Pride(62)

I don’t like what Papi is saying one bit. He makes sense, but I still don’t like it. “What’s Colin gonna do with the money anyway? He’s only nineteen,” I say. A lump is forming in my throat, but I keep swallowing to keep my tears down.

“According to him, Madrina has been getting offers for years. Someone came to him with a deal he couldn’t refuse. All cash. Look, Zuri, keep your head up, my daughter. I used to be like you, you know—getting pissed at the world when this or that didn’t go my way. But you know what opened up my eyes and my heart? Your mother and five beautiful daughters. The world could fall apart around me, but we are still a family. It doesn’t matter where we go. Bushwick will come with us. Don’t let your pride get in the way of your heart, mija.” He turns to look at me.

With every word he says, the tears start to well up in my eyes again. I keep blinking them back, but my face is wet.

“Hey, mija,” Papi says, holding me by the shoulders so that he can look me straight in the eye. “I knew it would be you to take it the hardest. It’s a lot, Zuri. First Madrina. And now this. But you gotta grow up. It’s a big world out there.”

I can’t help but laugh a little, even as tears roll down my cheeks. “That was corny, Papi.” And then I let it all out. I hang my head low, and the tears fall like rain. I cross my arms.

“No, no, no,” he says. “Not out here, and not like this.”

We’ve walked about ten blocks, and I realize where Papi’s going. He’s headed for the library on Dekalb and Bushwick—our favorite spot. This is where he’d take me when I was little. I’d disappear into the kids’ section, and he’d disappear between any and every aisle of thick books. But it’s Sunday, and we can tell from the tall and wide windows that the lights are off and it’s closed.

The gate leading up to the front steps is wide open, though, so we walk in and sit there.

“You don’t wanna leave that boy?” Papi asks. “Darius?”

“Papi!” I say. “I don’t wanna leave our hood, our building, our home!”

“And that boy,” he says.

Papi knows me through and through. So I hide my face in my hands, not wanting to believe that he’s right. “It’s more than the boy,” I mumble. I look up at him. “Papi, if we could just live on only one floor of his house.”

“It’s not our house and it’s not our life. And who knows? Maybe being here was a tough decision for them too. I mean, it’s not like they fit in, you know? And maybe with that buyout money and all, we’ll be the new rich kids on the block. Entiendes?”

I laugh a little again. And Papi places his arm around my shoulders and I lean in to him. He kisses my forehead, and his beard grazes my skin. I have always thought of Bushwick as home, but in that moment, I realize that home is where the people I love are, wherever that is.





Twenty-Eight


AS MY SISTERS begin packing, I spend as much time at the library on Bushwick Avenue as I possibly can. I sit in corners, at tables, on dirty couches, and on the front steps, getting lost in the pages of books. But most important, I work on my essay for Howard University.

College is the one true thing I can hold on to. It’s going to happen no matter what. But I can either stay here in Brooklyn and go to a community college, or one of the City University schools, or go away. And the only option I’ve given myself for going away is Howard. I have to make this happen for myself. If I get in, then I’ll know that people like me have a say in how our lives turn out. Even if we’re thrown away by people with more money, we can always climb our way out of the messiness and the brokenness of our lives.

Because the thing about sharp corners is, the right turns can bring you back home.

I print out my five-hundred-word essay just as the security guard announces that it’s five minutes till closing. I don’t write a poem after all, but poetry has helped me get my feelings out. My broken words helped me make sense of everything, so that when I pieced them back together in an essay, my truth was clearer.

I place everything in a folder on my thumb drive with all my other application materials for early acceptance. But before I close it, I start a new document and get some last words out.

Pride

by Zuri Benitez

We were not supposed to be proud. We were not supposed to love these things so hard: the chipping paint, the missing floorboards, the gas stove we have to light with matches, the cracks in the windows, the moldy bathroom tiles, the mice and the roaches.

But I’ve never known anything else. These broken things all spell home to me.

They are like the many worn sheets and blankets Mama and Papi brought with them from their childhood. They are older than us, and there are stories lodged in their cracks and crevices, their stains and their tears. And if I listen closely enough, I can hear the whispers of the ones who came before us. They’ve left these holes for us to fill.

Ambulance sirens at night put me to sleep. Cars honking and neighbors cursing at each other let me know that love lives here. We care enough to be angry and impatient. Sometimes I wonder . . . if my neighborhood ever floods or breaks in half, and someone throws me, only me, a lifeboat or a lifeline, will I take it and leave everyone and everything behind?

This college is a lifeboat and a lifeline.

But my neighborhood is not flooding or splitting in half. It’s being cleaned up and wiped out. It’s being polished and erased. So where do I reach back and pull out memories as if they’ve been safely tucked away into a trunk or an attic like the people on TV who have enough time and too much space? Where do I call home? Where can I place a layer of brick to use as my platform, and hold my head up high to raise my voice and my fist?