Since Elena hated planes, as soon as we got to Mexico City, she decided that we would take a bus to the capital of the United States. On the bus, we sat in the back; I don’t know if it was for comfort or because our complexion placed us there. My mother told me that Jews were also not allowed to enter certain first-class restaurants or hotels. “In the United States,” she said, “they don’t consider us white.”
Arriving in the United States and going from being seen as white to now being “colored,” would be a reve-lation. In some restaurants, I saw the sign: “No colored people or Jews allowed.”
We finally arrived in the capital of the United States, where my sister was studying and had an apartment near Dupont Circle, not far from the White House.
By then, Derek’s marriage was in trouble, and Elena wanted to know what she could do to save it.
Before returning to Costa Rica, my mother had a conversation with her daughter. No matter how hard she tried to dissuade her, Derek was determined to get a divorce. Elena told me she was going back home because she was “fed up with the melodrama,” but she would leave me alone in the United States to visit New York. However, before she left, she gave me a mission.
She told me that my sister had spoken to her about a girlfriend we would meet in that city and asked me to tell her about it when she returned because “the relationship was not convenient.” This would be her new lover, but my mother didn’t even want to admit it.