There’s a specific dread that comes from not knowing if the words in your head are the right ones in that language.
I lived inside that fear, not of a school test, but of speaking in class and having the wrong language come out, or the right one come out wrong.
I was born in the Dominican Republic. My parents divorced when I was 1, and left for the US, independent of each other, while I stayed behind in my maternal grandparents’ care. At 6, my mother came back for me, remarried, with a new baby, and my legal documents. She’d divorce again, and with her third husband, she started a clothing manufacturing business that brought us back to the…
