One Saturday morning, before the sun poked its head up over the high-rises, Harry and I met at Union Square to hop on a bus to Hunter Mountain in the Catskills of upstate New York. Harry showed up with a bagel, a pair of extra gloves for me, and some handwarmers I didn’t know I’d need.
Once on the mountain, tiny white children in their adorable pink-and-white onesies swooshed past me. Their pale faces and red checks glowed with excitement. Meanwhile, I had squeezed into my friend’s small ski clothes and looked like a frozen stuffed sausage in her blue pants and white jacket. I’d saved for weeks to be able to take the trip with Harry but didn’t have enough to buy the clothes to fully play the part. My annual salary as a first-year analyst was $55,000. That was a lot of money for a recent college graduate, but not as much as I needed to live in New York City and to take care of my parents who were back in México. At work I was eating at Michelin-rated restaurants, boarding yachts, and shaking hands with millionaires, while at home I was scraping to get by. My roommate and I oftentimes shared a Sbarro’s pizza special of two cheese slices and a Coke for dinner to make ends meet. I wondered whether these children on the mountain knew how lucky they were to grow up being part of this world—not having to be self-conscious, not having to change themselves to fit in, and not having to feel like a sellout for wanting to fit in.
The instructor, who looked like he belonged in an episode of Saved by the Bell, kept calling me Julie despite my best efforts to remind him my name is Julissa. “It’s like Julie and Lisa combined,” I insisted.
“Okay, Julie,” he’d respond.
“If you get scared, just bring the front of your skis toward each other. Make a pizza wedge! That will slow you down,” the instructor said before releasing us for our first trial run.
I was glad Harry was not there to witness my embarrassment as I ate snow for breakfast. I had persuaded him to go off and do some “black diamonds” (a term he taught me on the bus ride to Hunter Mountain) while I learned how to properly put my boots on.
Harry was waiting for me at the end of my lesson. His nose and cheeks were as red as the children’s who’d swooshed past me that morning.
Harry explained that one of the most difficult things was figuring out how to get off the chairlift. I did as he said, putting my poles in one hand and using the other to push myself off the chair. Then, as though I had done it a million times before, I used my skis as skates to navigate the flat ground toward the start of the run.
As I made my way down, I thought about the rocky state of Guerrero, México, where I grew up. My hometown of Taxco was built on a mountain and is surrounded by luscious green hills on every side. It hit me that I had never seen a mountain covered in snow, and here were dozens of them all around me. Some of the peaks were surrounded by clouds, and the sun made the snow look like glitter.
It wasn’t until we were at the bottom that my heart exploded with triumph. I had just completed my first ski run! I raised my poles to the skies and let out a loud laugh that made the people around us look in our direction.
Back at the office, my boss had suggested I laugh less loudly. I found it impossible that over the noise of shouted profanities, dozens of phones ringing, and men pounding on their desks, it was the level of my laugh that was disruptive. And here on the slopes, the raised eyebrows and side looks told me my joy was offensive to those around me. I didn’t care. They should have all been laughing and jumping for joy at the glorious experience of gliding down a mountain.
After a few more runs we went to a different chairlift that transported us to a whole new world of possibilities, the blue slopes. The higher we went, the more beautiful the views. The population of the slopes looked like the trading floor at Goldman Sachs: mostly male, white, and stiff. At this elevation, I wondered whether anyone thought I didn’t belong, with my sausage outfit and loud laugh. Or did they assume, like my colleagues, that if I was this high up, walking among them, I must be part of their universe? I didn’t row crew or play field hockey or squash. My parents hadn’t attended college. Harry’s uncle had been a partner at Goldman Sachs. Another of our fellow interns’ dad was my boss’s boss’s boss. To be the first in my family to go to college in the US, to have this job and these experiences—it was what I had been working for all my life. And despite all the challenges of being undocumented, I was here doing the same job as my privileged colleagues. Now I had reached the peak of the same mountain, too.
But even as I marveled at the beauty of the whiteness around me, I knew I didn’t want to get sucked under it. I didn’t want my laugh to fade. I had already given up too much to have this job, this life that promised me financial security—but at what cost? I had already paid a high price to be in this country, growing more afraid each day that someone might find out I was undocumented and working on Wall Street with fake papers. I constantly felt like an outsider in this place that was my home. And what I didn’t know that day on the mountain was just how much more I’d have to sacrifice. Like when my dad passed away in México a few years later. Since I was still undocumented, if I had gotten on a plane to be with him, to hold his hand as he took his last breath, I might not have been able to come back to the US. I might have died trying to cross the desert like so many others. So I stayed in my high-rise apartment in the financial district, chasing the acceptance of the rich white people around me. There isn’t a day I don’t wish I had taken a flight to be with my father. Job, money, and belonging in America be damned.
Going down the mountain, I felt an immense sense of sadness and happiness at the same time. I felt on top of the world—and how much more beautiful the world was from up here! As Harry and I did our last run, down the steepest slope of the day, I focused on the swoosh, swoosh of my skis as they cut through the snow. I was hooked. The rush of adrenaline pumping through my body was exhilarating, scary, and freeing.
Adapted from Somewhere We Are Human edited by Reyna Grande and Sonia Guiñansaca and reprinted with permission from HarperVia, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. Copyright 2022.
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