Once she was deported, she had a ten-year bar before she could try to come back to the States. Because my dad was a citizen, we heard we could apply for a waiver. So instead of trying to come back to us under the radar, my mom stayed in Mexico, saved money and waited. And then she submitted an application, and waited some more.

And then a bureaucrat decided that since my dad could work and I was doing okay in school and physically healthy, her absence did not create “extreme hardship” for a US citizen, and denied the waiver. As if birthdays and Christmases and Mother’s Days and first days of schools passing without my mom wasn’t extreme enough hardship. As if three or four trips a year to visit her, knowing she couldn’t visit us, wasn’t extreme enough hardship. As if breaking our family up across an invisible line wasn’t extreme enough hardship.

After the waiver was denied, the only thing we could do was wait.

So not getting to stay and party the first weekend of college? There were much more unfair things.

“I’ve started seeing more of those buses on my way to work, going to those tech places,” my dad says. “Los vecinos are mad.”

I nod. I’d read the articles and Facebook posts complaining about the buses and the gentrification they represented.

“Is it bad that I keep thinking I can’t wait to see you go by in a bus that says Google on the side?”

I laugh. “It might be. I do the same thing though.”

“At least you will wave to me when you pass through the neighborhood, instead of clutching your bag like some of these people.”

“Dad, if I make it onto one of those buses, you won’t be living in this house anymore.”

He smiles faintly. I have been talking about buying him a big house with a pool and granite countertops since I got the magnet school letter in eighth grade.

“Ya veremos...” he says. “I don’t mind it here too much though.”

I nod and think of Mateo and the rest of the neighbors. I know what he means, but I also know I will work until I don’t have to read news reports on shootings with my heart racing, hoping not to see my neighborhood, my cross street or, God help me, a name I know.

My father prepares me food even though I tell him I already ate, and then we sit in the living room and watch his shows. He tries to explain all the backstories and relationships between the characters to me, and I don’t have the heart to tell him I watch this only with him so he really doesn’t have to.