Sometimes I wonder why, out of every city, town, and suburb in the entire country of the United States, my grandmother chose to move to Lynn, Massachusetts. A city otherwise rich in history, but unluckily dubbed over by an ingloriously annoying jingle, “Lynn, Lynn, city of sin, you’ll never come out the way you came in.” I heard it chanted through elementary school hallways, mocked by middle school kids, and hummed by high schoolers. You would think its omnipresence would keep away travelers, but, then again, my grandmother didn’t speak English.
She came over from the Dominican Republic thirty-six years ago, with my mother and her five other kids.…