That closet had been my own America — a bright, iconic country where an immigrant woman could wear dresses just like those worn by the late president’s wife.

There were many brown and taupe and black people standing behind and ahead of me in the immigration queue. I lumped the lot of us into the same color-blind category: immigrants. I see now just how naive I was.

For this woman, our shared New England history wasn’t one. The melting pot had never really melted.

As myopic and unplanned as my 24-year-old life was, I knew what I didn’t want: an unplanned pregnancy.

The corpses of nearly 800 children may have been buried in a mass grave beside a former orphanage. Another shameful chapter in our country’s history.