It was our second week in the United States and my mother needed to learn how to drive so she could get a job mopping floors. My father borrowed a white van from the community center where he mopped floors and boiled spaghetti on Italian night. And maybe you don’t see it at first but this story is romantic. The middle of the night, two young immigrants in love in an alleyway, matching leather jackets, and my mother’s red lips shining in the moonlight? No, not shining but radiating like a neon sign that said open. Did she scratch the car on purpose or was she unsure of how to parallel park? The answer didn’t matter because the next day my sleepless father followed the driving test instructor. Noted the 25 feet marked by orange cones and knew he could not teach my mother how to place a vehicle between them. You see she was not born to fit into arbitrary spaces, she needed room for her hair and her eyes and her voice that my father often says fills a room like an ocean fills a fish tank, immediately until everyone is drowning in beauty.  Instead, he committed some light crimes and moved the cones minutes before her turn to take the driving test. And listen, I know you want me to tell you whether or not she passed or whether or not my father was arrested, but all I can say is that she wore her fur coat and aviator sunglasses that day, and my father watched her from that borrowed van thinking she looked technicolor,  an American movie star playing the role of a woman with no way to return home.