give away piece after piece after piece of himself.
I do not tell Carline any of this. I hand her back the child.
I promise to check on her again next week.
She asks me if I heard back about the message I sent,
but I do not know how to pucker my mouth
around the words I want to say. What does another burden
do for Carline? & a part of me feels shame.
It is then I know, my father has become a secret,
even from my dearest friend. He’s become
an unspeakable name.
All I want
is Papi back.
I want his
booming laugh
to shake the walls.
I want his heavy
knock to the
outside door.
I want his
stupid sayings,
& his angry bellow,
& his mixed-up English
he would pepper
in conversation
& his eyes
that misted over
when he prayed
or when he danced.
There are pieces
of him all over
this barrio,
all over
República Dominicana,
& beyond that
to New York City,
but I can’t bundle
those pieces.
Can’t tie them tight with twine;
can’t blow life into them,
or shed light onto them
or assemble those pieces
to make anything, anyone,
resembling him.
The news no longer shares
updates about the plane crash;
there are more important
or current tragedies to cover.
Throughout the neighborhood,
people keep candles lit in windows,
& every time I walk by a storefront
someone tips their hat
& asks if I need anything.
The rest of the world has moved on
to bigger & juicier news;
so many of us here seem suspended
in time, still waiting for more
information, still hoping
this is a nightmare we’ll wake from.
Forty-Two Days After
My skin itches from missing the sea.
I force myself to help Tía with her cough syrups
& making her rounds until
I snicker one time too many beneath my breath.
Tía waves her hand in my face. “Te fuiste lejo.”
& she’s right. My mind drifted off far away.
“When was the last time you went swimming?
You’re just like your mother.
She was always happiest when she was near the water.
It’s why she loved visiting El Malecón.”
& I know I can’t avoid the water forever, especially not now.
In my room I hold my swimsuit up to my nose
& the scent of laundry soap is a small comfort.
What are arms in the water if not wings?
I slice through the liquid sky.
Push the water behind me.
I move with a speed
I’ve never moved with before.
Out into the ocean & back.
Until my wings again become arms
that are aching
& my lungs need big gulps of air.
I push onto my back & float.
The curved spoon of moon
peeks through clouds.
When I open my eyes
to the sand, there he is.
There he always fucking is.
“You were swimming
as if demons were chasing
with torches behind you.”
I roll my shoulders
before walking calmly to
shimmy into my shorts.
Pretend not to see
El Cero checking out my ass
from where he’s crouching.
“Is this where
you want me, Camino?
Begging at your feet?”
The body is a funny piece of meat.
How it inflates & deflates
in order to keep you alive,
but how simple words can fill you up
or pierce the air out of you.
El Cero gives me more goose bumps
than freezing water. & never the
kind that means you’re moved.
Always the kind that means
run hard & fast in the other direction.
“I don’t want anything from you.”
But he shakes his head almost sadly.
“You need me.”
Leave me alone, Cero. Just leave me the hell alone.
On my way home from the beach I get caught in the rain.
Tía is stirring an asopao in a huge pot; the rice & meat stew
fills the house
with the scent
of bay leaves. She gives me a look & points her large metal spoon
at my tablet. “That thing has been chirping, & you’re lucky
I didn’t put it on the porch so this rain could shut it up.
Turn the volume down on that thing.” Although Papi
was not her brother,
she’d known him forever. I have yet to ask her
how she’s doing. The notifications on my tablet
pop up in long succession.
Esa Yahaira wants to video-chat. & the thought of that
makes my palms sweaty.
What will I see in the face of this girl? Am I ready to see it?
Yahaira & I are supposed
to video-chat after dinner.
But the appointed time has passed,
& I still dawdle in the kitchen,
washing dishes & putting away the leftovers
in recycled margarine containers.
Tía shuffles to her room to watch a novela
& shuts her door. I take my tablet to the porch
although the tiles are still wet,
although the Wi-Fi is faintest here.
It’s almost as if I want a reason
not to speak to the girl.
I have missed two calls.
& five minutes later my tablet chimes.
The porch light is faint, but when I answer,
the light behind the girl
is bright bright bright.
& as her face comes into focus my heart stops.
She has Papi’s face.
His tight curls. His broad nose.
Her lips are shaped different but full like his.
My sister is pretty. Darker than me,
& clearly eating better, yet
I know that strangers in the street
would look at us
& peg easily that we are related;
we are of the same features.
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.
Camino Yahaira
Camino is like a golden version of me,
with long loose curls hanging wet down her back.
She tells me she likes to swim & was at the beach.
She has the look of a swimmer, long limbed, thin.
She doesn’t smile much on the call,
& I press my shaky hands together;
I don’t want her to see that I’m nervous.
We don’t spend much time chitchatting.
In fact, for the first couple of seconds,
we are completely silent.
I memorize
her features
& puzzle-piece her face, see my own there
& Papi’s. I compare what our mothers must have given us.
But I suspect if I say any of this out loud Camino will shut down.
She does not offer me many long sentences;
& her face shows no enthusiasm to connect.
She seems like she is not the type to deal with emotions well.
So I move to what I know how to do: strategy.
I outline what I’m thinking, my plans for attending
the funeral. & then I tell her what I’ll need from her.
She is silent a moment. Slow to agree.
& the way her forehead wrinkles
looks just like Papi’s used to when he was trying to figure out
if I had laid a trap down for his king to fall into.
Finally she nods.
Forty-Three Days After
I can’t remember the last time
Mami & I went shopping together.
We don’t got the same taste at all;
every Christmas & birthday Mami will buy me
cute little rompers & low-cut shirts & I’ll have to throw
on leggings under or a button-down on top.
Not that I don’t look cute,
but just that our styles don’t necessarily match.
& it’s easy to remember why. Mami
is a showpiece of a woman. Her long hair
sleek & shiny down to the middle of her back,
jeans tighter than mine, tight shirt too.
She doesn’t look like an American-apple-pie mother.
She looks like a tres golpes of a mother.
& I’ve forgotten that these last weeks she’s piled her hair into rollers
& rocked nothing but dusty sweats & slippers.
But it is obvious now, as dudes eye her as we walk
(I walk, Mami swishes her big butt).
She’s just every kind of feminine,
& I’ve never been sure I’d measure up.
Camino would probably be thought her daughter before me.
I grab Mami’s hand & move closer to her.
A childish move, I know. But a reminder to all of us,
she is mine. & only mine.
“You ever wish I looked more like you?
That people looked at you &
didn’t have to wonder at our relationship?”
Mami looks startled by the question.
“Y esa ridícule? What you mean, looked more like me?
You look just like me. Your heart-shaped mouth,
your fat big toe, your ears like seashells;
your eyes same brown as mine.
You got your father’s coloring, kinked hair,
& stubbornness, but the rest of you is all me.
& anyone that can’t see that que se vayan al carajo.”
Mami is annoyed. I can tell by the pinched jawline.
The same way my jaw looks pinched when I’m annoyed.
“Everyone always said I looked just like Papi.”
For some reason I want to keep pushing her.
I want her to defend all the parts of her that live in me.
“Ay, Mamita.” Mami’s face smooths out.
We are standing still on the sidewalk,
& the hustle & bustle of Grand Concourse,
the people running in & out of shops, fade away;
the heat sticks to our bodies, a second skin.
I take a deep, warm breath.
“People loved to say you were your father’s daughter.
& you, you loved to hear it. I’m sure you’ve always thought
me silly or superficial, or qué sé yo, too girly?
You, you’ve always been the best of daughters.
& already so beautiful. So good at makeup & funky clothes.
O, ¡pero claro! I wish you would straighten your hair more.
But I also understand your style doesn’t have to be my own.
I have my fingerprints all over you.
& I don’t need the world to see them
to know that they’re there.”
Although Mami is dead-ass serious
that she isn’t going to the DR funeral,
she is the one who visits the morgue
when we are given custody of what is left of Papi’s body;
she is the one who decides what to do with the remains.
Who takes Papi’s favorite navy blue suit to the mortician.
She is the one who comes home ashy gray in the face.
Who does not describe
what the leftovers look like, only hugs me to her.
She is the one who says, “Thank goodness
for that damn gold tooth.”
She is the one who calls the Dominican Republic
& says, “It needs to be a closed casket;
whatever you do, don’t let the girl see what is left.”
& I know she means Camino, means to spare her.
I don’t understand my parents’ kind of love & hate.
What it must take for Mami to lose him all over.
But I know she must have love for him, right?
She is so, so tender when she irons & folds
the purple pocket square that will go inside his grave.
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.
All I want
is my father back.
footsteps to tread
outside my door.
I want his
stupid sayings,
& his angry bellow,
& rapid Spanish,
& his eyes
that misted over
when his favorite
song played.
There are pieces
of him all over
the house,
all over New York City,
& beyond that to the island,
but I can’t bundle
them together
to make anything,
anyone
resembling him.
Camino Yahaira
Forty-Five Days After
The school year ended weeks ago. I’ve hidden three bills
the school’s sent beneath a candle Tía never moves.
I’m hoping the Saints will step in.
I don’t know how I’ll pay for it. But my sister & her mother
are rich, & damn if they don’t owe me something.
I just hope Tía doesn’t find the bills first.
In a week & some change, July 29, I will turn seventeen.
The same day my father’s remains will be buried.
I don’t know if my sister knows
that day is my birthday. & I don’t tell her.
At the beach I swim until I hit the resort buoys, then swim back.
& mostly ignore El Cero watching from the water bank.
He’s started taking out his phone
& recording me on the beach
I do not want to think what he does with these videos.
I help Tía with her rounds of the neighborhood.
We visit the lady with cancer & wipe her brow.
I sit with Carline & her baby.
I count down the days to the end of July.
Forty-Six Days After
Four days before my sister is supposed to arrive,
I finally get my nerve up. I call her after dinner.
She answers with a smile. I know it will not last.
“I won’t tell you any details about the funeral
unless you transfer me mon
ey. You’ll show up
for nothing. My Tía won’t help you sneak over here.”
I don’t want to be brisk. It almost hurts me to look
into her wide, soft eyes & ask for so 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.
My words, weighed down, become an avalanche.
In the blink of a second Yahaira’s face goes blank.
She leans back in her seat. “Of course. It’s your money too.
You didn’t have to threaten me to ask for it.
We haven’t gotten the advance in full,
but how much would you like me to transfer?”
I don’t know if it’s her cool tone or my guilt that causes me to flinch.
She can say whatever she wants, but no one,
no one gives you something simply for asking.
Life is an exchange; you’d think a chess player would know that.
“Ten thousand. You can keep everything else.”
I swallow back the bile that rises in my mouth.
I will make it alone on my own two feet. I give Yahaira
the information to wire cash. She promises to do it this week.
I hang up the phone without saying goodbye.
It seems easiest not to get attached to this sister,
to not give her a single reason to get attached to me.
Yahaira sends me the money & her flight plans.
She bought the flight with a credit card
that her mother doesn’t check.
She asks if I can pick her up from the airport.
& I want to ask her what car she thinks I have.
Or maybe she imagines like a mule
I will sling her across my back?
I may be a pobrecita right now,
but I am no one’s errand girl.
Perhaps she thinks she’s bought my compliance?
Perhaps that’s what I implied.
But I am annoyed to be treated like a servant girl.
All that money & she can’t just order a taxi?
But honestly, the taxi drivers are thieves.
& what if something happened to her,
a gringuita alone? Tía would kill me.
My father’s ghost would probably haunt me.
My guilt for sure would. I already feel horrible
about the money that was transferred to Western Union.