In the Country We Love

by Diane Guerrero

  Mami and I exchanged gifts. I brought her the usual items on her list: eyeliner, lotion, perfume, makeup. Early that Christmas morning, before I’d gotten out of bed, she came into my room and handed me a package. My eyes lit up.

  “Open it,” she said. I removed the tape from the layers of pink tissue paper. Inside, I found a stack of seven underwear, one in every color of the rainbow.

  “Thank you,” I whispered. I was half-asleep, but awake enough to reach over and embrace her. To anyone else, the present would’ve appeared to be a set of basic cotton undies. To me, it was a symbol of my mother’s care. It took me back to those days when I was four and seven and ten, the years when Mami had been there to give me a personal item that often only a mother would buy for her daughter. It probably sounds funny, but I still look forward to receiving panties from my mother.

  It was after that Christmas break that I began thinking about how I could eventually bring my parents to the States again. Could I do that? What would the barriers be? Upon completing college, would I be able to lock down a good job, save up, and hire a respectable attorney? I had none of the answers, but my time with Mami had reminded me of how lonely I felt without her and Papi here. How much I needed them. I didn’t tell either of them what I was considering. Instead, I stashed the thought away. It gave me something to look forward to, to anticipate, to pray about. We all need that. Dreams are what keep us alive.

  You’d think my sweet reunion with Mami would’ve prompted me to call her and Papi more regularly. It didn’t. Same song, seventeenth verse: I would’ve given just about anything for them to be closer, yet I also needed to keep some distance between a situation I was powerless to alter and myself. By this point, my parents had gotten used to me going underground. They stopped giving me shit about it. That battle was lost, and they knew it. Which might be why Mami smartly switched her tactic from demanding to guilt-tripping. “Diane,” she said on my voice mail that March, “I get so sad when you don’t call me.” A day later, I returned her call.

  Now, years later, I recall that particular conversation. The mother I’d known as a girl, the one who’d gently stroked my hair and tucked me into bed, showed up during that call. This time, Mami didn’t mention the heartache of 2001. She didn’t speak of how badly she wanted to be with Papi again. She didn’t linger on the daily hardships of her life in Colombia. Rather, she asked me a simple question, one I’ve carried with me since: “How are you, my dear—really?” She then listened, fully listened, as I told her.

  I hadn’t been there to see all the ways in which it was happening, but my mom was shifting. She was moving past the trauma and the outrage and the grief and settling into a quiet acceptance of things not as she wanted them to be but as they were. We don’t do all our growing up between birth and adolescence or even our twenties. If we’re fortunate, we never stop.

  * * *

  My classes were kicking my butt. As hard as I was working I was still pulling only Bs and Cs. That’s all good, but I wanted better, and I couldn’t understand why better was out of reach when I was making such an effort. It’s not like I was partying or procrastinating. So I went in to talk to my counselor. “Have you been tested for a learning disability?” he asked. I hadn’t. Once I took the tests and the results came in, we discovered those two culprits I’d been dealing with since elementary school: ADD and dyslexia in both math and reading. I got on medication, requested extra time from my professors to complete exams, and sure enough, the As began to roll in.

  With my GPA on the rise—and with a less generous financial aid package for year two at Regis—I searched for work. I landed a gig at Jasmine Sola, a retail store that sold designer denim and trendy clothing. I hadn’t ever been in the same room with such expensive jeans, some pairs as much as $250! As I folded and hung them each evening, I drooled. Who had that much loot to drop on clothes? Oh, right—everyone in the store but me.

  I did, however, meet really interesting people while on the job. There was this one girl—petite, blond, cute as a button, and a vision in baby pink. I instantly tried to look away. But even after all my crap, weird hang-ups, and promises to myself to have more girlfriends of color, Katie was the one white girl I could not pass up. She was and still is one of the most beautiful and caring people I’ve ever met. She wasn’t afraid to call me out on my bullshit, or to let me call her out on hers. She saw me for who I really was, and she still wanted to be my friend. That kind of friendship has no color and no limits. We would talk all throughout our shifts. While folding clothes and helping customers, we’d plan our futures and pick out clothes in the store we wanted to blow our paychecks on. It was a great time, and nothing could distract me from what I wanted to accomplish.

  During one of my shifts, a guy walked in. He was handsome with dark features. About five feet eleven. Well groomed. Broad smile. “Excuse me, miss,” he said. I turned, thinking he was ready to be rung up. “May I ask your name?”

  I blushed and smiled. “It’s Diane,” I said.

  “I’d love to get your number,” he said coolly. I blushed harder. When I didn’t answer, he reached into his jacket pocket and took out a pen and paper. “Would that be okay?” he asked. I nodded, grinned, and gave him my digits. “My name is Brian, by the way,” he told me. He didn’t take his eyes off me.

  So much for not being distracted by boys. That weekend, Brian took me out for a nice dinner. And then a second one the Friday after. And then a third the next week. Dating was fairly new for me. The handful of times I’d gone out in high school, the dude and I would chill with a group at the movies or McDonald’s. This was different. Brian was already out of college and had a real job. He’d call ahead to get on my calendar, choose a restaurant, swing by my dorm to pick me up, and then wine and dine me. I soaked up the attention. I also loved the freedom of not having to tell anyone who I was with or where I was going. We began seeing each other almost every weekend, and within a couple of months, we were chillin’. I felt like a real grown-up.

  * * *

  One afternoon, my friend Jemma came into my dorm room, energetic as always and holding a brochure. It was a study abroad application. “Pack your bags,” she said in her best British accent. “We’re going to London!” I’d heard about the program earlier, and although studying abroad was one of those things I’d dreamt about, I didn’t let myself get too excited. “Jemma, I can’t go,” I told her. “I’m broke as a joke! I can’t go sip tea with you and the Queen.” I then turned back to my studies. But being the can-do, resourceful person that Jemma is, she completely ignored my whining and pessimistic attitude and said, “It has a great international relations program.” I raised an eyebrow and thought, Well, maybe, but then the flood of doubt came pouring in. How could I pay for this? This isn’t for girls like me. I paced and paced, trying to make sense of this crazy idea. Me? Noooooo, not me. I’m too poor, too brown, too unfortunate. Then again, I’d gotten this far. Why not me? I looked over at Jemma, and she had this sneaky smile on her face. “See you in London town,” she said. She then handed me my application—which she’d already filled out for me. Not long after, I got the news: I was going to the United Kingdom. Jemma and a few of my other friends got in, too.

  The Westminster campus of Regent’s University London, my college’s partner school, could’ve been yanked off the set of Downton Abbey. Old brick buildings around a grassy quad. Cobblestone walkways. Sycamores displaying autumn’s red-golden leaves. Adrienne, Jemma, and I shared a decked-out suite with a balcony overlooking a picturesque courtyard while Paula was in her own room on the second floor.

  If I had been underground in Boston, I became a friggin’ MI6 agent in London. I’d only shared my story with Adrienne. One night when I was being particularly difficult to deal with, she said, “What is your deal?” So I spilled the beans. “Oh, it all makes sense now,” she said. “What?” I asked. She just hugged me and told me I was safe. From then on, I didn’t tell another soul about my background.

  �
�Where do your parents live?” some people would ask me. “Oh, they passed away,” I said. Other times, I claimed that my mother and father had returned to Colombia to run their own business. “They’re retired,” I explained. I had so many different tales going around that Adrienne was like, “You’d better keep your lies straight. You’re losing your shit out there. Pull yourself together. cap’tn! Arrr.” The way I saw it, this time in London was my opportunity to become someone else, to take on an identity in a plot of my own creation. If I’d revealed my tragic past, others would’ve pitied me—and I was so over pity. What I wanted was to be normal. I now get it that normal is relative, and even the person who appears so together is dealing with something. Así es la vida.

  During my entire time away, I talked to Mami and Papi only a few times. In one of those calls, Mami dropped some news. “I’m moving to Madrid,” she said. I gulped. Madrid? Why? “I need to start over somewhere new,” she said, as if she’d read my mind. Years ago in the seventies, my mother’s brother had relocated to Spain to pursue his dream as a bullfighter. Even though jobs were scarce in Madrid, there was still more opportunity than Colombia had to offer. “That’s nice. Mami,” I said. Wow. I didn’t have much to say because I was stunned. Also, I was so immersed in college life that I’d really ignored the fact that my parents were still living their own lives without me. No time to be sad, I told myself. You’ve gotta keep it moving. “Good Mami, that’s great,” I said. I didn’t ask whether she’d be there before I left the region. I was too focused on pretending I wasn’t her daughter, acting as if the life we’d shared hadn’t existed—and that she was retired and/or deceased.

  Even with all this pretending, I still managed to fulfill my duties as a responsible college student. My time in London was amazing, an experience I thought a girl like me would never have. I loved my classes and was thriving in a foreign land where people had accents! On breaks and on weekends I traveled with my gals all over Europe, seeing things I hadn’t imagined in my wildest dreams. I was living on bread, tomato, crisps, but my God, it was a dream. The worst thing I could’ve done would have been to deny myself the opportunity because of fear or feeling like I didn’t deserve it. It was one of those times when I really saw the power of having a dream and making it come true, no matter the obstacles. The only thing I would’ve changed would have been to have lived that dream as myself, and not someone else.

  I returned to the States, but not to Regis right away. I’d enjoyed my experience abroad so much that I decided to spend the spring semester in the field, this time at American University in Washington, DC—another of my college’s partner schools. Ahead of my program, I spent the holidays with Brian in Boston. When I told him about DC, he wasn’t too keen.

  Why can’t you go next year?” he shouted. “You’ve already been away so long!”

  “I don’t want to go next year,” I shot back. “And why are you flipping out? I’ll be in DC, not Europe. We can take the train to see each other.”

  The argument certainly clouded my decision and made DC a little gloomier than I’d hoped. In retrospect, I should have nipped that shit in the bud and kicked him to the curb. But alas, the heart wants what it doesn’t need sometimes. I realize this wasn’t the healthiest of relationships, but fuck—it’s not like I had anything else super-important going on, right?

  Despite Brian’s objections, I set off for my program in the nation’s capital. I’d chosen foreign policy as my concentration (at this point, I was thinking about a career as a diplomat). “Why aren’t you doing American policy?” Adrienne asked me. She knew I preferred debating this country’s social issues. As it turns out, my friend was right. The topics we discussed in class, though important, put me to sleep. US-China relations. Free-trade agreements. United Nations resolutions. Snore.

  College is a chance to explore, but even by the middle of my junior year, I was no closer to figuring out my path. I wanted to serve others and to do work that had meaning. That I knew. What I didn’t know is how to end up there. I had no one saying, “Hey, Diane, what are you going to do with this degree?” I was just drifting—and praying the wind would carry me in the right direction.

  * * *

  My time in DC was pure misery. A month into my coursework, my financial aid collapsed. I discovered (too late) that my federal student loans couldn’t be transferred to cover my costs at American. In desperation, I applied for private loans with high interest rates. I put my signature on agreements I had no business signing, but it was the only way forward that I could see. Those loans didn’t come through immediately, so in place of studying, I was agonizing over whether I’d be booted out on my behind. I got called into the financial aid office on several occasions. Things got so tense, in fact, that I considered quitting altogether and booking a one-way flight to Colombia. But I knew that wasn’t an answer; you can’t run away from your problems. College gave me a shot at a future.

  I fell into a depression. I’m not referring to a little case of the blues. I’m talking about a dark, heavy fog that kept me in bed for days at a time. I skipped classes. I stopped socializing. My appetite disappeared and I dropped twenty pounds. From Boston, Adrienne checked on me. “Diane, what’s up?” she’d call and ask. “I haven’t heard from you. You okay?” I put on a brave voice and reassured her I was fine so I could get her off the line. The pain, for me, was beyond emotional; it was physical. I literally felt as if I was about to burst. My whole body ached.

  I’d been low before but never this low. Which is why I decided the meds were contributing to my mood. So without consulting a doctor, I stopped taking the pills—and the impact on my grades was immediate and disastrous. In a month, I went from excelling to nearly flunking out. Things unraveled further from there.

  The combination of everything—my disastrous loan situation, my plummeting grades, my souring relationship—overwhelmed me. I had a lot riding on this grand plan to make it through school, land a job, and bring my parents back here. None of it was falling into place. I should go back to Regis, I kept thinking after I realized the financial hot mess I was in. Where did I go wrong? My life was a big unfinished project, one I feared I’d never complete. I was disappointed in my choices. How could a school year that began on such an amazing high in London end up in the ditch?

  When that attorney duped my father out of his life savings, Papi wanted to give up. That is exactly what I wanted to do. I was so burdened and exhausted that I hardly had the will to carry on.

  At the close of the semester, I dragged myself back to Boston and moved in with Brian. Again. I knew the relationship wasn’t the smartest choice, but it was all that I knew. I had come to rely on him.

  Depression can take various forms, and mine showed up in new ways that summer and into the following fall. I loved to P.A.R.T.Y., and I went out a lot with the girls from work. I’d crawl home drunk at three a.m., and then awaken the following afternoon, dizzy and dry mouthed. I didn’t give a rip about missing class. Several times, I got so wasted that I passed out, and my friends had to lift me into a cab and escort me to the house. Even now, years later, there are periods of that time that I cannot recall because I blacked out.

  I pushed everyone away. “Please call me!” Gabriela pleaded on my voice mail. “Please tell me you’re okay.” Sabrina, Eva, Amelia, and my aunt and uncle in New Jersey all rang as well, but I wouldn’t call back. Adrienne once came by my apartment and banged on the door. “Hey, Diane!” she yelled out. “Are you in there?” I ignored her. I had no desire whatsoever to discuss what was happening to me or to reveal the tightrope I was on. So I tuned out my loved ones, and the more I rejected their help, the more isolated I became.

  And the more I drank and socialized. I didn’t simply want to take the edge off; I wanted to be numb. In most weeks, I couldn’t have told you whether it was a Monday or a Thursday. Every day felt the same—like one I’d rather sleep through. It was wash, rinse, repeat: Depression. Drunken revelry. Fighting with Brian. Shame about my beh
avior. And then always—always—another round of liquid anesthesia.

  * * *

  “Diane?”

  My eyes fluttered open. Brian stood at my hospital bed, looking down over me. Around us was a blue curtain, one of those fabric partitions used to separate one patient from the next. My head throbbed. The room was blurry. I looked down to notice that my forearms were wrapped tightly in white bandages. A monitor at my left tracked my heartbeat. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.

  “What happened?” I muttered. “Where am I?”

  Brian pressed his lips together. “You tried to hurt yourself again,” he said. He nodded toward my arms. I peered at them and then back at him. “You know,” he whispered, leaning in close to my ear, “You cut yourself.”

  The cutting. The first time I’d hurt myself was in DC. That morning, I’d received the horrible news about my loans, and by that evening I was inconsolable. I uncorked some Merlot, sat on the floor in the middle of my room, and drank a glass at a time until the bottle was empty. For the life of me, I could not understand what I was feeling. I was uncomfortable, almost to the point of wanting to get out of my skin. I was literally trying to pull myself out of myself. I rolled around, slapped myself, pulled my hair, and dug my nails into my skin. I was exhausted and panicked. I thought, Do I have to just sit here and feel all this shit? Why? I looked in the mirror and cried out for my mother. “Ma! Mama! Where are you? Please—Mama, Papa!” Like a child, I wrapped my arms around my knees and rocked my body back and forth, as if doing so would soothe my distress. It didn’t. And in an instant I wish I could reverse, I grabbed the wine corkscrew from a table nearby, pointed its sharp tip into my arm, and ripped across my skin. As I saw the blood drip down my arm, my eyes widened. I got up and raced for a towel. What the hell is wrong with you? I thought. I did eventually pull it together, and after that episode, I promised myself I’d never do that again. It frightened me.

  And yet it also brought a strange relief. For a brief moment, the sharp physical pain blunted all other anguish—a kind of temporary interruption to my despair. It also put me in control. At the time, I saw myself as powerless. Although cutting did not offer a solution to my problems, I used it as a way to calm myself down when I got out of control. With the slight turn of my hand, in the privacy of my home, I could decide how I wanted to feel. I was in charge. I was holding the weapon.