Something odd happens with the birth of the boy: he comes out white. Like pasty white. Like, at-home-in-a-backwoods-bar-in-Nebraska white. He looks nothing like the mother. The mother is brown. The mother is from Panama. She knew there was a chance of this. But this white? He looks even whiter than his father, and he’s from Stickney, South Dakota!
Blanquito, the mother nicknames him, and the rest of the family follows suit. Little white boy. It’s a harmless nickname, and the more the family plays into it, the more they riff off the incongruent experiences that characterize the boy’s life. All of the mother’s cultural customs, ways of being, mannerisms—they’re taught to someone who looks nothing like anyone from Panama. Blanquito loves his arroz con pollo! they say when he devours his mother’s dishes. Blanquito loves his guayabera! they say, imagining a world in which they don another boy from the Midwest with the same traditional Panamanian shirt.
When the mother plays a game of hormiguita, tickling two fingers up the boy’s arm, teasing about the ant crawling up toward his armpit, she falls out of the scene. She can’t match up this experience—one she’s lived dozens of other times when playing with the baby boys of her family in Santiago, Chitré, Penonome—with the conditions of the moment. She pauses for a second, examining her own burnished skin against the boy’s pale arm. The boy laughs and laughs, an innocent giggle, until he, too, starts to notice her distance, giving her a look that seems to ask did I do something wrong?
As the time arrives for Blanquito to enter the social fray and start first grade, the mother wonders to whom he’ll attach. At first, he plays with a few white boys from the grade, Ryan and Brendan, Irish kids. Blanquito looks at home with them. The mother, the idea of this boy coming from her still a latent mystery in the back of her mind, feels a tinge of disappointment—not because he’s floating off, starting a path that will inevitably end with his independence from her. For that, she’s happy. No, she had wondered if he might feel some pull to the other Latino kids, even if they’re not Panamanian—there are a lot of Puerto Rican and Dominican boys in their neck of upstate New York—and now wonders if there’s something about them that repels him. The thought arises and fades as fast: he’s just a boy, she thinks. He can’t interpret these types of things.
The thought arises and fades as fast…until it doesn’t. Until it begins to stick in her everyday inner monologue. Until it begins to generate its own subcategory of thoughts that activates her anxiety—is there something about his home life, about her, that he doesn’t like? The closer he gets to Brendan, Ryan, the more she wonders. Can I go to Ryan’s? Can I go to Brendan’s? He asks every day for a playdate. Ryan says they eat mashed potatoes at home. Can we eat mashed potatoes? He asks about things he notes from their households. Brendan’s family has a shield. Do we have a shield? The father laughs at this—shares some vague anecdote about some great-grandfather possibly being Irish—while the mother pulls further inward.
Finally, one day, the opportunity arises for her to course correct. All parents are called to contribute to a potluck for the last day of third grade. Blanquito asks the mother if she can make mashed potatoes, chicken nuggets, mac n’cheese—foods he’s asked about for years since befriending Ryan and Brendan. But no, she pushes back with a gentle smile, I have to make our food, right? He seems puzzled. Like, arroz con pollo? Yes, she says. This is her chance to make him proud of their culture. She envisions a scenario where her food steals the stage, upsetting all the bland turkey sandwiches and flavorless pieces of white bread. She envisions a scenario in which all the other moms and little boys and little girls go up to her plate, sense the richness of her culture, the deep history of Panama and its mixing of Caribbean, indigenous, Spanish, and Jamaican heritages, and ooh and ahh their way into a bite, until the layered treasure of each morsel sweeps them into a phase opposite that of Blanquito—they’ll start asking their parents for Panamanian food! They’ll bug their parents about how they can be more like Blanquito!
When the day comes, the mother is surprised by how nervous she is. She has to take each step toward the school in deep, paced breaths, nervous that she’ll twitch her way into dropping a platter. Worse, a new anxiety appears, one that she hadn’t considered before: what if no one likes her food? But as she thinks this, she finds some footing in her own spiraling, because the thought is absurd. No way, she echoes to herself. How can anyone not like this food? How can anyone not enjoy the delicious melding of flavors in arroz con pollo? How can anyone take a bite out of an empanada, filled with ground beef flavored from her special sazon, and not come away with a smile?
Yet when she arrives at the common area between the joint classrooms for third grade, the anxiety has grown into an all-encompassing gong that sounds out over and over in her body. She can barely remember to smile and wave to the other moms. When one of the teachers asks who her child is, she panics for a moment, thinking her little boy isn’t around. But there he is, playing peacefully on the carpet with Ryan and Brendan. When she points to him, the teacher knits her brow and double takes.
The mother sets her platters down on the table. Blanquito was right—the other mothers have brought mac n’ cheese, chicken tenders, mashed potatoes. She checks her watch. Only ten minutes, then another ten, give or take, for everyone to take their food, and then this will be over, everyone will love her dish, they’ll cheer for her, they’ll ask her about her recipes, they’ll take an interest in Panama, even, asking where is that? What a beautiful cuisine, no? Only ten minutes, she thinks, pushing breaths deeper and deeper into her core so that she can still herself—only ten minutes until little Blanquito can see just how beautiful his country is. Just how beautiful all these things are that belong to him.
When the teachers announce the start of the potluck, the children flock to the mac n’ cheese, chicken tenders, mashed potatoes. Blanquito nears his mother’s food, glancing back with an innocent expression, before skipping over it. A few other children stop at the empanadas and the carimañolas, which are fried and tan, at least. No one tries the arroz con pollo.
Finally, Ryan and Brendan step their way up to the table. They both look at each other, then shrug, placing an empanada and carimañola on each of their plates. When they look at the arroz con pollo, they make twisted faces, and then turn back to Blanquito, who watches from a distance.
What is this? they ask. This looks weird.
Oh, Blanquito says. The mother tries hard not to pool her focus on him and his friends, but she can tell that he can tell that she’s listening, watching from the side of her eye. That’s something that my mom made. It’s pretty good.
The next moment lives in the mother’s mind for the rest of her life.
Ryan scoops a bit onto his plate. He nears a fork to the rice and takes the tiniest of bites. He chews for a bit, then immediately scowls, wincing and exploding in discomfort. He pulses out the food and reaches for his tongue, scratching at it with the other hand.
You eat this? he says. This is disgusting. Why are there so many vegetables? What is that green thing? Where is the soy sauce? This is like Chinese food, right? Rice? This is weird.
Blanquito has already retreated to another corner of the room by his desk. The mother starts an inward descent, shuffling through dark thought after dark thought, wondering how she could have ever exposed this much of their culture to other people, when two other children approach the table. They were last in line. They’re two little brown boys.
Look! one says, skipping the rest of the food and heading straight for the empanadas and carimañolas. Pastelillos!
The other elbows him. They’re called pa’telitos, he says. A Puerto Rican and Dominican boy. Joyfully, they take the arroz con pollo, too. They skip the other foods. They sit by Blanquito. Blanquito notices how they dig into the food. The mother wonders later if this is the moment when their friendship started.
The mother watches as Blanquito grows with the Latino boys in the school. He comes home asking for empanadas. Later, as a pre-teen, he replays reggaeton over and over and over, loading a Daddy Yankee CD into the home stereo system. The father is perplexed. You’re turning into a goddamn Panamanian! he says with a lighthearted tone. The father shrugs when the mother asks if he wants more of him represented in Blanquito. He says he just wants Blanquito to be happy. He doesn’t have the same sense of culture that feels distilled, localized like that of the mother—sure, he says, there are foods he ate growing up, memories of his father closing his eyes after a long day of work in the body shop, nodding off to Patsy Cline; but the spirit he wants to maintain is that of hard work, dedication, determination. He doesn’t want the boy to have to eat shit on a fuckin’ shingle.
Before long, the boy is in his teenage years, and the question of college comes up. The mother and father never had the luxury of choosing schools or hand-picking opportunities for him. But now, the mother begins to realize, the boy can make something of himself depending on where he goes to college, and America feels different in this way—the range of opportunities is far greater than the two or three “good” schools in Panama, and these schools may even provide serious scholarships. This, paired with the father’s GI bill, cultivates a small nugget of hope in the mother. For the first time, she wants her son to take an active role in making this world his. She signs him up for SAT prep courses, college application workshops, and meetings with his guidance counselor. He’s unusually bright—acing classes despite not trying hard and feigning interest—and the mother knows she has to fight the inertia that might otherwise funnel him into the local community college.
The mother senses his disappointment at having to spend more time with the college prep materials than with his friends. She’s going crazy with it, she overhears him say one day. I know, it’s too much, I don’t even want to go to a school far away. When she asks him what his friends plan to do, she tries to hold back judgement. One of Blanquito’s white friends, John, has a clear path in front of him: he’s going to enter the union his father is in, driving dump trucks in the city. Blanquito’s Latino friends vary in their goals: some are going to local SUNYs, one wants to continue pursuing his rap career. When she asks him if anyone has thought of applying to elite, private schools—things she’s Googled, schools in the Ivy League, schools like Cornell—he looks at her with a confused expression.
Why would we apply to those schools? Blanquito asks. They’re not for us. The mother knows that he hasn’t applied himself in the way a “perfect” student might, preferring skateboarding and basketball to the standard extracurriculars. But he’s smart! And though she wishes he would consider a more defined path, like medicine or engineering, she encourages him to explore his dreams, no matter how lofty—even buying him a new camcorder when he cuts together an artsy montage of his friends skateboarding. Though she can’t quite trace the path he’d take in his dream of directing films, she wants him to expand above and beyond the world she has access to.
Shit, his father consoles her in bed as she vents, he has an opportunity I never had, either. That’s why I joined the army at eighteen.
One Saturday, they travel further upstate, touring Blanquito through Cornell, asking if his interests might evolve and grow and need this type of terrain to germinate. To the mother’s surprise, he absorbs himself with the show of campus, the ivy-wrapped buildings, the history. At the end of the afternoon, after they’ve eaten lunch, they wander, no destination in mind, when Blanquito sees a boy skateboarding. He’s a bit older—though not by much—and brown, with speckles of facial hair growing in the same patches where Blanquito has scruff. The mother sees the moment unfold in real time. Blanquito watches the brown boy skate. He sees the boy fall, get up with a smile, laugh it off—and then amble back to his friends, who sit on a nearby curb, cheering him on. I could definitely see myself here, Blanquito says later. That school was cool.
To their delight, Blanquito gets in—he has a few valuable experiences he writes about in his personal statement, including growing up in a multicultural household. His test scores are great. His scholarship is robust. He’s even invited to a “diverse admitted students” event. He seems surprised, if not mildly discomforted, by the news. He thought he’d be studying closer, he admits. As the summer passes, the mother asks Blanquito if he’s excited. This is supposed to be a good thing, after all! Blanquito reassures her: he’s ready. He’s been wanting this. I just hope there are, like, cool people there, he says, recalling the moment with the skater. I do, too, the mother thinks.
But as the first two years of college pass, the mother notes that Blanquito falls into a muted, slow rhythm, coming home on weekends tired and ready to sleep through half the day. He doesn’t seem particularly enthused by college. It’s fine, he always says, offering a meek smile. She notes how he lights up when his old friends are around, how a weight drops off him when he uses his old lingo and slang. His spring breaks involve waking up at noon, eating cereal at 1PM, playing video games late into the night; his summer breaks entail new film and sketch comedy ideas with his friends. He doesn’t speak down on the college experience, but he never seems to catch the unique thrill of this phase of life.
By his third year, Blanquito begins repeating several names in stories he recounts, and the mother senses him gaining community. The boy has found new vigor in his studies, committing to a Media Studies major and joining the filmmaking club. Even so, the mother can’t help but ask in the middle of the year: who do you spend time with? She figures the stakes are low—he only has a year and change left. To this, he nods his head, almost indignant. Don’t you remember? Joe? Eric? The friends aren’t the same as his hometown friends, but they’re into the same artistic films, and they’re fun enough to hang out with. He says this as if he’s acquiescing to friendship. She can sense that he can sense her dissatisfaction with this answer. He shrugs. I just realized that I’m not going to find other Hispanic friends. I never found that skater kid again. I’m not going to find people who like the Knicks and Nas or who go back through the old Mas Flow tapes. It’s no big deal.
The mother feels the shock of discovering a deep secret, or worse, an obvious reality, like when she brought arroz con pollo to Blanquito’s third grade potluck. Of course he doesn’t fit in. Of course he’s lonely. The mother worries, but swallows her anxieties, trusting life and its ways—or, maybe, trusting Blanquito and his ways, his ability to find resolve and ignite his own flame.
On his last winter break before graduating, he comes back with a new fixation. He keeps asking things like how oppressive was the American regime in Panama when you were there? and did you know of the colonizing influence of America in re-establishing Latin American governments throughout the 1900s? She flusters at these questions, unable to match his academic curiosity with her lived experience: she bounced among houses growing up, started work at the age of seven or eight, and never knew anything but poverty. He’s been able to take more electives, he says, and now that he’s on track to graduate and has a decent GPA, he can move away from the rigid curriculum. He’s been taking classes on the history of Latin America. The more he reads, the more he asks the mother to fill him in, as if she’s been hiding this information. Why didn’t you tell me about Noriega? Why didn’t you tell me about the bombing of El Chorillo? She wants to say that she sensed this suffocating, tight-sealed horizon of Panama at the time, the understanding that staying there would only lead to more stress over limited futures, capped opportunities to grow. When she met his father, right before Noriega, she felt the love, although she can reflect at this point that the opportunity baked into his American citizenship—baked into his skin color—helped her view his qualities in a positive light. She can’t answer his questions.
How come you haven’t taken me in a while? he says finally. How come we don’t go anymore? They had visited on a more regular basis when he was younger—a time when he was too young to absorb the culture or atmosphere, instead complaining of the old TVs, sticky heat, lack of opportunities to play. He hated how the adults would gather in a living room and talk for hours. That’s so boring, he would say. Panama is boring, Panama is hot, stuffy, they don’t have cool TVs, video game stores, air conditioning. She wants to dig back into this bag of aching memories as a way of rebuking him, but stops herself, instead relying on the truth: we haven’t had the money, she says. And… But she can’t utter the next line that comes to her mind. The line that says and I’m not really interested and don’t think you should be, either. We have a new life here.
I want to go when I graduate, he says. What do you think? What do you think Dad will say? He’s full of new curiosity and verve for his country. The mother finds herself coming up with excuses and reasons not to go. She argues with herself for a moment, trying to locate the source of her unease, before nodding her head, saying she’ll check with the father. But she knows what she’ll do, even though she doesn’t understand why: she’ll frame the ask to the father as a naïve, unproductive one; she’ll say that even she doesn’t want to entertain the request, instead hoping to shore up money to support Blanquito after college. The father says nothing. Doesn’t put up a fight. Makes sense, he says. She wonders if he thinks Blanquito’s had his fill of Latinidad—if any more will border on being embarrassing, especially since Blanquito has grown more into his father’s image, looking even more like a farmer from South Dakota. This type of person? Going to Panama? Rolling his r’s as he tours the Museum of the Canal, or sporting a sombrero pinta’o, or inhaling a plate of arroz con pollo?
When she goes to tell him on the last day of winter break, she finds herself awaiting his bombastic reaction, a clawing need to see Panama, and even finds herself willing him to push back. But instead, he shrugs, saying he understands. He’s thankful enough to his parents for supporting him through college. He worked several jobs to afford the times out with friends, infrequent lunches, but his parents paid rent and books. The father’s GI bill got him through in the first place. He seems to have a greater sense of the weight of a dollar after having spent so much time near ultra-rich scions and heiresses.
When he graduates, he sings of the open world, the dreams he’s dreamed, the opportunities he envisioned in college: directing films or producing documentaries. At first, he seems on the fast track to achieving exactly this—he rings up alumni and cold calls his way into a network, gaining sympathetic ear after sympathetic ear. He relates to the mother, I’ve got people on the lookout for me. She probes Blanquito about his college friends’ futures, expecting a similar fight amongst his peers to find a path. He answers that Joe is following the same plan he always had—to work at the fund his dad manages—and Eric is going to med school to be a doctor like his mother, having already gotten into top med schools. The mother smiles at this, hoping with more desperation that one of the cold calls turns into a job opportunity for Blanquito. His own parents have little more to offer than an in at the local Walmart and a military pension split three ways.
Then, one day, it happens—Blanquito gets the call. He has to show up on set the next day at five in the morning. He’s going to be a PA! Production Assistant! She prepares a breakfast for him ahead of time, something he can warm up at three in the morning, and tells him and the father to go to sleep early so that they’ll be able to wake up. The father agrees to drive him down to Port Authority—not too far that the boy can’t walk to set, but not too close that he’s caught getting a lift from daddy.
That day, the mother does nothing else but worry. She does nothing else but stare at her phone, awaiting a text or call. Finally, at ten o’clock, he calls. He’s done. He had to work overtime. He has a rush of energy, excitement in his voice. The father picks him up from the local bus stop. He comes in at midnight the next day and can barely contain himself: he tells stories of leading talent to set, fetching coffees for producers, setting up C-stands.
It was great, he says. I messed up a lot. But it was great.
That was the start, the mom thinks in the coming years. That was the test. Of whether or not he could make it. Of whether or not he had the resolve. Because he does have the resolve. He keeps booking gigs—circulating his dreams of producing, directing—and his involvement in film helps him develop contacts. But as he grows and gains more experience in the industry, he falters in an impossibly consistent manner, always nearing the next step toward his dream of directing before falling back to another PA gig. He books one gig as a production coordinator and then, in the next gig, returns to fetching coffees for producers—which wouldn’t be an issue if the boy hadn’t shot out of the cannon of college having permitted himself to hope.
As the years pass and he reaches his mid-twenties, he can’t convert the initial excitement of PA’ing into stable footing. He shares with his mother that he feels as if something is sticking out, serving as an invisible barrier to his attempts to move forward. He applies to jobs as a media coordinator, media assistant—anything full-time—and continues hustling his network, making new connections every week, bussing down into the city for “lunch meetings” if he’s not working on set. He moves into the city off a bet on his own future. He continues to hope that he’ll break in, he’ll get a call to review his script, or he’ll get a call to help produce someone else’s script, anything. Nothing happens.
Finally, one day, he calls his mom after an interview with a documentary film production company, telling her it couldn’t have gone better—he connected closely with the team and felt as if his production experience and passion aligned perfectly with the position. They even asked when I could start, he says, and the mother can’t help but nod from behind the phone, saying that’s good over and over, but feeling like a fish taking the bait, diving further and further into black waters.
Weeks pass. The mother doesn’t hear from Blanquito. It’s a bad sign. She would know if he had gotten the job. One Saturday, as she wonders how the topic will pass over in Blanquito’s next visit upstate, she startles at the sight of a white man walking up their driveway at their home. She still senses dread at unfamiliar faces and too-focused attention on her. She still sticks out in America, after all. Then, she shakes her head, righting herself. It’s Blanquito. Hi mom, he says when she opens the front door. Surprise visit. Needed a reset. He sucks in the fresh air of upstate nature. He hikes with his father. He sits at home with the mother, watching TV as she prepares a pot of arroz con pollo. He seems relaxed in a way that puts the mother on edge. He’s too at ease.
Everything good with work? she says one afternoon, tiptoeing into conversation. Que tal todo con el trabajo? But he has no façade this time, no buttering of his words. She remembers the words from college—it’s fine—and sinks deeper into a worst-case spiral as he shares. He’s going nowhere, he says, and will never go anywhere. He’s not worth shit. Not with what he’s doing. And all his dreams? He sets up meetings and shows he’s willing to work, betting on his brightness, his curiosity—everything that got him into the elite college in the first place—and each meeting, something doesn’t click. He doesn’t quite connect with the person. He books one gig as a coordinator and then doesn’t get a call back and has to go back to PA’ing. He interviews at a company and hears them practically offer him the job before ghosting him. This time, too, he knows what it is.
They think that because I’m Latino, being a PA is the beginning and end of my potential, he says. And to be honest? They’re right. There aren’t any Latino producers. There aren’t any Latino directors. We’re not supposed to be leaders like that. I had dreams, sure. But I can’t trick myself anymore.
The mother listens in awe. The line confirms something that she only ever considered in the earliest stages of her anxiety about his upbringing. Something about this, her brown skin, her games of hormiguita, her cooking—it does all repel him, doesn’t it?
She can’t work. She can’t fold clothes in Menswear without losing herself in this internal dialogue. At lunch, her coworkers ask her what’s wrong. It’s my son, she says. He’s having a hard time. When they pry, she assuages them, saying he’s having a hard time finding a job. Having a hard time finding himself, really. But that it’s nothing more than the typical problems from being in your twenties. Or is it? She doesn’t know what it’s like growing up in America.
After lunch, her closest coworker, Debbie, a Dominican woman, approaches her. She’s always been sharp, with a mind for a manager, though she settles for running the layaway desk.
Que está pasando? she asks the mother. Debbie’s way of peering into her heart makes her protective layers fall away. She starts sobbing, right there, outside of the lunchroom at Walmart. She sobs and sobs, covering her face, trying to wipe away tears.
It’s my son, the mother says. I thought he would have such a beautiful life here. He came out very blanquito, you know. He looks American. And yet he can’t figure it out. He doesn’t fit in. Nothing seems straightforward to him. He makes some money, yes, but he never gets ahead. He has so much promise. It doesn’t make sense. I realize I can do nothing for him. I can’t help him. I don’t understand. I don’t know what makes life hard here for him, not when he has everything I could have offered him. And now, he says it’s because of this. He says it’s because he’s Spanish, like us. He says that he’s destined to be a nobody. He says that’s what happens to our people. He says this and he seems almost happy. Now, I feel as if maybe it is my fault. It’s my fault. It’s my fault.
Debbie embraces the mother. It’s life, Doris. It’s supposed to be hard. But he’s bright, isn’t he? He went to a great school. He’s young.
The school doesn’t help, the mother says. He didn’t pick a regular major. He picked Media Studies. He works in film.
Debbie stiffens up. The mother leans away, the tears drying on her face. Are you okay? she says to Debbie. Debbie is lost in thought. Then, Debbie shakes her by the shoulders.
I can’t believe I never thought of this, Debbie says. My cousin. She grew up in New York City. She is a producer! She works in film, too! You have to have your son talk to her. She lives in the city. Tell him to go as soon as he can. I’m going to text her.
Okay, okay, the mother says, stunned.
Just one thing, though, Debbie says. My cousin… she’s kind of weird. She’s nice though. She acts blanquita in her own way. She doesn’t like admitting she’s Dominican, you know?
Mijo, the mother says when she arrives home, sitting down with purpose at Blanquito’s side. His “surprise visit” has turned into an extended vacation at this point, with more of the same every day: TV, couch, video games in his room. I have news for you. Mi compañera, la de Walmart, quiere que tu conozca a su prima. She works in media, too. She is an important woman.
Blanquito listens with a bored expression, still focused on the TV. After enough time passes, he shifts to look at her, realizing that she’s serious.
Okay mom, he says, and she senses that he does this out of respect to her more than he does out of excitement for the opportunity. I’ll do it.
She passes the contact on from Debbie; Blanquito coordinates a visit; in short time, he’s on his way to the city, bussing down for their meeting.
That day, the mother does nothing but worry. She does nothing but stare at her phone, awaiting a text or call. Finally, at six o’clock, he calls. He has a rush of energy, excitement in his voice. The father goes to pick him up from the park n’ride. Blanquito can barely contain himself: he talks of Debbie’s cousin as if she revealed some ancient wisdom. But what’s more, he says that she understood him, like really saw him. In fact, he says, when he first met her, he was stunned, because she was a small, brown woman, just like the mother, and he realized that he had learned to recognize women like her in only the narrowest of professional circumstances—working at restaurants, as maids, in Walmart—and, before he could feel any of the sadness at that reality, felt a triumph exactly because he was meeting her under different circumstances.
And she’s a boss! he says. She’s producing commercials! She’s like the line producer. She works with well-known directors.
Commercials? the mother asks. He’s always worked in film. Wants to write and direct. Wants to make an impact through an artistic vision. But this? This sounds way better, he says. He even wonders aloud how he ever got swept up in the whole romance of art and cinema.
But what’s best, he shares, is that the woman—Jay, she goes by, even though her full name is Juanita—has already referred him to other producer contacts and will help mentor him in those positions. While they met, Jay texted colleagues, saying she had a new contact they needed to know about: a production coordinator that would have a huge impact.
It’s like she shared a secret that no one wanted to tell me about, he says.
But when the mother asks what the secret is, he grows quiet.
Blanquito’s luck turns around. He moves into a bigger apartment, citing the steady stream of gigs—and, though unstated, the shift to commercials, not films. The day rate is just higher, he says when the mother asks him about the new format. What’s more, Jay has actively coached him through all of his new gigs, walking him through how to coordinate, how to ensure he earns repeat bookings from these other production supervisors, how to be, essentially. The mother can’t help but feel uneasy at Jay’s adoption of her son’s career. Why is she so invested in Blanquito making it in commercials? Why does she care? She keeps mum, though the question must occupy the boy’s mind, too, as he offers a thought of his own accord: she was surprised to see another Latino in these spaces, and, what’s more, one with my communication skills. The others, the Dominicans and Puerto Ricans I usually PA with, they’re not able to put together a good email, or stay organized. That’s why she helps me.
The mother doesn’t push any further, finding happiness in the idea that the boy is gaining momentum and taking life on his terms, for once. The subject matter of his projects—and the way he approaches them—changes as he starts mentioning brand names, client asks, creative decks, pre-pro meetings, quick check-ins, and even adopts a new way of speaking with a harsh, rigid tone to his voice. When the mother squints, she can see an inner businessman emerge. He chews out truck PAs on runs in the city, saying the client needs a specific dolly for a specific shot and that the agency will absolutely notice the difference.
He shrugs off her questions on his interest, his passion for films, his creativity. He led the student filmmakers group at one point, advocated for student films in a local film festival, and even volunteered at a major film festival in the city before his summer of unemployment. Was he still scratching that itch with his commercials?
But Blanquito can afford things for once! He feels like a real grown up now, like one of the characters from a TV show in the big city, going out with new friends he makes through his industry. He feels as if he’s on a distinct path that will lead to some sense of stability as he ages. This, he shares, was the point that he overlooked when chasing dreams, fostering artistry, imagining his name on marquees: he needed to feel grounded, first, before he could excel in anything. He echoes this so often during his infrequent trips home, whenever he’s not attending parties in the city or dodging family events by citing too much fun the night before, that the mother begins to question how little he was grounded in the first place. Had he not had stability before? His parents never made a lot of money, but they weren’t poor. No, the father theorizes, a gap appeared in his life when he attended that elite college off the back of his GI bill, earning his way into a place that was normally reserved for rich kids. That, the father says, messed up all his expectations.
But no, the mother thinks, remembering the first time she caught onto the true disparity between their skin tones while playing hormiguita, summoning a Blanquito from some twenty-nine years back: this was the first gap in his life.
As Blanquito’s career finally flourishes, the commercial coordinating gigs turning into low-level producer gigs, those producer gigs turning into low-level director gigs, he disappears completely, unable even to chime into the family group chat. Months pass into a new year, Blanquito having now worked with Jay for a while, and he celebrates his thirtieth birthday in August without a peep—not even responding to the mother’s call. When Thanksgiving rolls around, the mother sighs, conceding to the father that Blanquito has probably booked another important shoot in an international location that doesn’t celebrate Thanksgiving. But the father lowers his iPad, staring deep into the mother’s sorrowful gaze. No, he says. He’s coming. He calls up Blanquito until he answers. He chews out Blanquito. He says, You are not missing Thanksgiving for any reason, you hear me? He hangs up the phone.
The day before Thanksgiving, Blanquito arrives, smiling and in good humor like any other holiday visit. He’s wearing a checkered button-down and a Patagonia vest over top. He’s wearing slick, smart chinos with loafers and has his hair styled in an unfamiliar quaff, like something a politician might sport. His big grin and sharp, new professional way of talking—interesting thought partnership double-backed to plant a flag on client back-and-forths that might be out of scope—come from the person who looks exactly like Blanquito. But is it Blanquito?
The next day, they sit together around the dining room table, giving grace—as always—to God for the food that they’ve shared. The father has prepared American favorites: turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberry jelly. The mother has prepared Panamanian favorites: arroz con pollo, empanadas, carimañolas. They go around the table sharing updates on their lives, with the obvious mystery burning between them: what has Blanquito been up to? What has his life entailed? By this point, he’s missed their birthdays, other family gatherings, and more, though he’s apparently done well in his career. Out of the blue, last May, he shared that he was moving into a one-bedroom in Williamsburg—a leap that was exponentially larger than all of his previous evolutions. Tonight, they rehash the same news—looming retirement for the mother, who still works at Walmart, the father’s plans to fly fish the streams of the Catskills—before coming to Blanquito’s turn. He has taken none of the arroz con pollo or empanadas or carimañolas. He slurps down a rum-and-diet he made with a handle he brought. He checks his phone.
Well? the father says, finally. Aren’t you going to share, golden boy?
Golden boy? Blanquito says. Who are you referring to?
Well, the father continues. It was like asking the damn President to stop by and wave for us. Just to get you to see your own damn family. What’s been so important?
The mother might have softened her tone, or poked with a lighter stick, but she agrees with the sentiment. When Blanquito searches for her support, she holds firm, sending him back a steeled look that says you have avoided us.
You all know how hard it was for me to get off the ground, he says. And now, I’m ostracized for it?
Was that all it took? the father says, openly upset now. Was it your family that was in the way of success? So now you have to ignore your mother’s calls?
You have no idea what the fuck I’ve done to get to this point, Blanquito roars. If his father was at a five, Blanquito has maxed out at a ten already, sending his mother shuddering. All I’ve done and sacrificed to get to this point! And maybe I didn’t want to come up for this reason! Maybe I knew you’d press me! Because what the fuck do you two know?
What do we know? Didn’t we get up with you at three in the morning when you first PA’d? Didn’t I drive you down to Port Authority?
You didn’t give me what I needed, Blanquito says. You didn’t mentor me. You didn’t set me up for a career. All my other friends found stable footing. But I needed Jay’s help.
Maldita Jay, the mother finally says. She can’t take it anymore. Tu y la jefa. Que te dio algo que no supiste. Que fue? Cuál fue el secreto? What was the secret, then?
She knows she’s not actually that invested in the secret. She knows that she’s lashing out. She knows that she means to say, I miss you and I love you and want you to hold a place for us in your heart and I don’t want you to change what makes you, you, if it means being successful.
It was this, Blanquito says. She thinks he’s pointing at his white skin, but then he tugs at his vest, runs a hand through his hair. Playing the part. When I talked to Jay, I said, I don’t fit in, I don’t pass the tests, I show up and have all the confidence in the interview and don’t end up finding a way to relate to the interviewers. I’m not white enough. And she told me—that’s the game. You have to speak their language. Play by their rules. All the clients, agency producers, directors. Be into what they’re into. Talk like them. So I’ll never, ever go back to liking all that dumb, immature shit that I was into. I stopped talking to the other PAs, too. Hang with losers, stay with losers. I’m only moving forward now. No matter the cost.
A palpable silence spreads about the table.
The mother looks to the father. Nevermind that the father is white, too, and can no more relate to agency producers or directors than Blanquito. Nevermind that it seems reasonable to expect Blanquito to keep in touch with his family while playing this charade.
But that’s not who you are, the father says. You shouldn’t be ashamed of where you came from.
Where I came from? I was born here. I’m American, Dad.
And your mother? the father barks back. He’s flustered, his face wrought and red. You can’t change where she’s from.
Well guess what? Blanquito says. She’s been stuck at fucking Walmart for longer than she ever lived in Panama. Do you call that success?
The mother feels the focus pool around her. She feels their gazes. But surprisingly, she feels no ire, no sense of sharpness come to her. Instead, she feels an immense sorrow overtake her. She remembers only one image: the little boy retreating to his corner in the classroom because Ryan and Brendan rejected him.
Then, a hiccup sounds out. Blanquito has covered his face with a hand. His white, pale skin takes on a rouge. Then he bolts up from his chair.
She follows him, sitting next to his heaving body on the bed. She pets his arm the same way she might have comforted her three-year old boy. I’m sorry, he says over and over and over. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
She thinks of a question he asked a long time ago. She thinks of a place almost as foreign to her as it is to him. She thinks of a city with booming buses, upturned straw hats, culantro growing in the front yard, and people—family, even—who look and feel like Blanquito, even if he’s five shades lighter. She thinks of a place that she’s avoided for so long, she’s erased it from Blanquito’s imagination.
She thinks of this place, growing in shame, and says the words aloud.
It’s time.
