said he didn’t have a phone to call.
Mami rubbed my back but said
Papi would get to me when he could.
On a day Mami wasn’t home, I went through
a folder of Papi’s papers. I thought one of his
business forms might have a company number.
My fingers, drawn like magnets, landed on a closed envelope.
I know Mami had never
looked at it herself.
I know this for a fact because if she had
she would know what I now know,
what she cannot know
or nothing would have been like it was.
It depends on whether Mami or Papi
is telling it, their story.
According to Papi, he saw Mami
at El Malecón in Puerto Plata.
Sitting near the water’s edge,
rocking high-waist jeans,
“Guapa y alta como un modelo.
Straight hair & the nose of a Roman empress.”
According to Mami,
she saw Papi creeping closer.
Dark like the skin of a vanilla bean,
a barrel chest & the hands of a mechanic.
“Fuerte como un luchador.
Pelo afro y esos dientes derechitos.”
According to Papi, Mami looked fina,
like a porcelain chess piece to be captured.
According to Mami,
something about him called to her.
Maybe his laugh, scattering birds as it rang out.
The way the crowd parted as he walked toward her,
the way she stood & watched, unfazed & half smiling,
forcing him to puff up his chest,
to smooth his hair, to introduce himself to the woman
he said he’d one day wife.
You would think
coffee & condensed milk
would give you some kind
of light brown.
But I came out Papi’s mirror,
his bella negra.
Thick hair like his,
thick lips like his,
thick skin like his.
When some of my cousins
from Mami’s side
dissed me la prieta fea,
I never listened. Papi’s
reminder in my ear:
you are dark
& always been beautiful:
like the night, like a star after it bursts,
like obsidian & onyx & jet precious.
But I know I am beautiful
like all & none of those things:
far in the sky & deep in the earth
I am beautiful like a dark-skinned girl that is right here.
I’ve always preferred playing black
on the chessboard.
Always advancing,
conquering my offending
other side.
But although I got Papi’s skin color
& his facial features, my body
is all Mami’s. Her curves are a road map
for my own dips.
You cannot say I am not both their child.
The first time Dre touched me
without our clothes on, she kept running her hand
from waist to hip. & I wanted to write Mami
a thank-you text, for giving my body a spot
that was made to nest Dre’s hand.
Sometimes I look down at my fingers,
& they are long & thin;
it’s Mami’s imprint
covered in my father’s dark.
But my laugh is an interrupter,
all Papi. The cock of my head: all him.
When it comes to personality,
I am neither one of them.
When they hold boisterous family parties,
I’d rather be reading in my room.
Where Papi is always thinking
of how to save another dollar,
I’m dreaming up a Sephora wish list
to request for my next birthday.
Mami stands in front of a stove for hours,
& I would burn an untoasted sandwich.
I am theirs. You can see them on me.
But I am also all mine, mostly.
Three Days After
Because I don’t know
if Papi is an anchor
at the bottom of the ocean,
I ignore everyone’s calls.
I press Decline on my phone
as classmates hit me up.
I want to fold my ears
like empty candy wrappers,
small & small & smaller
until no words fit inside.
I’m afraid if I close my eyes
I will have accepted
his will never open again.
It is a losing battle;
I fall asleep on the couch
with the remote in my hand.
I am awakened by a moan
that sounds like something monstrous
has clawed its way into my mother’s body.
Her ear cradles the house phone
but my eyes follow hers to the TV:
There have been no survivors found from flight 1112.
Dre has been my best friend
since her family rented the apartment next door.
She’s been my girlfriend
since some time during seventh grade.
We share a fire escape,
& the summer we turned twelve
we found ourselves out there
at the same hours of the day.
Dre would be reading a fantasy novel
or pruning a half-dead tomato plant,
& I’d be playing chess on my phone,
or looking at nail tutorials.
She & I became tight
as freshly laundered jeans.
Both of us absorbed in our own worlds
but comfortable sharing space.
Dre comes from a Southern military family.
She wasn’t meant to be a hippie child,
but she’s granola to the core. A tree-hugging,
squirrel-feeding, astrology-following vegan.
Me? I was a fashion-loving, chess-playing negrita
who quit at the top of my game.
We both know what it’s like to have our parents look at us
like we are dressed in neon question marks.
We also know exactly what it’s like to look at the other
& see all the answers of ourselves there.
I am a girl who will notice
if your nostril hair grows long
or if your nails are cut too close to the quick.
I’d as soon compliment you
on how well you groom your edges
as I would on how smoothly you steer a debate.
Dre will turn any conversation
into one about gardening.
If you tell a dirty joke,
Dre will talk about plants that pollinate themselves.
If you talk about hoing around,
you’d see Dre blink as her mind goes down a
long winding path of tilling dirt & sowing seeds.
Here we are, with our interests in chess
& astrology & dirt & each other.
Dre has been texting me
since this morning.
She must have seen the news.
She didn’t hear it from me
because I turned off my phone.
The thought of speaking
makes me want to
uncarve myself from this skin.
But you can only ignore
your girlfriend for so long
before she knocks on the window
& sticks her head in.
“Is it true, Yaya?”
& I hear the tremble
in her voice
that threatens the wobble
in my own.
Dre loved Papi
as if he were her own family.
Would make Papi laugh
with her precise school Spanish