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2655 Karla Cornejo VillavicencioIf you are an undocumented person anywhere in America, some of the things you do to make a dignified life for yourself and your loved ones are illegal. Others require a special set of skills. The elders know some great tricks%u2014crossing deserts in the dead of night, studying the Rio Grande for weeks to find the shallowest bend of river to cross, getting a job on their first day in the country, finding apartments that don%u2019t need a lease, learning English at public libraries, community colleges, or from %u201cFrasier.%u201d I would not have been able to do a single thing that the elders have done. But the elders often have only one hope for survival, which we tend not to mention. I%u2019m talking about children. And no, it%u2019s not an %u201canchor baby%u201d thing. Our parents have kids for the same reasons as most people, but their sacrifice for us is impossible to articulate, and its weight is felt deep down, in the body. That is the pact between immigrants and their children in America: they give us a better life, and we spend the rest of that life figuring out how much of our flesh will pay off the debt.I am a first-generation immigrant, undocumented for most of my life, then on DACA [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals], now a permanent resident. But my real identity, the one that follows me around like a migraine, is that I am the daughter of immigrants. As such, I have some skills of my own.You pick them up young. Something we always hear about, because Americans love this shit, is that immigrant children often translate for their parents. I began doing this as a little girl, because I lost my accent, dumb luck, and because I was adorable in the way that adults like, which is to say I had large, frightened eyes and a flamboyant vocabulary. As soon as doctors or teachers began talking, I felt my parents%u2019 nervous energy, and I%u2019d either answer for them or interpret their response. It was like my little Model U.N. job. I was around seven. My career as a professional daughter of immigrants had begun.In my teens, I began to specialize. I became a performance artist. I accompanied my parents to places where I knew they would be discriminated against, and where I could insure that their rights would be granted. If a bank teller wasn%u2019t accepting their I.D., I%u2019d stroll in with an oversized Forever 21 blazer, red lipstick, a slicked-back bun, and fresh Stan Smiths. I brought a pleather folder and made sure my handshake broke bones. Sometimes I appealed to decency, sometimes to law, sometimes to God. Sometimes I leaned back in my chair, like a sexy gangster, and said, %u201cSo, you tell me how you want my mom to survive in this country without a bank account. You close at four, but I have all the time in the world.%u201d Then I%u2019d wink. It was vaudeville, but it worked.My parents came to America in their early twenties, na%u00efve about what awaited them. Back in Ecuador, they had encountered images of a wealthy nation%u2014the requisite flashes of Clint Eastwood and the New York City skyline%u2014and heard stories about migrants who had done O.K. for themselves there. But my parents were not starry-eyed people. They were just kids, lost and reckless, running away from the dead ends around them.My father is the only son of a callous mother and an absent father. My mother, the result of her mother%u2019s rape, grew up cared for by an aunt and uncle. When she married my father, it was for the reasons a lot of women marry: for love, and to escape. The day I was born, she once told me, was the happiest day of her life.Soon after that, my parents, owners of a small auto-body business, found themselves in debt. When I was eighteen months old, they left me with family and settled in Brooklyn, hoping to work for a year and move back once they%u2019d saved up some money. I haven%u2019t asked them much about this time%u2014I%u2019ve never felt the urge%u2014but I know that one year became three. I also know that they began to be lured 5Copyright %u00a9 Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. Distributed by Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. For review purposes only. Not for redistribution.