I switched to English, not wanting to speak Spanish anymore, not liking how strange it sounded coming out of my own mouth. “I’m Cuban,” I said to her. “I’ve spoken Spanish my entire life.” That wasn’t true, though. I hadn’t spoken it in years. She looked at me as if I were a painting she was interpreting, and then she said, apologetically, “You do not look Cuban.” “Pues, lo soy,” | said haughtily. (“Well, I am.”) Luisa nodded and packed up her lunch, moving on to change the bed linens. I sat at that table for at least a half hour, reeling. I kept thinking, How dare she try to take my own identity away from me? But as I looked around my house, seeing no pictures of my family, not a single Latin-American book, stray blond hairs in my hairbrush, not even a jar of cumin in my spice rack, I realized Luisa hadn’t done that to me. I had done it to me. I’d made the choice to be different from my true self. Fidel Castro had control of Cuba. Eisenhower had already put the economic embargo in place by that point. The Bay of Pigs had been a disaster. Being a Cuban-American was complicated. And instead of trying to make my way in the world as a Cuban woman, I simply forsook where I came from. In some ways, this helped me release any remaining ties connecting me to my father. But it also pulled me further away from my mother. My mother, whom this had all been for at some point. That was all me. All the results of my own choices. None of that was Luisa’s fault. So I realized I had no right to sit at my own kitchen table blaming her. When she left that night, I could tell she still felt uncomfortable around me. So I made sure to smile sincerely and tell her I was excited to see her the next day. From that day forward, I never spoke Spanish to her. I was too embarrassed, too insecure of my disloyalty. But she spoke it from time to time, and I smiled when she made jokes to her mother within earshot. I let her know I understood her. And I quickly grew to care for her very much. I envied how secure she was in her own skin. How unafraid she was to be her true self. She was proud to be Luisa Jimenez. She was the first employee I ever had whom I cherished. I was not going to move house without her.