the name "wetback" first slipped out of america's mouth in the 1920s

in reference to the mexicans who swam snake-spined through the rio grande

forcing themselves to shed dead skin in the current

they fell

panting and limp

on the bank of the river

pushed into a New World through the body of tlaloquetotontli

the river goddess of their ancient empire

the water still glistened on their bare skin, and no white mouth could think of a name more suitable than

wet-back

in that moment

that name rolled off of salt-coated tongues into brown ears for decades

those tongues forgot what it was like not to taste the salt in their mouths when they spoke it

even if they could not remember why it was there in the first place

the mexicanos forgot what it was like to not feel those cataclysmic tides crashing in their eardrums when they heard the word

as lady liberty's ocean seeped into that once-pure river

mexico must have known what was coming when they named it rio bravo

furious river

my father's family has no rio

but more than enough bravo to cast entire cities underwater

there is no peaceful ebb and flow beneath the leather skin of his mother

or the calloused hands of his father

the two of them gave birth to the maelstrom inside of my father and left him drowning in the center of a culture he would never be a part of

choking every thought he had that was not in english

he found solace in the feeling of the river unwrapping itself from around his tongue

he instead let the weight of the ocean anchor itself in his mouth

he did not look back

and then he had me.

let me be more rio than bravo

but there are still days where I cannot tell the hurricane from myself

see, i look like a river but i speak like an ocean

i look like mexico

floating downstream next to time

but I speak like america

taking everything I see in my path like it belongs to me

effortlessly

this storm is not made of the rage my grandparents are so fond of

i wear this freshwater cloak around my shoulders without knowing what it means, and I don't know who to blame for that

so I have grown up as the brown girl who could be asian

or indian,

or native american,

or any kind of Other but myself

i answer "mexican" when the test asks if I am hispanic or latino

and "white" when the next question asks how i identify

i have grown up as the brown girl who can only comfortably claim her ancestry when it fits inside a box

I have come to think that maybe my father grew up with the wrong kind of river in his veins

the kind polluted by the transplanted saltwater in his parents' words

poisoning all the things that kept him whole

with endless thirst

the kind of river that made the vastness of the ocean seem so much more appealing, simply because the dehydration is all he has ever known

maybe that is why he is so alone now

a stagnant pond in the heat of relentless summer

my father has no ebb or flow

he, too, looks like a river but speaks like an ocean

and i do not want to speak like my father.

but i don't know what a river sounds like

i don't know how to speak without claiming everything in front of me as my own

maybe he left me without any kind of freshwater at all

because to him

the quiet sound of still

open water

is the only way i'll be able to hear him

maybe he remembers what those tides crashing in his brown ears sound like

and maybe he is too afraid to open the floodgates and let me hear them, too.