shiny floors, where the soles of my shoes squeaked with every step. I twirled around and jumped up and down to see what other sounds they would make, but Papá put his hand on my shoulder, tacitly telling me to stop. A bunch of strangers I had never seen before walked in, and then one little boy climbed up onto the slippery leather chair next to me. His hair was all shiny and slicked back, and he was wearing a suit. It took me a second to realize it was Horatio. You know him; he’s the boy that lives right next door. During our usual play dates he would have dirt on his face and would be wearing a ripped tee shirt, so I barely recognized him in this big fancy building. We talked about school and soccer until a bald white man wearing glasses told us to be quiet. The rest of the ceremony is blurry in my memory. The adults in the room said a bunch of big words I didn’t understand, the bald man shook their hands, my parents hugged and kissed, Horatio’s parents hugged and kissed, and they came over to us and did the same. They took us to get ice cream and we went back to Miami Beach in our fancy clothes to eat it. When we got home, my father pinned a tiny American flag to the lapel of his jacket. He looked down at me and said, “We’re real Americans now, mija.” While Mamá and Papá are so proud of their Mexican heritage, I knew that they were even more proud to become citizens of the United States. When I was growing up they always told me about how America was the land of opportunity, where everyone had a voice, and those voices were valued. Everyone was accepted here. Even as a girl who grew up in a Spanish-speaking household with two Mexican parents, I was still as American as anyone else because there was no one definition of a true American. We used to have a tape called Schoolhouse Rock that I loved watching. There were a bunch of fun songs they would sing about history, math, and English, and little cartoon people would sing and dance around. I was fascinated by the American history songs, like “I’m Just a Bill” and “The Preamble,” and my favorite one was always “The Great American Melting Pot.” The song told
[176] Little Brown House Review Twenty-Three