Clap When You Land(20)

When I get home, Tía has lit candles.

Although he was not her brother,

I can’t imagine what she must feel.

I’ve known my father my whole life.

She knew my father all of his.

Tía was a healer’s apprentice as a child, seven years old, and in the room when Papi was born, years later saw him fall in love with my mother.

She was the first person to hold his child.

Even when he came to visit

this house he paid for & updated, Papi treated Tía like an older sister: so much respect for how she kept the house, for the beliefs she had,

the decisions she made regarding my well-being.

They were friends. But until this moment I have not thought of what she’s lost.

He was like her brother. Besides me, her only family.

& on this day that ends all hope we hold each other close thinking of a man & all the people that must live on without him.





Tía tells me she has heard rumors.

She is speaking to me the next morning as we await news regarding Papi’s body.

Her hands pluck the feathers off a chicken.

She is methodical, her fingers fast along the fluff that she drops into a plastic bag in the kitchen sink.

The big machete that is never far from her side catches the light through the window; it glints at me & I wish I could carry it with me.

Tía tells me both Don Mateo & the woman who sells fruit have mentioned seeing El Cero waiting for me after school, or walking from the beach soon after I’ve left it.

She says the Saints have whispered caution in her ear.

I take a deep breath; I want to tell Tía it’s all true.

That I’m afraid of the thing El Cero wants to ask of me.

Her voice is stripped of any emotions.

But if fingers can be angry,

hers must be wrathful; she plucks in hard snatches.

“I raised you smart. Right, girl?”

This is not a question she actually wants answered.

I can tell by how fast she speaks.

Tía’s anger now sounds like it could be directed at me.

That thought puts a staying hand

on the words that were going to leap from my lips.

“I raised you clean & fed,

even when my feet were soiled,

when my own stomach rumbled. Right, girl?

I grew you up for a future

different than the one most girls

around here are allowed.

Choices. Did I not do everything

to provide you choices?”

The feathers bulge in the bag,

& I wish I was just as light.

But I feel weighed down,

her words turned to stones.

Tía thinks I have been inviting El Cero’s attention.

Somehow his stalking has turned into something I must have done.

The chicken is nearly naked.

Raw & puckered, dressed in saggy skin.

A feast for our hunger,

a place to gnash our teeth

since neither one of us can bite at the world.





I wish I could tell Tía that El Cero won’t leave me alone.

I haven’t done anything wrong or encouraged him in any way.

He just shows up, grinning,

waiting.

I wish I could tell Tía

I don’t know what to do. That I’m scared he’ll corner me.

I wish

I could tell Tía, but what would Tía do if she knew? Tía is older, with little money. She is

respected in the neighborhood & beloved by the people to whom she offers care, but El Cero occupies a world of men who care little of healers, & even less of the girls who represent little more than dollar signs.

Don Mateo is old. Tio Jorge does not know me.

There is no one to stop El Cero. Anymore.

What would El Cero do to Tía if she tried to stand up to him?

I cannot even think the thought.





I am from a playground place.

Our oceans that we need for fish are cleared so extranjeros can kite surf.

Our land, lush & green, is bought & sold to foreign powers so they can build luxury hotels for others to rest their heads.

The bananas & yucca & sugarcane farmed & harvested, exported, while kids thank God for every little scrap.

The developed world wastes gas, raises carbon emissions & water levels that threaten to disappear us in a single gulp.

Even the women, girls like me, our mothers & tías, our bodies are branded jungle gyms.

Men with accents pick us

as if from a brochure to climb & slide & swing. & him?

El Cero? He has his hand in every pocket.

If you are not from an island, you cannot understand

what it means to be of water: to learn to curve around the bend, to learn to rise with rain,

to learn to quench an outside thirst while all the while

you grow shallow

until there is not one drop left for you.

I know this is what Tía does not say.

Sand & soil & sinew & smiles: all bartered. & who reaps? Who eats?

Not us. Not me.





Tía doesn’t believe girls should wear all black.

I was thirteen the first time she let me buy a black dress I wanted for my middle school graduation.