an estate forty-five minutes from the closest city, might have a very different life experience than say… a poor black girl from the inner city?”
Sal thought back to some of the insane stories he’d heard from Elizabeth, and then from Frenchie. Even a couple from Teddy. The women’s lives all seemed insane to him, even if he had been the one to figure out that the Frenchie girl was homeless in the park.
“I…”
Nova’s voice was quieter when she continued. “You know, I was picked up by immigration once.”
That stopped him cold right when he’d picked up his scoop again. “You what?”
“Got picked up. I was walking around with a couple of my friends, Yolanda and Daniella. Nice girls who I’d met when I’d first moved here and was confused in the supermarket. We were going out to the movies together when we all got picked up.
“It was one of the scariest experiences of my life. They hauled us away, took us to what seemed like a jail, and demanded our papers. We had our IDs, of course, but they kept saying that wasn’t enough. They separated us, and I remember the officer who was talking to me kept accusing me of having a fake ID. Kept asking what my ‘real’ name was, not the white name I made up.”
“They thought you weren’t white?”
“That’s what I’m guessing. I mean, I know I tan pretty deep, but I’m about as white bread as you can get. Irish, Welsh, and all that. I’m just what people seem to call ‘ethnically ambiguous.’ They held me there for hours before my immigration lawyer was able to call them and set them straight.”
“I… I don’t know what to say to that.”
“That’s alright. I just wanted you to know that we all have different life experiences. And while sometimes something seems impossible, listening to other folks might prove otherwise.”
“What happened to your friends?”
“I don’t know. I lost contact with them. For all that I’m aware, they were deported, or they packed up and moved. I’ve texted them, but nothing gets answered. We never did connect on social media so…” She shrugged, and Sal couldn’t help but wonder about the life that the woman in front of him had lived.
“Why didn’t you leave?” he asked.
“Hmmm?”
“That sounds so awful. I wouldn’t blame you if you left the States altogether. But you didn’t.”
“No, I didn’t.”
She was closing off again. He could feel it. “… is there a reason?”
Finally, she stopped what she was doing, setting aside the spatula she had been stirring with. “I guess it’s because even with all that awfulness, being in the States was a chance for me to be free. Appropriate, isn’t it, considering that is the theme of the place and all that.”
“Free?”
She nodded, and he could tell that she was picking her words carefully, one by one. It felt like something important was happening and his skin prickled with the weight of anticipation.
“Back home, who I am is already decided. I’m the too tall, too fat, too opinionated eldest daughter. I was basically used as a third parent to raise my siblings growing up, and nothing I did was ever good enough. I wasn’t smart enough, wasn’t pretty enough, wasn’t good enough. I was a set of difficulties and failures, one right after the other.
“But here, I’m just Nova. A struggling twenty-one-year-old who fits right in with all the other struggling twenty-one-year-olds. I’m not anything special, or awful. I’m just me. And after nineteen years of trying to squeeze myself into being what my family wanted and utterly failing at that, it’s a real nice feeling to just… be.”
There was so much information in there, so much to unpack and digest. They’d gotten very serious, very quickly, but his brain was gobbling it up and hoarding every detail like a dragon.
Her family didn’t like her? Seemed like insanity. Nova was tough—he’d watched her snap her own knee into place. Nova was kind—he’d seen her with animals, and how she acted with Mom was more than enough proof of that. She was capable—she wouldn’t have gotten her job, otherwise. She was funny—the previous day had had Sal’s cheeks hurting from how much he’d laughed and smiled. She was a litany of other positive traits, all of which surged on him at once. The idea that her parents could see her as anything other than a wonderful young woman was insane to him.
But he couldn’t say any of that, because it was all too much. The