Ingrid Rojas Contreras Quotes

We were refugees when we arrived to the U.S. You must be happy now that you'e safe, people said. They told us to strive for assimilation. The quicker we transformed into one of the many the better. But how could we choose? The U.S. was the land that saved us; Colombia was the land that saw us emerge.

There were mathematical principles to becoming an American: you had to know one hundred historical facts (What was one reason for the Civil War? Who was the President during World War II?), and you had to spend five uninterrupted years on North American soil. We memorized the facts, we stayed in place - but when I elevated my feet at night and my head found its pillow I wondered: of what country was I during those hours when my feet were in the air?

Multiply me when necessary,
make me disappear
when peremptory.
Transform me into light when there is shadow,
into a star
when in the desert.

Mamá's headlights lit up the yellow fluorescent lines of the road. They were curvy and it seemed like they were being traced out of nothingness by the invisible hand of God - like God was bored, drawing hills and lines with a highlighter.

What song could Pablo Escobar possibly sing in the shower?

They told us to strive for assimilation. The quicker we transformed into one of the many the better. But how could we choose? The U.S. was the land that saved us; Colombia was the land that saw us emerge.

I didn't tell Papa that Petrona was raped.

I didn't tell Cassandra I had written to Petrona and that she had written back.

I didn't correct Mama when she assumed the photograph Petrona had sent was a new photograph. I didn't tell her it was actually printed the year we fled Colombia.

I didn't tell Mama that the man in the photograph was Gorrion.

I was the only one with all the pieces. I was the only one that knew that Petrona had made a home with a man who had betrayed her, that she had chosen to keep the baby, that this new life she had fed from her breasts was something I had to make up to her and the only thing I could do was keep silent about what I knew. After all, who am I to judge? As her photo blurred, I thought: even oblivion is a kindness.

I thought again about Pablo Escobar cutting off people's tongues. It made sense to stop speaking, to say only what was necessary and nothing beyond. It was a way to survive.

I wanted to yell at the television like Mama and Papa, but I had to learn how to properly do it. I gathered that being a mouse was better than being a mosquita muerta, and being a snake was better than being a man, because flies pretending to be dead could be crushed, mice were shy, and men were persecuted; but everybody always avoided snakes.

Both versions of the story I told were lies, probably because the truth was more difficult to tell. What was the truth? Something terrible had happened. A man had been killed. Maybe it wasn't so difficult after all.

Multiply me when necessary. Transform me into light where there is shadow.

I blurted out a sob at the sound. Papa's voice fit into a groove in my ear, deserted for so many years, now full of his timbre. How easy it was to recognize this once lost detail. There was a home for every departed thing.