Clap When You Land(5)

Instead, I put my arms underneath hers, help her up to her feet & into her bedroom.

When the phone begins ringing I answer & murmur to family.

I take charge where no one else can.





Last summer, when I learned my father’s secret, it was like bank-style gates descended on my tongue: no words could escape. Those words I learned must be protected at all cost. Even from my family.

Papi thought my silence was because of chess.

Because I was angry at his disapproval.

He never once imagined that my silence

was my disappointment in him. At what I’d found.

But although I felt he’d become a stranger, I never stopped being my parents’ steady daughter.

Who did her chores & bothered no one.

Even now, that is not a habit I know how to break.

I take down the trash. I microwave the leftovers.

I wrap myself tight around the feelings I cannot share, an unopened present, a gift no one wants.





Camino Yahaira


One Day After


The day after the crash,

but with still no deaths confirmed,

my friend Carline comes by before work, hugs me tightly, her swollen belly between us, but I quickly pull away.

I am afraid that I would break her.

Am afraid that I would break.

She is quiet. Holds my hand in hers. Says God will see me through. Carline has lost aunts & uncles & cousins & knows about mourning, but she still has both parents at home. & so, I take her comfort without yelling

that she Does. Not. Understand.

When her phone buzzes, she quickly releases my hand on a curse. I know without her telling me it’s her manager at the resort, wondering where she is.

When she leaves, Tía sits in front of the TV

& Don Mateo comes over, hat in his hands, & the phone rings, & even Vira Lata, usually mellow, howls at our gate.

Everyone in these streets knew Papi:

The hustlers he gave money to keep an eye on me, the colmado owners & fruit-cart guys who held our tab, the folks Tía has been a curandera to, healing their babies.

The neighbor women send pastelones & papayas, & men stop by to offer care in the form of labor & prayer.

Papi was gone three-fourths of each year but kept his ear pressed to the ground all three hundred sixty-five days.

& so, like grains of rice in boiling water, the crowd outside our little teal house expands.

People stand there in shorts & caps, in thong sandals, the viejos held up by their bastones, they shuffle onto the balcón,

they wrap their fingers around the barred fence, they watch & wait & watch & wait an unrehearsed vigil.

& they pray& I try not to suffocate under all the eyes that seem to be expecting me to tear myself out of my skin.





We have the nicest house in the barrio because Papi spent money to make it so.

He wanted to move us, but Tía refused to leave the neighborhood she knows & serves.

So instead, Papi got us fat iron locks, running water, & a working bathroom we don’t have to share.

We have humming air conditioners,

a large refrigerator, & a small microwave.

A generator para cuando se va la luz, the latter setting us apart;

when the daily power outages happen

& the whole hood goes dark,

we are one of the few homes with our lights still on.

But it feels like for the first time, our house is the one that’s gone dim.





Our house is squat, with two bedrooms, a kitchen & comedor.

A small patio in the backyard where we hold prayer circles & parties.

Our floors are not dirt. But tiled recently, & always mopped clean.

We have a TV in the living room, & Wi-Fi, & so many small luxuries Papi’s US sweat provided.

But the best thing about our house is that it’s a three-minute walk from the beach.

Which isn’t always lucky when the water rises, but it has saved my life on the many days when I need a reminder the world is bigger than the one I know, & its currents are always moving; when I need a reminder

there is a life for me beyond the water & that one day I will not be left behind.





My bathing suit is a red-hot color, like the one from that old North American show Baywatch?

Not as low cut. Unfortunately.

I sneak out of the house through the back

& avoid the well-meaning people out front,

whose questions & condolences I want to swat.

From the back road, it’s a straight shot to the water’s edge.

Even though I snuck out from the back, Vira Lata is soon dogging my feet.

I pass a couple of houses & two bar fronts

where men play dominoes & sip lukewarm beer.

This is the edge of our neighborhood.

El Cero sits outside one bar in his blue shorts, his eyes following me as I approach. He is a man somewhere older than me but younger than Papi, & I’ve known that from the moment I turned thirteen Papi paid El Cero a yearly fee to leave me alone.

But the last few months, I’ve felt his eyes on my back.

Little things, like him now hanging outside my bus stop.

Or strolling more often on the beach. Carline even told me she saw him at the resort once & he asked about me.