to protect us from evil.
On one side of the wall
a woman screams at God in pleasure or pain.
On the other side of the wall
Mami screams at God.
WOMEN, INFANTS & CHILDREN
Mami gets a check once a month
that she can trade in the store for food.
We can’t trade it for Chinese food,
cuchifritos or Taco Bell though, which is wack.
WIC vouchers look like a real check
& you actually have to sign for your food
and show ID, I guess to make sure
no one else is tryna steal your poor-ass identity.
I think if someone is tryna steal
Mami’s WIC check
they must need it more than us.
Anyway, instead of a dollar amount
the check shows you the type of food,
how much food and even the name brand
of food you are allowed to get.
There is usually no way around this.
Goldo could risk losing his license
if he was caught allowing us
to get things that are not on the list.
But sometimes we swap the Juicy Juice
for some 7-Up and Goldo acts
like he didn’t see shit.
HOW WE GOT OUR NAMES
TROPICAL FANTASY
I cop the pineapple Tropical Fantasy & Estrella says
they put these drinks in our hoods to kill us.
Think about it. You ever see Tropical Fantasy
in white people stores?
I ain’t never been to no white people store
so how am I supposed to know what they drink?
I roll my eyes at Estrella and drink it anyway.
’cause if the soda doesn’t kill me the thirst will.
Plus, I kind of like saying that I’m going to the store
to buy a Tropical Fantasy.
As if I can finally afford something
that I wasn’t supposed to.
SIDE HUSTLE
I didn’t even get to enjoy my Tropical Fantasy
when I peep Mami running down Knickerbocker Avenue.
Raffy don’t see her
about to charge him.
He is too busy screaming Tempooooo.
Tempooooo para las cucarachas. Tempoooo.
Mami’s hands catch up with Raffy
before her body does.
She slaps Raffy per syllable.
SIN-VER-GÜEN-ZA. MAL-PA-RI-DO.
She ends with a two-syllable punch CA-BRÓN
before he grabs her wrists and stops her.
Mami has been giving Raffy train money
so he could go to the city and search for a job
& here he is using it to buy & flip
roach poison in the hood.
Mami is yelling so loud
I think she might give birth.
Yo aquí matándome y estas muchachas con hambre
& you can’t even find a real job. Canto estúpido.
Raffy yells back that this is a real job.
& pulls out mad wrinkled dollars from his socks.
Mami rips the money from his hands and gives it to me.
Sarai, go order a pepperoni pie and get a two-liter 7-Up.
I feel bad for Mami & Raffy.
Worried about where they gonna get the next dollar.
But I can’t be worried
about adult problems.
’Cause tonight we eating good.
Tonight we eating good.
LEAVE BEFORE YOU’RE LEFT
Back at the motel Mami picks up Estrella
& my clothes from the floor
& stuffs them into black garbage bags.
We don’t own no suitcases or book bags.
Just a shopping cart and
some 99 cents bootleg Heftys.
She says we going back to the church
before Raffy comes by looking for her.
She don’t wanna be around no man
that lies to her.
She wants to shake him up a little bit.
Make him worry about her.
Make him regret treating her like a fool.
He got too comfortable. Like all men do
when they get a good thing going.
Better to leave than to be left.
Look how loyal we are to him now.
Look how much we appreciate him now.
Look how we ask for forgiveness.
& wait for him to come back.
HOW WE GOT OUR NAMES
ANGRY BITCHES
Sarai, don’t ever trust a man with the truth, Mami said.
They only want lies. Fantasías.
Things that make them feel good
even if it makes you feel bad.
Like the time Mami gave herself the gift of being glass,
and Papi only saw her shards.
Now every time I see Papi, I practice smiling.
If I ever have to cry around him,
I make sure it sounds like laughter.
Pero of course, I know how to be multiple things at once.
I come from a woman who prays like she’s fighting.
I come from a woman who will burn her hands
for you to have a hot meal
but will tell you to serve yourself.
I come from a woman so passionate
the world calls her angry.
Maybe Mami’s not angry.
Maybe she just knows what she’s worth.
EL BODEGUERO
Toward the end of the month
Mami has racked up so much credit
that Goldo doesn’t allow her to borrow anything else
until she’s paid off what she owes.
I thought Goldo was an asshole for that
until this weekend, when Papi decides
to be a really good father and buys us
salami and cheese sandwiches.
Goldo tells Papi that he’s glad Papi comes around
and buys us food because he worries
about us being hungry all the time
but doesn’t wanna let Mami borrow so much
that she spends all her money paying him back
and can’t afford to buy us anything else.
I look at the cruel man with the stocked shelves
and then at my new jelly sandals
Mami got us from Payless &
I decide to gift him a forgiving smile
but he can’t smile back.
Papi’s hands are already around his neck
like a microphone he is yelling into
his voice echoing to the whole store
that he always makes sure his kids are good
and that the next time Goldo decides
not to mind his business
he might not have a business to mind.
GOOD JOBS
BAD JOBS
Papi is a carpenter at a woodworking factory
on Hart Street.
He makes custom furniture
for la gente rica in Manhattan.
Hart Street is one of the nicer blocks
in Bushwick
where people own their houses
and the grass isn’t so littered
with dope baggies.
Mami says Papi only got a job that good
because he blends in with the gringos.
I think of Welo and remember what Wela said.
Papi es un blanco Puerto Rican.
Papi and his green eyes could pass
for Irish, maybe Italian,
as long as he didn’t open his mouth.
Mami told me Raffy tried to get a job there
but was told he just didn’t have the look
to lock in big furniture contracts,
which I think means he was too brown.
Papi thinks it’s ridiculous
to blame his light eyes and skin
for him having a good job. He’s worked hard to be where he’s at.
Doesn’t matter what color you are or where you’re from.
Just work hard & you’ll make it, he says.
Just work hard and you’ll make it.
ERASURE
I’m thinking about why
we don’t talk about color.
I remember once in art class
we talked about how the color white
is actually composed
of many different colors.
But no one ever talks about that
so it ends up that the color white
absence of the other colors.
In other words
white needs the other colors to simply exist
but those other colors never
get any credit.
Unless you start doing research
or pay attention in art class you’d
never know they’re even there.
Makes you wonder
if white is even a color at all
if it can only exist when
all of the other colors
are erased.
HOW WE GOT OUR NAMES
FIVE DOLLAR SHOE STORE
The first of the month is here
and that’s when Mami has the most money.
A new shoe store opened up
on Knickerbocker Avenue and everyone’s hype.
Unlike Payless, which is quickly becoming Paymore,
the Five Dollar Shoe Store lets us know exactly how
much we gotta sacrifice out of our food budget
for a new pair of kicks.
I ain’t never seen something
named so honestly.
PORK-FRIED RICE MONEY
If Mami has some money left over after we pay Goldo
we walk over to the Chinos on Knickerbocker.
Mami lets us get whatever we want.
I always order an egg roll, dollar fries with extra ketchup & barbecue sauce.
Mami gets the beef and broccoli
just so we can have some vegetables.
If she’s in a good mood
we get to eat our food at the restaurant
and for a moment everybody on the block
can see us living good
through the clear glass windows. There are mirrors
on the walls and I take advantage of seeing myself happy.
My mouth slick with grease.
My lips, full and glossed.
HOW WE GOT OUR NAMES
DANNY
My brother Danny used to live with Mami.
When Papi left, Mami said she noticed
Danny needed more help
than she could give him.
He couldn’t keep
moving from place to place with us.
So now he lives in a home
for people with disabilities.
Mami says this is temporary.
Until we get on our feet.
Now we visit him every Saturday
at a place where the furniture is bolted to the floor.
We wait for the 13 bus on Myrtle Avenue
then ride it to the last stop,
where the grass is so green it tricks you
into thinking you’ve left New York.
There is a merry-go-round in the middle
of the trickster field,
so colorful you almost forget
how sad the whole story is.
VISITING DANNY AT THE GROUP HOME
Danny yells out Estrella’s name when he sees me.
He can’t pronounce it fully so he says Lela.
I don’t tell him I’m Sarai
because I know it makes him feel good
to recognize someone he grew up with.
Estrella can’t come ’cuz Mami can only afford
one bus token for herself & since I’m short
I duck a little bit & get on the bus for free.
I get on first ’cause we never know how the bus driver
is gonna react to me tryna get over on the fare.
If the bus driver is in a good mood he’ll let it slide.
If the bus driver is in a bad mood he’ll kick us out
& we’ll wait for the next bus
& start all over again.
Danny doesn’t know me.
& I don’t know him.
He went to live at the home before either of us
could form memories of each other.
He talks differently than we do. He slurs his words,
& sounds like he’s talking in slow motion.
Danny can say our names
and ask for junk food.
We are always ready with
Cheez Doodles, Devil Dogs & quarter juices.
ANTONIO
At the bodega while paying the rest of what she owed to Goldo, Mami met this dude named Antonio.
He said to call him Tone.
Tone must have reminded her of God
or something because suddenly she started speaking
like she does when she’s praying.
She told Tone about where we live and don’t live,
what we eat and don’t eat.
About Raffy cogiéndola de pendeja.
& Tone being “the savior” that Mami
guessed him to be, said that he has an extra bedroom
in his three-bedroom apartment on Troutman Street
and that we could stay there
as long as we needed to.
All she had to do was give him half the rent:
two hundred dollars a month.
Mami said Gracias a Dios even though she meant
Gracias a Antonio. She apologized as she told Goldo
that she’d only be paying half of her balance today.
I’m excited at the thought of having a permanent place to live.
A home that lets me get to know it long enough
to give me something to write about.
THE APARTMENT ON TROUTMAN STREET
Tone’s apartment is on Troutman & Irving.
The hottest block in Bushwick.
We move in at night so no one asks any questions.
Tone says the front door is always broken
so we don’t need keys.
The new crib is on the 3rd floor.
Some stairs are missing and the railing
wiggles like a tooth that’s about to fall out ya mouth.
The hallway smells like something died here.
The R.I.P. tags on the walls
lets me know that someone did.
On the door a sticker that says 3R is peeling off.
Struggling like everything else.
The door got mad locks and Tone struggles
to push it open. It fights against newspapers,
and boxes stacked on each other behind the door.
Inside, I flick the light switch and nothing happens.
Tone says he’s working on the light bill
and grabs a flashlight from a crate.
The light dances over more crates full of hammers
and drills and tools I can’t name.
I scan the rooms with the flashlight
like I’m investigating a crime scene.
The entire apartment looks like a repair shop.
TVs with no backs, radios with no dial buttons,
busted speakers, fans with wires blowing out of them.
I almost slip on some batteries.
A few rusty cans with brown water in them
are scattered all over the floor.
Estrella & I spot an intact TV.
Tone says it works
& we can have it.
It’s the first thing we move into our new room.
We argue about what show we’re gonna watch first.
She wants to watch the baby mama drama
on Ricki Lake but I wanna watch the news
which I’m sure will be better than a talk show
’cause the drama is always us.
THE NEWS SAYS BUSHWICK HAS A DRUG PROBLEM
but I don’t see anybody trying to fix it.
If they were, I wouldn’t have to skip over Julie
in our new hallway.
I’m so careful not to wake her up.
She looks like she found a peace
most of us haven’t yet.
Sometimes, when I am trying to beat the rats
to the front door, Julie shrieks and jumps up.
I know this means I’ll be late to school
’cause Julie makes me stand in front of her.
She fixes my hair and clothes and commands me
in a voice that sounds like regret to stay in school.
She has me make promises to her on the spot.
Promise that I won’t be like her.
Promise that I’ll bring her some food
if I have any left over from lunch, even if it’s an apple,
she’s cool with just an apple.
She stay asking for food
even though when I come back
home with it she’s gone.
It makes me wonder if she remembers
what she asked me for or if she just wants
to be on someone’s mind throughout the day.
She stands in front of me like I am her reflection.
She tells me I am so, so beautiful
and since I am her mirror