Today, I decide to remember.
Today I am Sarai.
14 going on 15 from Bushwick, Brooklyn.
I start describing my body.
A body that is mine, and will never be anyone else’s.
NEW WORDS/STATISTIC/
A FACT OR PIECE OF DATA FROM A STUDY OF A LARGE COLLECTION OF NUMERICAL DATA
Nobody wants to admit it,
but everyone is scared of something.
Sometimes anger
is how we show we are afraid.
Mami’s case workers are afraid
they’ll miss a lunch break
when the office is packed with people
who haven’t eaten either.
Mami is afraid one day they’ll send her home
with no food stamps at all.
Papi is afraid
I’ll grow up to hate him like Mami does.
Estrella is afraid
of being afraid.
Danny is afraid
we’ll forget his snacks when we visit him.
Bori Wela is afraid
Mami will never come back to Puerto Rico.
Lala is afraid
if she doesn’t work hard she won’t make it.
The cops are afraid
one day we’ll decide we won’t need them.
G is afraid he’ll never make enough money
to quit dealing.
I am afraid
none of what I am afraid of will matter.
TONY’S PIZZA
At Tony’s Pizza, Estrella and I peep
some weird couple eating
a slice with a fork and a knife.
Everyone around here folds
their slice in half, maybe because it’s faster
to eat and we are always in a hurry
to get somewhere even
if that somewhere is nowhere at all.
Or maybe folding it in half only
requires one hand
and keeps the other free
in case we need it to tell a story
or protect ourselves from something, anything.
The point is, I learn
a lot about that couple
just by how they eat.
I know they not from here
’cause they not in a rush
and look mad peaceful
using utensils on a pizza
like they found all of the calm
and sliced it for themselves.
NEW WORDS/RESENTMENT/
A FEELING OF ANGER BECAUSE YOU HAVE BEEN FORCED TO ACCEPT SOMETHING THAT YOU DO NOT LIKE
The newspapers said
they gonna start planting trees
on the block
Mami is worried
this means
they are gonna raise the rent.
No one but us
can understand
this anger.
How poor
you have to be
to resent trees.
WELO
died before I was born. A freak car accident in Puerto Rico. Brooklyn Wela tells me the story as she lifts the mattress to pull out the envelope where she keeps her money. The medics said they had never seen something so gruesome. Welo was so unrecognizable they had to have a closed casket funeral. But Wela didn’t need to see his face to cry. She is almost crying now retelling the story. I feel bad for asking about Welo. For being a metiche. You must have been so sad, I say. She laughs a laugh I haven’t inherited yet. She said Welo was so evil not even the Devil would take him. She wasn’t crying out of sadness. She was crying because she was free. I promise myself one day I’ll cry for that reason too.
THINGS WE DON’T TALK ABOUT
PUERTO RICAN HISTORY
At home there are no history lessons on Puerto Rico.
We don’t sing the national anthem around the table.
We don’t talk about being Puerto Rican.
We just live it. You know?
We just eat Puerto Rican
We just drink Puerto Rican
We just dance Puerto Rican
We just sing Puerto Rican
We just pray Puerto Rican
We just fight Puerto Rican
We just cry Puerto Rican
We just laugh Puerto Rican
We just dress Puerto Rican
We just suffer Puerto Rican
& we love Puerto Rican too.
THINGS WE DON’T TALK ABOUT
Everybody has a story.
But Mami doesn’t tell us hers.
Estrella & I take turns guessing
who Mami was before she was our mother.
A Russian spy!
A salsa dancer!
A drill sergeant!
Yo. That last one though!
Estrella and I laugh
& laugh as we make up
pasts for Mami
that might help us understand
her present.
CHURCH BOY
My whole body shivers when I see him.
I blame the Holy Spirit in case someone notices my shaking.
I feel so guilty trying to figure out what
kind of sin Church Boy falls under.
I don’t have any adults to ask about my crush.
None of the women I know have husbands
unless you count Jesus.
All of the women I know are waiting for a man
who left and promised to come back.
Even though she is dating Raffy
Mami says she is una mujer sola
as if her loneliness
is her greatest accomplishment.
I don’t understand it but sometimes I’m proud of her.
How brave to not need anything but hope.
PICKUP LINES
Church Boy says:
I must have been a notebook
in another lifetime.
The one God kept in his back pocket.
With instructions on how to build the world.
FIRST KISS
Our first kiss happens in the church van.
We hop on before everyone else does.
When our tongues first meet they dance
like the white people do in the movies,
awkward but sure of themselves.
When it’s over
Church Boy looks at me
like he wants me to say something
special about him.
But this was never about him.
END OF SUMMER
We know it’s the end of summer
when the usually crack-ridden park
hosts a festival and tents it with meaning.
I sneak in a swing
while Mami watches the performers
move their bodies
in ways she has forbidden herself to.
Her eyes look busy with questions
and it fascinates me to see her curious
about something other
than how to keep us alive.
I HATE MY NEW HIGH SCHOOL
I didn’t get into the school for gifted kids.
I didn’t get into any of the schools I applied to.
I’m stuck with my Zone School.
Lala got into a good school in the city.
She’s on her way to making it and I’m so proud of her.
At my new high school
the teacher throws a Blue Emergency card at my desk.
Said it had the wrong address.
She came looking for me and the lady
who answered the door said I didn’t live there.
I
stared her right in her pretend caring face.
Why you tryna come to my house anyway?
Today, I decide to be braver than my mother.
Today, I am a troublemaker.
A malcriada. My father’s hands. An angry bitch.
I give my mouth permission
to be as dangerous as my neighborhood.
She matches my energy. High school teachers
be acting like they want smoke.
She said maybe if I came to school the first week
she wouldn’t have to go look for me.
I’ve been cutting class a lot to hang out with Church Boy.
My new best friend.
THE COOL WHITE ENGLISH TEACHER
Curses, lets us curse
doesn’t yell, lets us yell
Wears Tommy Hilfiger
& knows the latest hip-hop joints
Asks us what we wanna learn about
tells us things we shouldn’t know
Like how she’ll get in trouble with the principal
if they know she is the cool white teacher
So if they come by for a classroom visit
we’ll have to pretend that we’re doing work
& she’ll have to pretend that she’s teaching
& of course she’s teaching but she may
have to yell at us to be quiet and if we don’t
she may have to call our parents right then & there
So if we want her to keep being
the cool white teacher we have to listen
when people are watching
just so they know she’s down
just so they know
she’s doing her job
STRANGER DANGER
In high school, we have to prove
that we are not what the news says about us.
Even if what the news says about us is good.
Like when that genius kid from the hood got skipped a few grades
and his family had to tell everyone it’s ’cause
he reads a lot ’cause he ain’t have no TV
and not because he cheats a lot like they say
about people like us on TV.
The white teachers won’t say it out loud
but they feel sorry for us.
I can tell by how nice they are.
No one is that nice just because.
They kneel down by our desks
sacrifice their good knees for us.
They get real close to our faces
just like the news reporters do.
Just like they do at the welfare office
when they want to know if Mami is lying
about where she keeps
Papi’s abandon.
They demand we look at them in the eye
while they tell us they understand us.
Pero, I don’t ever see them on the block
so I know that they don’t.
NEW WORDS/INVESTMENTS/
SPEND MONEY NOW TO MAKE MONEY LATER
The cool white teacher says today’s lesson
is about making money.
Class Clown TJ says
Hey, how come we don’t ever learn
about stocks and bonds and shit?
A chorus of woooooord and yooooo carry a
challenge straight under the cool white teacher’s nose.
The cool white teacher says it’s complicated
and that we wouldn’t really understand.
Try us, I push.
I mean to say we know mad complicated shit
the cool white teacher wouldn’t really understand.
The cool white teacher is cool
when she explains.
It’s like when you buy something now
you think might be worth something later.
Class clown TJ screams
like he figured something out.
Oh! Like when I buy Jordans!
Them shits is worth mad bread, miss.
No. The cool white teacher isn’t cool anymore.
You can’t invest in sneakers.
But you can invest in real estate.
Let me give you a real life example.
The cool white teacher uses investment in a sentence.
My husband. . .
Oooooh! all the girls who want someone to love squeal.
Her cool white husband is a real estate agent
and says houses in Bushwick are cheap right now.
Buying houses when they don’t cost much
is a good investment ’cuz they might
be worth more later.
TJ feels dumb now.
I know because he cracks jokes whenever he wants
to let the teachers know they lost his attention.
Okay then.
Ask your husband if he wanna invest in some weed!
The cool white teacher
doesn’t laugh with us & TJ like she normally does.
Everything cool about her is gone.
Now she is just the white teacher.
You want to go to jail, TJ?
Lots of new jails are opening looking for kids like you.
& I think I learned something new today.
I think she means that jails are someone’s investments
but I don’t know if that means someone thinks
we’re worth something or nothing at all.
CLASS CLOWN
I don’t know why we get in trouble for laughing.
If they saw how much time we spent crying
they would be encouraging our laughter instead.
One day our laughter will be revered.
Our laughter will have its own holiday & parade.
Our laughter will be a mandatory course
of study in school.
Our laughter will be researched
& analyzed by scientists.
Religious organizations will call our laughter
a false prophet, fearing we found a new god
in our smile.
We’ll blast our laughter out of car stereos
in the summer so loud that they’ll want to feature it in the opening ceremony of the Olympics.
Maybe our laughter will be the torch.
Maybe they’ll want to make our laughter
the national anthem.
Our laughter will cure our bodies.
Our laughter will be hereditary.
Our laughter will be as full
as the Check Cashing on the first of the month.
Our laughter won’t ever be hungry.
Our laughter won’t ever be worried.
Our laughter will stay strapped.
Our laughter will split skulls.
Our laughter will dance
like it’s never had sense.
Our laughter will sound
like it caught the Holy Spirit.
Our laughter will be so much
of a miracle that God will give it its own heaven.
Maybe one day our laughter
will be so valuable
That someone will want to steal it.
That they will try to bootleg it.
That they will attempt to sell it back to us
at a higher price.
That we will have to protect it.
That it will have to come with a warning.
We’ll have to tell our children
laugh at your own risk
& they will.
they will.
& maybe they do.
maybe we do.
SECOND PERSON
In English class you learn how t
o write in second person
and it becomes your new favorite way to exist.
Suddenly you don’t have to be present-day you.
You can be you in the past.
You can write about your life like you’re observing it.
You can write like you’re wiser now.
Removed from all of the stupidity of the first person.
You are your smarter twin or you are future you
who writes to you in the past
& advises her to make better choices.
You hope this is on the quiz.
AN ENGLISH QUIZ I ACE
The English quiz is on figurative language.
& I have to write a poem using literary devices.
I think of how yesterday’s newspaper
said the police call my block The Well.
& I laughed ’cause there are no actual wells in the hood.
We lucky we even got water. Ha!
They mean it as a metaphor—
a connection between
two unrelated images.
If I had to break down the metaphor:
The deep down water would be the drugs &
the police would be the bucket &
that would make the 83rd precinct
the thirstiest village.
TONE GOES MISSING
It’s been three days since Tone last came home.
In Bushwick, everyone is bound to go missing.
It’s almost a birthright to disappear one day
like your life has earned the trouble
of being searched for. The truth is we all dream
of disappearing somewhere someday.
Mami wants to disappear back to Puerto Rico.
Sometimes, I don’t think she even wants us to come.
Disappearing has to happen alone
in order for it to matter.
In order for it to matter, people have to wonder
and worry about where you could be.
Knowing you matter is the best part
about disappearing.
The worst part is not being around
to hear just how much.