I must’ve been around seven years old when Ma and Pa sat me down to have this conversation. At first, I thought I’d done something wrong, but Ma quickly said that wasn’t the reason they wanted to talk. They explained everything to me—how they’d left Mexico, Pa when he was seventeen and Ma when she was twenty-one. They told me how they’d met once they were both settled in New York, how their families back home had been able to survive because of the money they sent them, how much better life had gotten since they had come to the United States. And how no one could ever know that they didn’t have papers.

“If anyone at school asks, tell them your parents are from the South. They’ll think we’re from Texas or something,” Ma said.

Pa nodded quickly. “Never, ever tell anyone more than they need to know.”

They gave Sophie the exact same talk last year, when she was only six. Unlike me, she didn’t just sit down and listen. She asked a million questions, which my parents answered patiently.

Sophie has always been a big talker. It’s one of the things I love most about her—how easily she can make friends, how open and loving she is even with people she doesn’t know. But it’s probably also the reason my parents decided to have this conversation with her at such a young age.

Tonight, Sophie’s quiet. She looks so tiny in her chair. She must’ve taken two bites of her food before putting her fork down, and now she’s just staring at her plate. All I want to do is reach out to her, hold her hand, tell her everything’s gonna be okay, but I can’t find the strength to do any of that.

Ma clutches her stomach. Since her gallbladder surgery last year, she’s been doing that a lot. She’s not in pain—or at least she says she’s not. I think it’s just a reflex. The scar she now has on her belly is probably an important reminder to her—a reminder that we made it through what we thought was the worst that could possibly happen: getting sick without insurance, having to find a way to pay for the surgery, praying that no one at the hospital would alert the authorities that my mom didn’t have papers.

“¿Cómo pudo pasar esto?” she asks. “They must’ve known—someone must’ve told them about you.”

Pa presses his lips together, shakes his head without saying anything.

“ICE doesn’t just come looking for people without a reason,” Ma says.