Clap When You Land(35)

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.