A Cup of Water Under My Bed

Hernández’s mother and her aunts give her advice on what kind of man she should seek. They encourage her to find a white, college-educated partner and to avoid some Latino men over others. Specifically, they tell her not to date Colombian men, but when she is 16, she meets Julio, a young Colombian guy who works alongside her at McDonald’s. Her family is suspicious and judgmental, which only pushes her toward him, although Hernández is worried about having sex for the first time. She does not want to end up as a teenaged parent. She also overhears the women in her family gossiping about a woman they know leaving her husband for another woman. Hernández moves in with Julio when she is 19, but the pair break up a year later when she meets another man: “He didn’t emigrate from Colombia and he has the money to attend college” (80). Somehow, she is with the kind of man her mother wants for her.

While in college, Hernández realizes that she is also attracted to women, but “the worst part about trying to date women is that I don’t have my mother’s warnings. There is no indicator if I am doing it right or wrong” (82).