Dear Daughters,

One summer I interned at a large company that made chemicals into different sweet shapes of cartoon characters, called them fruit snacks, and told parents they were healthy. I had beaten out many people for the job because I said things they wanted to hear. Saying things others want to hear is easy for an immigrant’s child because, for an immigrant’s child, language is theater. We are always performing.

That summer, I left behind a boyfriend and packed a few suitcases to make my way to a new city. That boyfriend liked telling stories so that others loved him more. In this way, we were a perfect match. His favorite one was about his basketball team making it to the NCAA finals. That boyfriend glowed like only the wounded could. He was always moving. He was a forward. In hindsight, I dated him because he seemed to be everything I wanted to be. White, athletic, popular.

I found a nice apartment but felt unhoused. I rented a small car but felt like I was standing still. I tried to inherit the meadows but the meadows were fenced in. I remember an older man on the project team who said impatiently, Just make the decision and stop asking us what we think. I had chalk in my throat most days. Back then, I thought other people made decisions, that other people led teams.

Once when my boyfriend came to visit, we watched The Phantom of the Opera. He fell asleep a few times. I thought about what new chemicals we could make out of his breathing the next day. In my dream that night, I was wearing the Phantom’s white mask.

My hands tapped on spreadsheets that calculated how many bags of snacks we could sell. I was supposed to put small numbers into rectangular boxes. Instead, I sorted clouds. Averaged countries. Tried to divide loneliness. Sometimes at night, with a persistent moon, I could see the numbers beneath my skin.

I followed the other interns to happy hours, to meetings, but everything remained interior. I couldn’t seem to get in sync with a country. I couldn’t figure out if the country was where I buried my memories, or the ground that would bury me.

I felt as if I were staring at a painting that had more dimensions but I couldn’t get inside. A co-worker was moving one weekend and I offered to help her because I thought that’s what an American would do. I shook her hand so hard that I couldn’t uncurl my hand for days.

Dearest Daughters, in your life, you will sometimes be the glove and sometimes the hand. But on some cold nights, you won’t be able to see your hands at all. On some nights, you might feel like the last person who shook your hand took your hand with them.

On some nights, you will have a camera around your neck, unwanted, which is also my camera which is also your grandmother’s camera and your great-great-great-grandmother’s camera. You can’t escape seeing with our eyes. But you also won’t be able to see us.

Daughters, there will be some days when everyone around you looks like an executioner. There will be times when everyone sounds like you, but no one looks like you. There will be other times when everyone looks like you but no one sounds like you. It’s okay, though. Those without history are difficult to harm. Because we are always moving.

That summer, I used up all the right words to get the job, but then I had no words left. That summer would be the ending and the beginning. The nice man who gave me the job later asked me about my summer experience. I told him that the job and the city weren’t a good fit. What I should have said was, I don’t know how to interact with white people. That spending time in the Midwest felt like a step back into an old house that I thought had long fallen off the cliff. I was sorry he hired me based on my words. Because under those 643 words were masses of flies.

It took me a long time to find my people: writers, creatives, and artists. My people didn’t sit in cubicles and calculate sales forecasts for fruit snacks. It took me a long time to know my people existed, and even longer for me to seek them out.

Daughters, I have felt incomplete for most of my life. Please don’t follow me. What I worry most is that you have already started following me. That you are from me. You both have my freckles. What else have I passed on?

Then through the door, I hear you playing a game on the computer with a friend. I listen to your perfect English and am bewildered by it, the beauty of the words, the precision of each pause, the curve of each idiom. Then I hear you laughing so loudly that the door shakes a little. And I put my head in my hands and weep.

• Maternal Great-Grandmother (middle), Mother (center top) •