Latina is Who I AM
Adriana Perla
When I was seven years old, it was a group of girls who waited for me by the bathrooms. They were white, had the newest twinkle toe light up shoes and had each other. They laughed easily, whispered loudly enough for me to hear and watched me with the attention that made me sick to my stomach. Sometimes they blocked the doorway. Other times they followed me inside and shoved me into a stall, flushing the toilet again and again, giving me “flushies” while they laughed. I learned quickly to avoid the bathroom when they were nearby, even at the young age of seven my legs ached from holding it all day. They took my lunch, too. They opened it, picked at the food my abuela woke up early to make for me and threw it away while making faces. I would starve all day because even when I tried picking up “American” food, those girls would say that’s not the food that I should eat. One of them told me my parents would be sent back to “Mexico” and killed, like she was repeating something an adult told her to say. It probably felt like words to her but for me I understood what deportation meant. I understood it because letters of it would live in our mailbox. At seven years old, I didn’t call this bullying. I thought it was just how things were because I wasn’t like them.
My Salvadorian abuela raised me. My mom was seventeen when she had me and had to work. She would always be tired and rushing back and forth to provide for me and my older brother. My dad was deported when I was younger, his absence greatly affected my mom. My abuela filled the space he left. She cooked, prayed, and loved me. She filled the absence of my parents. My abuela’s hands always smelled like masa and Vicks Vaporub. She would press her palm against my cheek before school and say, “Mija, acuerdate quien eres.” Home was always loud and vibrant, always blasting cumbia and the beautiful language Spanish between all 14 members of the family that consists of my tios, tias, and primos. Home was where I felt safe and happy. School was where I learned I was different and scared.
The girls never yelled. They didn’t need to because their cruelty lived in their looks and in confidence that they would hurt me and walk away untouched. Teachers were aware, but nothing ever changed. No one asked me what it felt like to be afraid of using the bathroom. No one asked why I stopped bringing lunch from home. What I understand now is what I could not back then, which is that racism doesn’t always look like shouting or violence. Sometimes it looks like social power. Like exclusion. Like children who already know they will be believed over you.
Being Latina meant growing up at a young age. It meant learning that my family story of my young mom, deported father, and my abuela raising me was something other people felt entitled to judge. It meant learning that shame could be taught through repetition. I didn’t tell my abuela what was happening. She already carried enough. She had stepped into a role she never expected, raising me while having to hold the family together. I didn’t want to add my pain to hers. So I learned to stay quiet. I learned to disappear when I needed to. At school, I became careful. I stopped drawing attention to myself. I watched rooms before entering them and memorized where the girls usually stood. I didn’t yet have words like racism to understand, I only knew that some people were allowed to hurt others without consequences. Looking back now, I don’t see a weak child. I see a child forced to grow alert too early. I see how being Latina became connected to vigilance and to self protection. Those habits didn’t come from nowhere, they were shaped by fear.
These memories still haunt me. Not as constant pain, but as instinct. I feel them when I enter unfamiliar spaces. When I hesitate before speaking. When I prepare myself for judgement before it happens. That awareness was learned at 7 years old. But haunting can also mean endurance. Memory that refuses to disappear. Those girls taught me something without meaning to which was that cruelty is learned but so is resistance. That survival doesn’t always look loud or brave but sometimes it looks like making it through the day. The older I got, I watched the women around me like my abuela, my mom, my tias live under the same pressures and still stand tall. I saw older Latina women navigate fear without letting it eat at their pride. They opened mail with shaking hands and steady faces. They worked their asses off, laughed despite all the pain and, most of all, let it be known that Latina is who they were. Being Latina is not just something I am. It is something I inherited. It was my abuela at the kitchen table with official papers spread out before her. My mom is going back to school and now I am a first-generation college student. A lineage of women who taught me that survival does not require silence. What I know now is what I couldn’t then, and that is that none of the cruelty defined me. The girls at school were never the whole story. The strong Latina women at home were. I carry those memories with me still. But now, I carry them with intention and pride. Being Latina means surviving what was meant to break you and learning from the women before you. If I could sit beside that little girl in the bathroom stall, I would wipe her tears and tell her that she does not have to disappear to survive. I would tell her one day she will speak about this without fear. She will be in uncomfortable spaces making a difference and breaking stereotypes. That the girls in light up shoes will become distant shadows, but her abuela’s strength and prayers would live in her bones forever.