I Remember

A short story by Andrea Chow

I remember so vividly, so clearly, that night. And I remember the morning after, too. With the clarity of memory as if it happened a mere fifteen minutes ago, I remember the numbness throughout my body as I put my sister to bed. I remember how my vision blurred as I stumbled through the dimly lit hallways. And I remember rising with the sun the next day to find my mom already awake in the kitchen, on her knees, eyes swollen from the tears from the night before, begging for mercy on her family and her people. I remember how she would not look me in the eyes, voice breaking as she promised me that America was our home and that it would still be our home four years from now.

The morning of Wednesday, November 9th, 2016, will forever be ingrained in my mind as the morning my family truly understood how the rest of this country understood us.

For sixteen years, my family hid a secret from me. Fundamentally altering my identity, my past, my present, and my future, this ancestral memory was never erased, rather, it was stowed away in boxes in closets, under the kitchen sink, covered up in drawers, cooked into the soup we ate for dinner…

Once upon a time, my mother and her sisters left their homes in the silence of the night. They crossed an endless desert hugging their children to their chests, whispering to them to stop crying, to stay silent para que nadie los oyeron. They hid under bushes and prayed that God would hide them from the lights of the helicopters above. Once upon a time, my mother gave up her entire world for me.

Seared into her memory for the rest of eternity is the pain of wiping a child’s tears and praying for a safety and sense of belonging that might never be hers. And seared into mine is the memory of wiping her tears so many years later.