Clap When You Land(38)

I could always anticipate Papi’s moves.

His every feeling flashed across his face like the digital ads at the bus stops.

For the rest of my life I will sit & imagine what my father would say in any given moment.

& I will make him up:

his words, his advice, our memories.





Tomorrow morning the funeral director will ship the body out to DR; ship the body, as if it is an Amazon order of toilet paper or textbooks.

People come & people leave.

But Dre stays until the very end,

presses drooping carnations

into my hands, & I know she bought them outside the train station & carried them through rush hour & bus transfers & a walk to give them to me. “I just wanted you to have something . . .”

& the knot in my throat swells to twice its size, my tongue bloated & still in the coffin of my mouth.

I nod & take them from her.

She gives my shoulder a small squeeze.

They are beautiful. I love them. I love you.

You are the only thing that does not hurt.

I try to say with my eyes since I can’t get my mouth to make a single sound.





I don’t want to tell Dre I am accompanying my father’s body, but since I can’t keep a single secret from her I blurt it out anyway. & then ask her not to ask me anything.

“I knew you were going

but lying to your moms is too much.”

Dre shakes her head with frustration.

“I hope you know what you’re doing, Yaya.

We aren’t like white girls in movies who fly off & have adventures. This sounds reckless.”

I want to agree with her, I do;

I even nod. But all I can think

is that it seems wild to me

that our family would let Papi fly alone again.

As if dying alone wasn’t enough.

Nah. I don’t tell Dre a thing.

Not as she helps me clean & collect the condolence cards,

as Mami makes arrangements for the flowers that will never rest at a grave.

At one point, Dre holds my hand gently in hers, & it thaws

a part of me I didn’t even know

had been left cold.

A funeral parlor is not a romantic place or a warm place or a place to cuddle.

Especially when it’s your own father’s death you are there to mourn.

But curl into Dre is exactly what I want to do.

“Can I sleep over later?”

I ask her, my hand still in hers.

She gives it a squeeze. “I’d love that, but maybe you should talk to your mom?

She seems really upset,

& you know how she is about that kind of thing.”

Mami hates the concept of sleepovers, says our house has enough beds

& what kind of sheets does someone else have that I cannot sleep in my own?





I know what ugly looks like when it departs from your mouth fully formed.

How the words can push space between two people; how it’s close to impossible to collapse that space.

After the viewing, we are in a cab headed back to Morningside, & I am hoping Mami does not say anything but of course she does utter words: “I think we should take a trip. For your birthday.

I think we need to get away. Somewhere far, far.

He would have wanted you to celebrate.”

& I don’t say my father also would have wanted me at his funeral. She knows this.

I understand she’s angry at him. I am too.

But my father was a man of commemorations; no way he would have wanted to be buried

without his child there to make sure they lowered his casket properly; that they laid the bouquet of flowers over his grave with the appropriate amount of respect.

& now I know my feelings flash across my face.

That is the dumbest transition I’ve ever heard.

Who is thinking about a birthday when they’re thinking about a funeral? What could I want? What could I want?

“That’s stupid to think about.

I just want to be left alone.”

& there goes that ugly again. Like a picket fence risen between us; we can still see each other,

but it’s a barrier too high to climb.





I tell Mami I’m sleeping over at Dre’s house.

I do not ask

for permission, & although her jaw tightens,

she does not say a word to me.

I climb through Dre’s window, hauling the duffel I packed.

Dre asks me if I told my mother about my plans

for the morning.

She must feel

how I get stiff in her arms, because she turns on her night-light to look at me.

“She deserves

the truth, Yaya.

I don’t want to lie.

& you know she’s going to ask me.”

Tears prick at my eyes.

Everyone spends years, my entire lifetime, lying to me about my family, but I’m the one who supposedly owes people the truth?

“Dre, I don’t want you to lie; just let me get a head start.

I know it seems unsafe, unkind, but I do think it is the right thing for me to do.”

She doesn’t respond.

But she turns off the light & holds me close the whole night.