Clap When You Land(41)
The customs line is long, & I scan the form I filled out on the plane with all my information.
I pay ten dollars for a tourist card & am afraid I will be rejected.
I answer all the customs agent’s questions about where I am staying & why I am here.
Her hard eyes soften a bit when I mention my father’s funeral.
She scans my passport
& then I am walking through the doors here. I am here. I am here.
& then I see, that so is she.
Camino reaches up & touches my cheek.
“Te pareces igualito a él.”
& it’s true I’ve always favored my father.
But so does she. In real life, it’s not quite like looking into a mirror.
Her eyes are light, a hazel color, her lashes long.
She is supermodel thin where I am curvier, & for a moment I want to smack her hard.
For wearing my face. For looking like
a Yahaira-lite version of me.
For so clearly being my father’s daughter.
& then guilt swamps over me. I am the one he left her for.
She said on video chat he called her “India linda.”
& I wonder what he saw when he looked at her.
Her eyes fill, but I know she won’t cry. She seems like the kind of girl who can will her eyes to unmake tears.
“You look just like him. Except your eyes.
Papi never knew how to hide what he felt, but you know how to draw down window shades.”
& I know she means that all the anger I feel is locked inside. That I am blank-faced.
The way I was at the chessboard.
“We look just like him.
You must have gotten your coloring from your mother.”
She nods & sucks in a deep breath,
the mention of her mother wiping the softness from her face.
She drops her hand. We both take a step back.
Without my asking, Camino takes my duffel in hand & swings it onto her shoulder.
We leave the coolness of the air-conditioning & I’m immediately swarmed
by a heavy humidity & a flurry of movement.
All around me people in slacks & colorful dresses hug, babies cling to their mothers’ legs, & other teens in shorts & caps walk around selling Chiclets gum, green mints.
Camino weaves with ease by crying couples & parents toward a slim man leaning against a broke-down car.
He has the kind of smile that would have made Papi fidget with his big gold ring.
The same ring he said he would plant in the face of any man who messed with his daughter.
In other words, he looks like trouble. I don’t smile back.
& instead stop in my tracks. “Is this our taxi?”
Camino shrugs. “The unofficial ones tend to be cheaper.”
I shake my head at her & weave back toward the taxi line.
The one with marked & labeled cars,
where an old man with a kind smile helps us with my bag & holds the door open as we climb in.
Camino’s mouth is in a hard line.
I stare at the window as we drive & try to ask Camino about the scenery.
She smirks at my Spanish
& responds to me in English.
I hope my face does not show surprise
at her vocabulary & accent:
I mean, she sounds like an English professor, with her perfect pronunciations, but she must have worked hard to speak so fluently. My Spanish
is nowhere near as good, & it’s my first language.
I feel like I am losing to my sister & it’s only the opening.
The cabdriver slows the car in front of an aqua house with a fenced-in front porch.
Before Camino can reach into her wallet I thrust some dollar bills at the driver.
I’m hoping this will make Camino feel better; I don’t need her to pay. But instead she makes a sound low in her throat
& hops out the car without a word.
It seems my money offends her.
There is a woman hunched over a side garden pulling up some greens by the roots.
I cannot imagine my father in this
little, cozy house.
He was a man who loved his luxuries.
& this is a barrio house.
A nice barrio house, but a barrio
nonetheless: stray dogs walking the streets, garbage piling into the gutters.
Mud stretching up the stone walls enclosing the casita.
My father would have hated getting his freshly waxed shoes dirty.
The tiny woman by the garden straightens up, & when she glances at me, all the herbs she’d been picking fall from her hand. She is staring, at me, I think, until I realize she is staring beyond me.
“Camino, muchacha del carajo, what have you done?”
Camino’s Tía Solana’s body shakes as she hugs me.
& I lean into the arms & warmth of this woman who is a stranger.
I want to ask her so many questions
but her eyes are wet when she pulls back, & I realize I want to fight her
for what are actually my father’s sins.
“Where is your mother, ni?a?”
I glance at Camino, who indicates with a shrug that I am entirely on my own. I rub my earlobe.
Camino’s Tía takes a hard look at her before she guides me into the house as if I am a fragile old woman.