I never imagined there could be a child
from my father’s secret marriage.
Or perhaps, my father’s not-so-secret marriage
since it seems everyone else still knew
more than me even Mami
who I was trying to protect.
It’s taken me almost twelve months
to deal with the truth of who my father was
but even that was a lie. My stomach churns,
& I feel myself about to be sick.
I bend my face forward, & Mami puts
a hand on my back. But I pull away from her.
All these lies that we’ve all swallowed,
they’re probably rotting in our stomachs.
“I knew about his wife,” I tell Mami.
“I can’t believe no one told me.”
She shakes her head. “But how?
We didn’t want to burden you.”
I wave my hand at the computer.
“This I didn’t know about.
This—person—I couldn’t imagine.”
I am taking big, gasping breaths.
Mami does not try to rub my back again,
but she gently whispers to me:
“Respira, Yahaira, respira.
Así, nice, big breaths.”
I feel like a spool of thread
that’s been dropped to the ground.
I’m rolling undone
from the truth of this thing.
A sister. A sister. A sister.
Ma tries to explain things to me,
but I feel like I’ve been dropped
into a part of the story
where all of the characters are unfamiliar.
“She was my friend. His other wife.
I actually met him through her.”
He married the other woman
after her, so it wasn’t technically legal.
But the other woman didn’t know that
until much, much later.
Mami married my father
against her own father’s wishes.
My maternal grandfather was high up in the military
& wanted Mami to marry someone of rank.
My mother says she almost died
when she learned of Papi’s betrayal.
All the people she dismissed when marrying Papi,
only to have him betray her a few months after they wed.
She cannot get through the story
without her voice breaking
my entire heart. & then she tells me
what I did not expect.
“She’s dead, his wife. Did you know?
Almost ten years ago. Your father never got over it.
Neither did I. I used to wish she’d go away,
but it was unthinkable, the way it happened.”
I want to hate this dead woman. For the way
even talking about her twists up my mother’s face.
This dead woman, who made my father visit,
& have a child, & board a plane that fell into the ocean.
I am slow to put the pieces together.
I want to hate a dead woman, & her daughter
who most likely hates me for making my father
leave her in the first place.
Without thinking, I ask Mami why.
Mami sifts through her thoughts
as if trying to figure out what I’m really asking.
& I mean all of it. Why would Papi
do this to her? To us?
“He told me once, with me,
he felt like he had to perform,
become a character in a play,
he had to prove he was good enough.
That he had earned the right
to marry the heralded general’s only child.
But with her, with the woman who was my friend,
who was his childhood friend, he could take off
the mask.
I was an aspiration, a flame he wanted to kiss.
But for her, he would have lit the entire island.
I was a smart decision. She made a dreamer of him.
& well, for the child that came, he sacrificed it all.
He loved you both. Understand that.
A part of me even thinks he might have loved me
& his other wife too.
Yano was a complicated man.
After she died, I refused to have the child here.
It was all too much. I don’t know! I can’t explain.
Your father refused not to be in her life;
he would not abandon her completely.
I know now,
I should not ever have asked it of him.
So he created a theater of his life
& got lost in all the different roles he had to play.”
Mami seems so tired
after telling me what she knows
& I feel so tired just
want to speak to Mami
anymore. She must
realize I need a break
from her, from this, because
she kisses me good night
& only sighs when I
do not say the words back.
I know, in the place
inside me that is still clear
& fair, this is not my mother’s
fault. But I’m just so damn
tired of being lied to, & she
is the only one who is here
for me to be angry at.
I sit & stare at the message
Camino Rios sent me.
I sit & stare at the picture
of my father proudly hugging
a child that is not me.
I could delete the message.
I should delete the message.
Why say a single thing
to this girl I do not know?
I will decline her friend request.
Camino Yahaira
When I get home from picking up my report card
there is a notification shining blue
on my tablet.
It’s been days since I sent the message.
I stopped believing she’d ever see it.
I stopped checking it incessantly.
But now, here is a response.
Tía asks me if I want something to eat
but I feel so queasy, I don’t think I could.
I unlock the tablet & take a deep breath.
There is shock in the list of questions
the girl, Yahaira, has sent my way.
& it is clear she did not know
I existed.
Message from Yahaira Rios:
How old are you?
Did Papi live with you when he visited?
Where in the Dominican Republic do you live?
Have you ever been to the States?
Who do you live with there?
Do you have other siblings?
How did you learn Papi had died?
I think we need to video-chat.
As far back as I’ve had memory to keep me company,
It’s been Tía & me making an existence.
Papi, someone who was only present by voice & pixelated face,
& by his summer visits that were always too short.
I was not the kind of child who wanted siblings,
or someone to play with my hair.
Sometimes, I would miss the mother I barely knew,
but mostly, Tía was all the parent I needed;
all the family I thought I wanted.
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.
I do not repl
y to her.
Even though I know
the message will show as read.
I take a moment to figure out
what it is I want to say.
I am nervous to admit to Tía what I’ve done.
That I’ve reached out
& told her my father’s secret:
I Exist.
I must make a sound.
Because Tía looks up from her reading
or maybe in her magic way, she just knows.
Our backyard rooster crows an evening song.
“I reached out to Yahaira. Papi’s girl. She responded.”
Tía puts down her book but is otherwise silent.
“She wants to talk. She wants to video-chat.”
& it comes as a surprise to me,
but all of a sudden I’m crying, the sob
pulled up from the well in my chest,
full & wet, & Tía must have been expecting it.
She scoops me to her.
“Ya, mi’ja, ya. Ya, mi’ja, ya.”
What I respond
to this Yahaira:
Hello. Yes.
We should talk.
Camino Yahaira
“You’re in this square
& squares don’t overlap.”
Papi taught me every piece
has its own space.
Papi taught me every piece
moves in its own way.
Papi taught me every piece
has its own purpose.
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.
When he was here—he was mine,
when he was there he was theirs.
He would glide from family to family,
square to square & never look back.
It’s why I heard so little from him
when he was gone.
It’s why the girl in DR
needed to message me
to confirm I am my father’s daughter.
Everything has a purpose, Papi taught me.
But what was his in keeping
such big secrets?
Thirty-Six Days After
We eat in silence. We haven’t sat
at the dinner table since Papi.
Instead, we bring plates to the couch
& pretend to eat with them in our laps.
I haven’t seen Mami wear makeup
in weeks, & her chancletas
are the only footwear she rocks these days.
Between commercials I play on my phone.
Now that school’s out, I don’t even have
homework to distract me from the silence
which is why I’m surprised today
when Mami mutes her novela to say
“We need to make plans for your future;
we are the only family we have left.”
Because Mami did not want to legally fight Papi’s will,
after Papi’s remains are released to us
he’ll be flown back to DR to be buried.
Mami refuses to talk about the body.
After she goes to bed, I begin doing research
on what I would need to travel.
It is funny how money has no regard for time.
How it eases past minutes to get you what you want.
Thankfully, I have a passport. Papi had me get one years ago
when it became clear I might qualify for tournaments abroad.
For a ticket, I used Mami’s credit card.
Mami does not remove any passwords from our computer,
& I log on to her bank account & ensure we have enough.
I still don’t know if I have the courage
to do what I want to do, & I know I can’t plan this trip alone
but somehow, some way, I know I need to be there
the day that Papi gets buried. I need to meet this sister.
I don’t know
how much of
my desire
to meet Camino
is because
all of a sudden
I have a sister,
& that’s very
What the fuck?
But also, maybe,
a part of me feels
that she is a piece
of Papi.
That in her body
there will be answers
for all the questions
he left behind.
How could she
have existed
this whole time
without me?
Me without her?
Nothing has been logical
since the morning
Mami came to school,
but in my heart
of hearts I know
whatever I need to find
I’ll need to go.
Thirty-Seven Days After
Mami has not asked me again
about the online message.
& I have not given
her any updates.
I told Dre because holding it in
was killing me.
She shook her head & pushed
a loud whistle through her teeth.
“Damn, who would have thought
Poppa Rios had it in him?”
After a moment she said,
“Maybe it’s better you didn’t know?”
How can you lose
an entire person,
only to gain a part of them back
in someone entirely new?
“I think I need to go meet her,
with Papi’s body, I mean.”
Dre nods without hesitation.
“Yes. It’s the right thing to do.”
& although her words
should be a comfort,
a twinge of annoyance twists
my mouth. How could she
possibly know the right thing
to do? In a situation like this,
how would anyone know
so easily right from wrong
when it all seems like we are
pivoting left, spinning in circles.
Camino Yahaira
I think I hate this sister.
She messages me
that she has acquired a plane ticket.
& how easy she says it.
Because it wasn’t endless paperwork,
because no one wondered if she would
want to overstay her visa.
The years my father tried
to get me to the States,
& that girl over there fills out a short form,
is granted permission, given a blue book—
shit, an entire welcome mat to the world.
I squeeze my tablet so hard
I’m surprised I don’t crack the screen.
Her mother will not let her come, & she is planning
to do so behind her back.
That takes strength. I know if it were me,
Tía would kill me dead,
then have the spirits bring me back to life
so she could murder me all over again.
As much as I want to hate this girl,
I also have to admire what she will do to get here.
& I hope that she will admire
all I will do to get there, too.
Forty Days After
It’s been three weeks since Carline gave birth.
I visit her every few days. Today carrying
vitamins & cloth diapers on top of my head,
I let my arms swing freely.
When I was little, my mother told me
she used to carry bundles of mangoes
to the market this way.
On mornings like this I pretend I’m her:
a girl who can carry water on
her crown,
who can walk barefoot without being scorched.
Although, I’m wearing a pair of Jordans that I now think
were probably my sister’s first;
they were not new when Papi
brought them to me, & I think back to all the hand-me-downs
I didn’t know were that other girl’s castoffs.
When I get to the house, Carline is there alone.
She chews on a thumbnail while little Luciano
sleeps quietly in a crib. In another country,
this baby would still be in the intensive care unit,
but these are Kreyòl-speaking folk who cannot afford
either the bill or the legalities that would come with hospitals.
Although Carline will not utter the words,
I know she still expects the baby to die.
He is just so, so small.
Carline takes the bundle from me slowly
& unwraps it like it might contain precious gems.
I ask her if I can wake the baby to check if he’s doing all right.
Tía has taught me how to listen to the babies’ hearts & swab
their throats for mucus. She has taught me how to feel
the neck for fever, to look for infection where the cord was cut.
Carline nods but gives me a long look. & I know her eyes
are telling me to be careful. We are friends, but she
is a mother now, & she is wary of anyone hurting her child.
She tells me Nelson is working himself to the bone
trying to save enough to move them out
& is also considering dropping out of school.
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.
Instead of saying soft, nice words, I fold clean towels
& stack dirty dishes. I sweep & make myself useful.
It is the best kind of gift I can offer Carline.
My father having two families
is also not an uncommon story.
When Yahaira messaged me
she seemed unutterably betrayed.
As if she couldn’t believe this of Papi.
But me, I know a man can have many faces & speak out of
both sides of his mouth; I know a man can make decisions
based on the flip of a coin;
a man can be real good at long division,