Sable Monroe

Before I ever felt winter, I tested it.

I was eleven years old, standing in my grandmother’s kitchen in Jamaica, staring into the freezer. People talked about cold like it was a warning more than a temperature. Snow. Ice. Wind that cut through clothes. I didn’t know what any of that meant in my body, only that it sounded like something you needed to be ready for.

No one explained it to me carefully. There were no instructions, no reassurance, no sense that preparation was anyone else’s responsibility. So I did what I had learned to do by then. I figured it out myself.

I opened the freezer and put my arm inside.

I held it there longer than was comfortable, watching my skin tighten, waiting for sensation to turn into pain. I needed a reference point. I needed to know what “cold” actually meant before I arrived somewhere that lived inside it. When it finally became unbearable, I pulled my arm out and closed the door.

That was my rehearsal.

I didn’t imagine America as warm or welcoming. I imagined it as unknown. I understood, even at eleven, that leaving meant trading one set of problems for another you couldn’t yet see. I didn’t expect rescue. I expected adjustment.

The adults around me spoke in fragments. Logistics. Flights. Timing. Money. I listened the way I always did, piecing together meaning from what wasn’t said. I knew this move wasn’t temporary. No one framed it that way. There were no return dates, no language of visiting. This was departure.

By then, I was already good at preparing quietly. At anticipating discomfort. At measuring risk without being asked. The freezer wasn’t dramatic. It was practical. It was how I learned to approach change: test it first, endure it second, understand it later.

The flight itself felt less dramatic than the idea of it.

Air Jamaica. The cabin smelled like recycled air and cigarettes. Back then, ashtrays were still built into the armrests, small metal reminders that the rules had been different not that long ago. My father smoked without hesitation, settling into his seat like this was just another trip, not a line being crossed permanently.

I watched him more than I watched anything else. I had learned early that adults often revealed more through behavior than explanation. He seemed calm. Unburdened. He moved through the process with the confidence of someone who believed he knew what was coming.

My younger brother stayed close to him. I took my seat and stayed quiet, already in observation mode. I didn’t feel sad exactly. I didn’t feel excited either. The feeling was closer to alertness. Like when something important is happening and you don’t yet know where to place yourself inside it.

I remember the music playing softly as people settled in. Sweet Sweet Jamaica drifted through the cabin, familiar and almost intrusive. It felt strange to hear it in a space designed for leaving.

Somewhere between takeoff and landing, it became clear that this wasn’t a visit. No one said it out loud, but it was understood. You could feel it in the way bags were packed, in what was left behind, in the absence of any talk about when we’d return.

This was a crossing, not a trip.

When the plane descended, the air changed. Everything felt sharper. Louder. More urgent. The cold hit immediately, cutting straight through what I was wearing. I noticed that I didn’t have a proper coat. My brother did. My father had planned for him.

We didn’t go straight to my mother.

We were taken to my uncle and his wife’s house. It wasn’t meant to be a stay. It was a pause. My mother was working that day, at a job where missing a shift meant losing money. Adult me understands that now. At eleven, I only knew that I had arrived in a new country and the person I wanted most wasn’t there.

We waited.

Hours passed. Not long enough to feel safe. Just long enough to feel suspended. When my mother finally arrived, taking the train to meet us, the tension in my body eased. She hugged us tightly. Then we left.

The move to Brooklyn happened quietly.

My mother took us to the place where she had been staying. At first, I assumed it was her apartment. Only later did I understand it was a room.

The room belonged to a man. I don’t remember his name. I remember that my mother later told me he was married, that sometimes he stayed there, and that they were not lovers. I accepted that explanation then. As an adult, I know I don’t actually understand how they met or what the nature of their relationship was. It remains unclear.

What I did know was that the space didn’t belong to us.

That night, my mother didn’t stay. She left us there while she went to spend the night at her boyfriend’s house, the man who would later become her second husband.

Later that night, the man came back.

It was his room. He took the bed. My brother and I slept on the floor together, pressed close, waiting for morning. Nothing happened. And I understand now how much worse it could have been.

In the morning, my mother returned and took us with her. The room disappeared from our lives as quickly as it had entered them.

Before I knew how to reach anyone, before I understood how far away help actually was, something in me had already adjusted.

I had crossed something irreversible.

And whatever came next, I would have to meet it awake.