like the eloquent pig Wilbur
in Charlotte’s Web.
Who is responsible
for these crimes
in the barrio? Who needs
a Puerto Rican accent, a second
last name, or the answer
to the question,
Where are you from?
desperately enough
to break into a basement
apartment, #35½ Market Street,
to steal it
from a fifteen-year-old girl
named María?
She is so subtle, this thief,
that practically
your entire childhood is gone
before you really notice.
You have heard of these strange things
happening to other people,
in exciting places like San Francisco
or Miami, but not
in this barrio,
and not to you.
Finally,
you decide to report
these losses to the police.
We recognize the M.O.,
the officer tells you,
it is a serial thief
who slips through our hands
every time. There is nothing
anyone can do to stop him, yet
it is a matter
of time. Only time will tell
who has taken
your childhood, María.
All we can do is wait and see,
wait and see
if we can catch this thief,
in time, maybe we will.
To this day
the crimes in the barrio
continue day-by-day,
week-by-week,
and year-by-year.
It is all still a mystery
that may not be solved
in my time.
I climb the stairs and stand outside the open door
of Uma’s apartment where I can see my friend
kneeling at the window, waiting, for a lover
whose only true passion is his own face in the mirror.
Heartbroken, her tears must sting like hard little grains
of rice, like wedding rice thrown at her face.
The bride wore red, Uma had told me
about a marriage ceremony in her country. But I will wear
a white dress made of silk and lace when I marry in America.
Uma’s mother sits in her room
reading the letters of her dead husband,
instructions from the grave,
while her daughter kneels at the window waiting,
waiting for what?
For her American prince to rescue her?
Peering over Uma’s hunched shoulders
I can see a little child wearing a red dress and a white cap,
playing on the sidewalk, suddenly
spooling out from her mother, almost into the traffic,
then quickly pulled back to safety by her voice,
out and back,
like a yo-yo on an invisible string.
Uma! The mother calls
from the darkened room, the back bedroom
thick with incense, where the faces of dead relatives
speak to Uma’s mother from their gilded frames,
telling her how to live in this land of too much freedom,
and what to do about her daughter
who loves only himself. Uma!
and Uma is reeled in toward her mother
like a small golden fish, thrust into a sealed world
of sandalwood smoke, of prayer rugs, veils,
and memories.
Uma, I had warned my friend,
he will break your heart. The papi-lindo cannot love
anyone but himself, and all his conquests are little mirrors
he puts up in his room so he can see himself
through each girl’s eyes. But when he made a song
of her name Uma, mi bonita Uma, ven, ven, ven,
she went to him like an arrow to the target,
up the stairs into his arms she raced,
wearing a blue sari trimmed with tiny silver stars and moons;
her skin of dark honey, scented with the steamed perfume
of rose petals, leaving a trail like a comet’s tail
up the stairs, down the hallway,
and into his apartment.
Afterward, she brought me
the words he had spoken in her ear: mi amor, mi vida, Mamacita.
Words spiced with adobo, with sofrito, and cooked over an open fire.
I am his life, is this not what it means, María? No, Uma,
to him you are only a new taste on his tongue, the flavor
of new spices — el sabor del día.
Uma, now kept in
by your mother’s fears, you wait each afternoon for the sight
of him, leaping off the bus like an action hero, scaring the pigeons
roosting on the window ledge. But he does not
even glance up, because he is only looking at his own feet
in their fancy Italian shoes, at his own reflection
in the dirty storefront window of the bodega. He is only
lusting after the expensive car that drives by, locked tight
and armored against the dangers of the barrio.
Uma, come down the stairs and be my friend.
I will tell you about the Emancipation Proclamation, about the Alamo,
the Louisiana Purchase, and Eleanor Roosevelt. We will
memorize the names of all the presidents. We will
look at the map together, make lists of cities
we will see someday; cities with names
like songs: Albany, Carmel, Phoenix, San Francisco,
Baton Rouge. Someday we will drive to the capitals
of Europe, the Middle and the Far East without crossing the ocean.
We’ll go to Rome, Georgia, to Cairo, Illinois,
and to Paris, Texas —
we will drive a convertible all over the world
and never leave America.
Yet I say nothing.
I cannot speak, nor step into the other world beyond the doorway,
where Uma’s mother chants her ancient prayers. Ghosts
are calling out to Uma in her native tongue today,
pulling her to their side.
Uma sways back and forth,
as if there were a rubber band attached to her spine. Uma
in her white funeral sari, gathering
her heavy veil of la tristeza
over her head, holds tight, tight to the window ledge, stays
on her knees at her window — waiting for the living to call her back
to her American life in Spanish or English
or both?
I go back downstairs
and play the best salsa song I know, loud. Loud! I play the tune
that forces your hips and feet to move, even against your will.
I turn up the volume
with the door and windows wide open, sending
the canción up like a spell against death, against sadness, up
and up one flight of stairs: Come down, Uma,
let’s paint our nails red and practice dancing salsa. I will
teach you some new Spanish words, Uma: ¡Bailar, cantar, vivir!
I say these words like a prayer, a spell against la tristeza.
I chant them like I have heard Uma and her mother do,
adding them to the song already climbing the stairs.
And for once my father is right! Music can
change the world, one heart at a time. Un corazón, dos, tres,
then, maybe, the entire universe.
At the threshold of my door
stand Uma and her mother holding hands, black streaks of kohl
running down their cheeks from tears, but trying hard to smile.
&nbs
p; “My mother,” says Uma, “wonders if you will teach us
how to dance the salsa.”
Uma’s mother extends one hand to me, and we become
a salsa triangle. “It’s all in the hips,” I remind them,
“it’s all in the hips.”
Ms. Coronado likes to quote complicated scientific facts
about the beauty and wonder of the natural world
while we take turns at the microscope.
If the DNA of one single human cell were stretched out,
it would measure six and one-half feet! Ms. Coronado
is only five feet tall so she stretches her arms
way above her head to make her point,
Listen to this. The average human being contains
ten to twenty billion, that’s billion with a B, people,
miles of DNA! She gets high on these facts,
and the kids make fun of her behind her back,
but she is a popular teacher because she knows
how to make anything interesting, even hours
spent waiting for an amoeba to replicate itself.
Yes! Ms. Coronado is as excited as if we had cloned
a human being. This is poetry, people, this is a poem
written by Mother Nature!
The rest of her speech on DNA does not reach my ears
because my lab partner’s comment to the tall girl, all angles
and stick-straight hair, a girl made of lines and a plane, hovering
over us, comes to me clear and complete. I cannot move
from my position between them — her perfume
is like a sticky silk web drawing us in. He says to her
over my bent head that I resemble the tadpole floating
in the labeled specimen jar sitting on the shelf
at our station, a bloated, brown little thing.
Reaching for it over my head, the geometric girl
shakes the jar so the small, blind creature
somersaults and cartwheels, then lingers midway
as it falls and rises,
falls and rises,
in its liquid world.
Ms. Coronado places her hands on my shoulders —
she has something to say:
The closer you look at the most ordinary thing,
bee’s wing — she interrupts herself — her attention
on my head —
Listen people,
an average human being has about 100,000 individual hairs
on her scalp, she says in wonder, almost to herself.
Look at a cockroach leg or a fruit fly abdomen,
it is a work of art! Look closely,
the closer you look the more beauty you will see.
There is a kaleidoscope of dazzling colors
in an insect’s eye, more gorgeous
than a homecoming queen’s
rhinestone crown. Each hair
grows about nine inches every year!
Ms. Coronado then asks me for a single hair from my head
that she will place under the microscope;
then she will have everyone in class line up behind me
to see it become poetry.
This will be on the next quiz!
The follicle is like a seed under the ground, it rises
through the dermis and subcutaneous tissue
which is rich in fat and blood vessels, fertile!
The hair shaft is like a little blade of grass
burrowing through the epidermis into the sunlight!
Look close, people.
María has at least 100,000 of these beauties
sprouting from her beautiful head.
Ms. Coronado meant to help me, to save me
from turning into an ugly toad in the minds of my classmates,
but for days I was teased about the tropical rain forest
on my beautiful head.
I looked up the parts of a human skin cell —
the words sound like a song in another language:
Dermal papilla, dermal basale, stratum spinosum, stratum
corneum, epidermis, dermis … and …
as I look at the illustration
of a cross section of skin — I have a Ms. Coronado moment:
People, listen to this: We are all made up of the same thing
under our epidermis.
The subject of a sentence (underlined) is the part talked about.
“María, please read some of your poems to our class.”
(I do not say this aloud: Oh no, Mr. Golden. I am afraid
of what my classmates will think. I will be the subject
of their insults.)
They will say:
The girl thinks she is an American.
María thinks she is good in English.
The girl can’t write.
María speaks with an accent.
The poems have an accent
just like María’s.
The poems are ugly.
She is ugly.
The teacher likes María.
María is the teacher’s little pet.
He will say to the class, you are fools.
The class will laugh at María. They will
hate her
and her poem.
Find the subject in these sentences:
Their laughter
is what María Alegre fears,
also their mockery
of her still-thick accent,
and their teasing
about her poetry.
She will turn into María Triste.
They are silent.
They are waiting
for her to read her poems.
When she finishes reading
she is amazed by what she hears.
Applause!
People are looking at her
in a different way
“In our society poets are often ignored,” Mr. Golden says,
“and almost always poor. Yet they are never unemployed.
They are always at work, on the job,
looking for the truth.
María, you are a poet,”
Mr. Golden declares.
yelling, I love the rain! I love the rain! María, come out and play! Out of the top half of my basement window, I watch her running down our block, a manic look of happiness on her face. She loves it when it rains hard. The world belongs only to the crazy people then, she says. She is splashing water on purpose, jumping into puddles.
I knew that in a minute she would be dragging me into her latest craziness. Maybe we’ll walk to the deserted playground, slide and swing in the rain, or maybe we will take a bus to the mall and annoy people by walking around dripping wet, her high-top sneakers squeaking. Or maybe I will ask her to stay in with me tonight and just be quiet. I will tell her about being called a frog in class today, and about making a poem from a single strand of hair. Whoopee will offer to brush my hair. She will teach me how to twist it and turn it into braids and dreadlocks. We will look up magic spells so we can turn some people at school into warty frogs. And although we will not find a spell to turn enemies into frogs, we learn that frogs were considered symbols of good luck in ancient Egypt. They were embalmed and kept around the house. There is a picture of a tiny frog mummy that makes Whoopee decide we should make frog mummies out of papier-mâché to give as party favors at Ms. Coronado’s annual fiesta. She will love the idea of frog mummies and maybe, Whoopee suggests, maybe even a frog piñata filled with chocolate frogs!
My friend Whoopee, who doesn’t believe she is beautiful herself, will make me laugh and look at myself in the mirror while she transforms me from María Triste into María Alegre. Whoopee is magic.
Regalos de Navidad. As a Christmas gift, my mother sends me a CD of El Gran Combo featuring “Silent Night” in Spanish, “Noche de paz, noche de amor.” This will not be a night of peace in the barrio, Mami. All around me on this Christmas Eve, the night begins t
o fill with the hot sounds of music from stereos and radios, hot enough to melt the ice and snow that has accumulated this long winter keeping us sealed in our separate spaces. All our neighbors’ doors will be open tonight in our building. Papi is rehearsing his high-volume version of “Feliz Navidad” in his room. The wall we share is vibrating just a little as he kicks up the tempo.
My grandmother sends me two pictures of herself when she was about my age. In one photo, Abuela is standing under a graceful palm tree. It is a moonlit night on the beach. The sea in the background is smooth as a black mirror. The palm tree bends toward her like a skinny admirer with wild hair. She is wearing a shiny black evening gown, hoop earrings peep through her dark curls. She is holding a large hibiscus blossom in her hand. Her smile is mine. I see my eyes on her face. But I will be taller. In the other picture, her chin is resting on her hands as she gazes dreamily beyond the camera, looking like a movie star of the past. She always told me that I looked exactly like she did at fifteen, but our resemblance is less obvious in the close-up photograph. I may never pose in a glamorous evening gown under a perfect silver moon, Abuela, nor on the seashore of a tropical island, in a perfect black-and-white world, but I will have a Noche de paz, noche de amor among my new friends here tonight.
The circle, y’all should know,
is a universal shape. You find circles everywhere
in this world of ours, and indeed, in our entire universe.
Just take a look around, says Mr. C. in his soft voice
laced with a thick Southern accent
that makes the girls giggle — they like to say the C
stands for “cute” — and the boys
want to sound like him, y’all.
Y’all hush and listen to me.
Circles are everywhere. Can anyone name
the circle that you live on, the circle that warms
and lights our days, the circle that illuminates
our nights? He turns to the chalkboard
and draws a circle. Let us look
at a shape y’all will recognize, the good ole pie,
it’s what taught you how to share
in grade-school, folks, how to be fair
to one another by using fractions. Remember?
Mr. C. faces us and does a silly little tap dance
while reciting:
One-half for you, one-half for me,
or if there are more than two, one-third for him, one-third
for me, one-third for Sue.
We all groan when Mr. C.
makes up his silly math rhymes. We put our heads down
on our desks when he sings and dances.
Mr. C. is tall