her hands would be stained with the smell of chlorine and Fabuloso for the rest of her life, but if I inhaled deeply enough, I could smell her true scent underneath the chemical stench of window cleaner. I smelled jasmine, berries and sunlight; I was happy that my mother's essence had not been erased.
What had been erased were her dreams. The pen and paper from her only semester at the University became a mop and the floor of the homes of Cuban exiles. My mother began cleaning houses at twenty and worked until the arthritis in her joints destroyed her ability to hold a broom and sweep. My mother, who dreamed of being a journalist, who dreamed of being a guitarist, who dreamed of being a teacher. My mother, who dreamed and knew how to multiply, add, subtract, and divide by the time she was four, reduced to a title when she was twenty: the woman who cleans houses.
"Estudia," she would remind me daily, "so you don't end up like me."
Pero Mama, te quiero mas de lo que imaginas. Mama, when they ask who I do it for, I say your name. Mama, I say your name. Don't disown me for getting a tattoo that reminds myself that I can be as brave as you. Don't be frightened when I protest in the streets. Because Mama, I am trying to fight for the both of us because you are too tired. You have worked hard enough Mama.
Mama, I am always proud of you.