A few weeks after I’d started hanging out with Rooney, two things happened. The first was that I started to learn how to cook. First I watched as she showed me the proper way to cut vegetables. Not so hard, I realized. Then I saw how to roast a chicken and how to make a proper Caesar salad. She explained that the Caesar salad was invented in Mexico, by the way. The other thing that happened was that I met a couple of girls who seemed like they wanted to be my friends.
“Hey, I think you’re in my Tapestries class,” said a girl who introduced herself as Willow.
I didn’t know for sure. Tapestries was an assembly class, held in the gym. There were more than fifty kids.
“Do you work in the kitchen?” she asked.
“Not really,” I explained. “But Chef Rooney is teaching me how to make a few things.”
Willow didn’t seem to hear the “not working” part, because she said, “Well, maybe one day when you’re not working, you can have lunch with me and my friend Tiggy. She’s a little OTT, but she’s good people.”
Rooney had been peeping the whole situation. “You should have lunch with them tomorrow. You’re here to be with the other kids, not to cook.”
The kitchen was open plan, which meant you could see us cooking from any of the student tables. As I was talking to Rooney, Milly, the girl with the tattoos, walked by. She looked at my cooking jacket and gave me a dirty look. “All Mexicans to the kitchen? I didn’t hear the announcement.”
I was so startled, I didn’t know what to say, which was just as well, because she didn’t stop for my response. It was just burn and roll.
I turned to Rooney. “That’s what my dad said when I told him I was hanging out in the kitchen with you.”
Rooney looked sympathetic. “It’s tough when you’re a minority to figure out what you love, as opposed to what you want to do for the mere fact of defying expectations. My dad refused to pay for me to go to culinary school. He said generations of black women had sweated and slaved to get out of the kitchen. We’d finally elected a black president, and he was accusing me of wanting to take us back to the days when women like me toiled over a hot stove.”
She added, “But I fell in love with cooking, and maybe you will too. Our history is always with us, but I think food is one of the most powerful game changers there is. We all eat. Every day. That’s power. Every time you put a plate in front of someone, you are telling them a story. That’s why I love doing the blog. Lookit, first let me try to get this little culinary internship approved by the administration. If your parents give their permission—and by ‘permission’ I mean they call me, not send a text or a possibly forged note—you can come help me on Tuesdays and Thursdays before school starts. That’ll leave your lunch hours free to hang with other kids and not look like the help.”
I told her it was a deal, and once my father called with his okay, it was.
The next day I had lunch with Willow and Tiggy. Willow explained that she was biracial—black mom, white dad, and as she put it, “heavily African American identified.” She smiled and said, “It’s like Drake said, ‘Hardly home, but always repping.’ ”
Tiggy introduced herself as “a garden-variety white girl. Park Avenue born. Palisades raised.”
“So,” Willow said. “Can I ask you a question? Do a lot of Mexican girls have blond hair?”
I shook my head. “Some do. But I’m a bottle blonde.”
Tiggy peered at me over her Chanel cat’s-eye shades. “So what’s up with that? Are you running from the law? Witness protection?”
No, I told her.
“Did you ever work as a drug mule?”
No.
Then Willow said it, “Your accent is so cute.”
This may sound crazy, but I didn’t think I had an accent. I speak English fluently. We all do in my family. I watch all of my favorite TV shows and movies in English. I sing along to all of my favorite songs on Google radio. When I traveled during the summer with my parents, everyone always commented on how good my English was. But alas, here it was. The thing that everyone at school kept saying was, “Oh. My. God. Your accent is so cute.” It was slightly disconcerting, like discovering you have a big mole on a part of your face that you’d never seen before.
Tiggy sat staring at me, her chin propped on her hand. “I love the way you talk. It’s almost like watching a foreign movie. How long have you lived in the US? Because you sound like you’re fresh off the boat.”
I said, in the calmest way I could, “Well, actually, we flew here.”
I wanted to add, “By private plane. But whatever.” I didn’t. The point was to stay low-key.
Tiggy said, “Of course you flew. We didn’t mean to imply that you snuck across the border, crawling on your belly, under a barbed wire. Though, I will say that’s how my nanny, Cresencia, got here.”
I was incredulous, and fascinated.
“So tell us how you got into Polestar in the middle of the year?” Willow asked. “The waiting list is insane, and I can’t imagine there’s any financial aid left at this time of year.”
I thought, “Oh, I get it. Financial aid. They think I’m poor.” That was interesting. I was anonymous, and now I got to ditch the whole MAP thing. Now I understood why Sergio had moved to Europe. It’s easier to try on a new identity when you cross a border.
“Well, I guess I just got lucky,” I said modestly.
Then Tiggy looked at me and said, “Is that T-shirt Proenza Schouler?”
Willow touched my shoulder and said, “Tiggy’s parents own a boutique. She’s like a living, breathing fashion encyclopedia.”
My mother had offered to take me back-to-school shopping at Barneys, and I had let her because while I do not go much for makeup, I love shopping. I thought the T-shirt was understated and cool. I guess I had miscalculated. I decided to play dumb.
“Prowen who?” I said, looking confused. Maybe I was a better actress than I gave myself credit for.
Tiggy gave me a sympathetic look, then spoke to me, loudly and slowly as if I did not speak fashion fluently. “Proenza Schouler,” she said. “It’s okay. Cresencia’s daughters wear all of my hand-me-downs too.”
Willow glared at Tiggy. “Why are you assuming her mother is a domestic?”
Tiggy rolled her eyes. “Because that’s what she said, right? That her mother was a maid and that she was on scholarship.”
I had in fact said nothing of the kind. But my parents always told me that the first rule of improv was to agree. Just go with it. You never say no. You say, “Yes and…”
Willow looked to me to confirm or deny, and what I said was, “Well, it’s complicated.”
Both girls seemed appeased. Then Willow said, “I like the way you talk. You don’t sound like most of the Mexicans in LA.”
Tiggy snorted. “And how many Mexicans do you know in LA, ése?”
I was appalled and fascinated. It was like I’d snuck onto the set of a new TV game show, Just How Racist Can You Be in an Hour?
Willow said, “I was born and raised in LA. I’ve been around Mexicans my whole life, Tiggy.”
“Oh yeah? Gardeners and maids don’t count,” Tiggy said defiantly. “Unless you’ve sat down and had a meaningful discussion with either?”
Willow linked arms with me. “Well, my new friend is a proud Mexican American, and I look forward to her teaching me everything about her culture.”
Was I just Mexican, or was I Mexican American? Is that something that happened the minute you crossed the border?
I smiled weakly. I felt like Faye Dunaway in Chinatown. I didn’t know what to think of these girls. I liked them. I hated them. I liked them.
Tiggy said, “Our new friend. From now on, you sit with us at lunch when you’re not in the kitchen.”
I looked around the cafeteria at all the kids who seemed to have known each other forever. Sure, Sergio would lump Willow and Tiggy into the same category as Patrizia. I could just hear him now, in his Oxford-tinged English saying, “What a bloody waste of space.” But I liked the blank slate of not being Carolina del Valle’s daughter. I liked the slightly superior feeling I had of being smarter than these girls and nowhere as racist. Sure, in Mexico City, I was a bit of a princess. Maybe I walked like one, talked like one, and God knows I shopped like one. But I would’ve never said half the ignorant things these girls had said to me, in less than an hour. So there was that. I didn’t know where I belonged at Polestar, but you had to start somewhere.
“Thanks for the invite,” I said, meaning it.