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(3 of 12)

I have always been afraid of what the world could do.

Fear is a learned thing like talking or walking or playing the chords of a piano; I was taught to recognize evil and expect it. My mother made me fluent in fear the same way she made me fluent in Spanish, by speaking it daily.

“Cuidado, Jessica, be careful, Jessica.” Cuidado when I played, cuidado when I ran, cuidado when I climbed. I’d heard the word so many times that when I was still too young to know what I was called, I wondered if cuidado might be my name.

Mamí watched me without blinking, always thinking one step ahead. I wondered what had happened to her that she feared might happen to me.