I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter

The school dance is approaching, and though Julia normally wouldn’t go, she’s determined to get to the afterparty, where she hopes she’ll run into the sister of the host—a girl who went to high school with Olga. Amá surprisingly agrees to let Julia goes to the dance, but insists on helping her pick out a suitable new dress for the occasion. The two of them go shopping at an outlet mall, but the trip is a disaster—the one dress Julia likes is a red-and-black number which Amá claims is revealing and unladylike. Frustrated, Julia locks herself in the dressing room and cries, embarrassed by her body and desperate to escape her mother’s constant judgement. 

The night of the dance, Julia borrows a dress from Lorena, and the two of them go to the event with a group of friends—Juanga has gone MIA after running off with an older man. Julia looks down on the girls she and Lorena are going to the dance with, seeing them as stupid, and when a guy from her grade tries to flirt with her and she shoots him down, he accuses her of thinking she’s “better than everybody.” Julia is angry, but briefly wonders if he’s right.

After the dance, the girls head to the afterparty—even though Julia knows doing so will get her in trouble with Amá for staying out late. At the crammed, steamy afterparty at a house nearby, Julia begins trying to scope out the host’s sister. Though Lorena encourages her to relax and have fun, Julia can focus on nothing else. As the party gets sloppier and there’s no sign of Olga’s classmate, Julia finds Lorena and says she wants to go home. Lorena is flirting with a guy, and tells Julia to wait for her on the couch—they’ll leave, she promises, in five minutes. Julia sits down and falls asleep, and by the time Lorena wakes her up, it’s three in the morning—and she’s going to be in deep trouble.

The next morning, after receiving her punishment, Julia calculates that she’s spent forty-five percent of the last two years grounded. Though she knows she’s not the ideal daughter, she’s hurt by the fact that her parents—especially Amá—treat her like a “degenerate.” When under severe punishment, and banned from even going to the library—like she is now—Julia feels painfully alone, and “hate[s] the life that [she has] to live.”

As the days go by, Julia suffers feelings of self-loathing and struggles with insomnia. She bottles everything up, though, and shares none of her feelings with her parents or Lorena. One day, after class, Mr. Ingman pulls Julia aside to ask if everything’s okay. She insists she’s fine, but feels tears threaten to leak from her eyes. Mr. Ingman asks Julia if she’s really doing well, and Julia lies and says she’s emotional due to her period. Mr. Ingman, seeing through the excuse, tells Julia that she can’t blame herself for her sister’s death, and reveals that his own mother died spontaneously when he was just ten. Julia is comforted by the story, and by Mr. Ingman’s kindness.

At home, the tired Apá is soaking his feet on the couch. Julia feels bad for her father, who always told her and Olga how important it was to get a good job in a nice office with air conditioning. Julia sits beside him on the couch and does her homework. When Amá comes home, she tells Julia she’s looking poorly, and asks if she’s been eating junk in secret. She tells Julia that she can’t be looking sallow for her quincé—she has to be “pretty for [her] family.” Julia feels a cramp in her stomach and goes to the bathroom—she has gotten her period a week early, which she sees as punishment for lying about it to Mr. Ingman.