To be from this barrio is to be made of this earth & clay:
dirt-packed, water-backed, third-world smacked:
they say, the soil beneath a country’s nail, they say.
I love my home. But it might be a sinkhole
trying to feast quicksand
mouth pried open; I hunger for stable ground,
somewhere else.
the crowd outside our little teal house expands.
People stand there in shorts and caps,
in thong sandals, the viejos held up by their bastones,
they shuffle onto the balcón,
they wrap their fingers around the barred fence,
they watch & wait & watch & wait an unrehearsed vigil.
& they pray & I try not to suffocate
under all the eyes that seem to be expecting
me to tear myself out of my skin.
[…] Before I learned to fear him,
there was one memory that kept coming back,
the one I cannot shake even as I shake when he approaches:
Cero has never appeared young to me. Always this same
age, this same face. But he would come to school
to pick Emily up. & she would stop
everything she was doing & run to him, arms spread wide.
He would catch her, swinging her in circles. & I was jealous.
Jealous I didn’t have a consistent male figure like Cero in my
life.
But before we got off at our stop,
Papi turned to my nine-year-old self & said:
“Never, ever, let them see you sweat, negra.
Fight until you can’t breathe, & if you have to forfeit,
you forfeit smiling, make them think you let them win.”
Did I love chess?
I did chess.
But love? Like I
love watching beauty tutorials?
[…]
Or how I love Papi’s brother, Tío Jorge,
holding my hand and saying I make him proud
for myself not for what I win?
Like I loved my father, that kind of love?
Consuming, huge, a love that takes the wheel,
a love where I pretended to be something I wasn’t?
I did chess. I was obsessed with winning.
But never love.
Without fail, most days I’m in school,
I get sent to the guidance counselor.
But I don’t have anything to tell her.
She asks me how I’m doing. Stupid fucking question.
I want to tell her some days I wake up
to find dents on the inside of my palms
from where I’ve fisted my hands while sleeping,
my nails biting into the skin & leaving angry marks.
On the days I wake up with smooth palms I’m angry at myself.
There should be no breaks from this grief. Not even in sleep.
I don’t tell her that. I don’t tell her anything.
I chew on the little green mints she offers & wait for the bell.
Even when he came to visit
this house he paid for & updated,
Papi treated Tía like an older sister:
so much respect for how she kept the house,
for the beliefs she had,
the decisions she made regarding my well-being.
They were friends. But until this moment
I have not thought of what she’s lost.
He was like her brother. Besides me, her only family.
If you are not from an island,
you cannot understand
what it means to be of water:
to learn to curve around the bend,
to learn to rise with rain,
to learn to quench an outside thirst
while all the while
you grow shallow
until there is not one drop
left for you.
I know this is what Tía does not say.
Sand & soil & sinew & smiles:
all bartered. & who reaps? Who eats?
Not us. Not me.
Things you can buy
with half a million dollars:
a car that looks more
like a space creature than a car.
[…]
Five hundred flights
to the Dominican Republic.
A half million Dollar Store chess sets,
with their accompanying boxes.
A hundred thousand copies
of Shakespeare’s The Tempest.
Apparently a father.
I want to put my fingers
against my sister’s cheek.
I want to put my face
in her neck & ask
if she hurts the way I do.
Does she know of me?
Would my father have told her?
Did she share
in his confidences?
While the whole while he lied to me?
Or is she the only one
who would understand
my heart right now?
If I find her
would I find a breathing piece
of myself I had not known
was missing?
I’m the child her father left her for in the summers.
While she is the child my father left me for my entire life.
I do not want to hate a girl with a glowing name.
But I cannot help the anger planted in my chest, fanning
its palm leaves wide & casting a shadow on all I’ve known.
I wonder what kind of girl learns she is almost a millionaire
& doesn’t at all wonder about the girl across the ocean
she will be denying food. Tuition. A dream.
Unless she doesn’t know about me.
Mami still had an air around Papi,
like he was a medicine she knew she needed
even as she cringed at the taste.
But now I wonder
if it was always more than that.
Maybe Mami knew about the other woman?
Even without seeing the certificate.
I think of how the word unhappy houses
so many unanswered questions.
Tía Lidia puts her hand over mine. “Your mother is having
a tough time. Their marriage wasn’t easy, & she has so much
she’s dealing with. Yano was a great father to you,
& I know you loved him, but he wasn’t always a great husband.”
& I don’t know how one man can be so many different things
to the people he was closest to. But I nod. I almost slip and ask
does everyone know? But if they don’t I can’t be the one
to reveal the dirt on my father’s name.
It is strange to go from being an only child
to seeing someone wearing your own face.
Now there is this other person & supposedly she is my sister
where yesterday she was just a name
holding the future I thought I wanted;
now there is a girl of blood & flesh who is
second only to Tía as the closest thing I have to family.
The squares do not overlap.
& neither do the pieces.
The only time two pieces
stand in the same square
is the second before one
is being taken & replaced.
& I know now, Papi could not
move between two families.
[…]
He would glide from family to family,
square to square & never look back.
[…]
Everything has a purpose, Papi taught me.
But what was his in keeping
such big secrets?
I want to offer her platitudes & murmurs
that it will all be all right. But thing is,
this isn’t an uncommon story.
A lot of people don’t finish school
or follow their dreams. That fairy-tale plotline is for
telenovelas.
Neither of us says a word.
On the screen, beyond where she can see my hand,
I trace her chin with my finger.
& for the first time
I don’t just feel loss.
I don’t feel just a big gaping
hole at everything
my father’s absence has consumed.
Look at what it’s spit out & offered.
Look at who it’s given me.
Papi will have two funerals.
Papi will have two ceremonies.
Papi will be mourned in two countries.
Papi will be said goodbye to here & there.
Papi had two lives.
Papi has two daughters.
Papi was a man split in two,
playing a game against himself.
But the problem with that
is that in order to win, you also always lose.
I don’t want to be brisk. It almost hurts me to look
into her wide, soft eyes & ask for so much.
But her softness has nothing to do with the desperation
I feel growing inside me. After Papi’s burial
I will have to leave this place. There is nothing
for me in this town where I see my exit doors growing smaller.
& there was a moment when the wheels first touched down
that my heart plummeted in my chest, but then we were slowing
& a smattering of passengers erupted into applause.
The old lady in the seat beside me said in Spanish,
“They don’t do that as much anymore. This must be a plane
of Dominicans returning home;
when you touch down on this soil, you must clap when you land.
Para dar gracias a dios. Regrezamos.” & I smiled back.
The ceremony we had for Papi in New York
is nothing compared to what is planned in DR.
Tía and Camino arrange an entire party.
Mami looks on disapprovingly
as a band of men in white show up with drums
& tambourines, & it’s a good thing the grave site
isn’t too far from the church because dozens
& dozens of people show up, until we’re a blur,
a smudge of people dressed like ash
advancing down the street.
I borrowed a light-colored dress from Camino,
& we walk down the street arm in arm.
People sing songs I don’t know.
I think Papi would have loved us making such a fuss.
[…] & here we are: Tía like a bishop,
slashing her long machete. Mami, the knight with rims. My body
in front of my sister’s body: queens.
Papi, who I know is here too. He did
build that castle he always promised.
She grabs her purse & drives out.
There was so much I had left to say:
That maybe a bad husband can still be a good parent.
That maybe he tried to be the best he knew how to be.
That he hurt her got caught up there’s no excuse.
But he is not here. He is not here. We are all that’s left.
Zoila & I speak little on these trips,
but when I’m humming along to a song,
she turns up the radio.
& when her face was red from heat
in the clinic waiting room,
I used a magazine to fan it.
It is awkward, these familial ties & breaks we share.
But we are muddling through it.
I skim my feet in the water, with my face stroked by the sun
& pretend it is my father hands on my skin
saying sorry I love you welcome home goodbye.
I forgive you. I forgive you. I forgive you.
Say the waves. Say I.
