I was born in the Dominican Republic. My parents divorced when I was a year old, and they both came to the United States independently of each other. I was left in the care of my maternal grandparents.
When I was 6, my mother came back to get me after completing my paperwork and establishing herself in the Bronx, New York. In my hyperthymesia mind, I remember her exactly as I saw her for the first time: wearing a blue, azure suit, a white shirt, black heels, and dark brown mid-length hair curled with a bold red lip. She also had a son with her, my new brother, and a few days later, I met my first stepfather.
I didn’t want to live in the US.
I felt like I was in the movies
I don’t remember my first plane ride. Before we left for the airport, I ran out of the house and tried to climb the avocado tree in the backyard with no success. I then hid under my bed, but the neighbors lifted it, so I rushed into my grandmother’s arms. My mother tore me from her arms, and we got into a car, where I watched her fade away.
The following day, I woke up in my new city to the sounds of “Super Cacu, DESPIERTA!” — the morning radio program my new family listened to. The weather was cold, and I gasped when I saw shaved ice falling from the sky. I had only seen that in the movie “La Blanca Navidad.” I thought I was in a movie, too; after all, if it happened on the screen and around me, they were extensions of each other.
I didn’t understand people
Everything felt strange to me. I couldn’t understand what the people around me were saying. When I asked my mother what it was, she told me, “It’s In-glishhh.” It sounded like crumpling paper to my child’s ears. On my first day of public school, I was greeted by a lovely Black woman with short, light brown hair and hazel eyes, wearing a beige pantsuit and black ballerina flats. “Welcome to your first day in America,” she said with a bright smile.
I was placed in an ESL (English as a Second Language) class. When my stepfather heard about it, he was angry because he felt I’d never learn how to speak the language properly. I was then transferred to an English class, where all my classmates laughed at me for not talking and for always sitting in the back.
A year later, I spoke fluently and even won the spelling bee.
I was bullied at school
During this time, my mother divorced, remarried, and I became obsessed with watching black-and-white TV shows on the Disney Channel. My favorites included “Ozzie and Harriet,” “Father Knows Best,” “Leave It to Beaver,” and especially “The Patty Duke Show”—that’s when I first heard the British pronunciation of the word “literary,” which I still use to this day.
Their everyday, wholesome, predictable family lives fascinated me, and I began to practice phrases like “Dare I say,” “Heavens no,” and “I fancy that.” When my neighbors heard me say these things, they would ask what I was saying. I always told them it was “American British.” It wasn’t until high school that I learned it was called the Transatlantic Accent.
My classmates’ daily routine of laughing at me escalated to pushing and shoving because I “talked like a white boy.” I always fought back, but it didn’t stop until I was enrolled in Catholic School, Saint Peter and Paul, in the Bronx, just one block away from my mother’s and stepfather’s business, a garment factory.
It happened again when we moved to the Dominican Republic
My life took another turn at the age of 11 when my parents decided to move to the Dominican Republic to expand their garment manufacturing business. There, I experienced the Spanish version of my English experience, but at an older age. In my new school, I was made fun of because I spoke the native language like a “gringo.” Once again, things changed for me when my mother placed me in a private bilingual school.
At 16, we moved back to New York City, and I selected the High School of Fashion Industries in Manhattan. I developed a love for reading when I had to do a book report about “The Crucible,” by Arthur Miller. Books became my best friends for life.
My college experience at FIT was a breeze. It focused not on race, color, or geography, but on skills and determination. It boiled down to education and who you wanted to be, adjusting according to your environment.
To this day, I can speak in every kind of vernacular, whether I’m in the South Bronx, California, the South, or Europe. I am who I am. However, every time I speak, even though it started as an affectation, it is genuinely me, an immigrant.
We assimilate without denying or eliminating our roots, creating a hybrid persona that represents us all as one.
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