My Broken Language

by Quiara Alegría Hudes

  The lady rebolted and we lingered beneath signage as dad lit another unfiltered. “Bailey’s Irish Cream and hot fudge?” Baskin-Robbins was still open and one parking lot over. And with his offer, my simmering question dissipated. “Religion is the root of all evil,” dad had decreed. Then does that make mom evil? I had reeled. But there in the empty unlit lot, I saw the crack in his foundation. Dad as an atheist—I couldn’t quite buy it. His words didn’t match his way. Dad the mystic, I thought, as if righting a crooked painting. Mom had taught me about mystics. It wasn’t the typical father stuff that made dad one, though he had done it all. Keep your eye on the ball. Aim for the bull’s-eye, hold the bow steady. When I let go of the bike, you stay pedaling. Sound out the word. No, his mysticism was an ability to be both a thousand miles away and right here with me, a creativity born of boyhood alone on a mountain. Despite his unrelenting intellectual certainty, dad spoke of a nail-less bookcase like psalm speaks of valley.

  No longer would I trust the man’s declarations, no matter how far his chair leaned. If his words didn’t match his way, why bother seeking explanations? Why not simply observe the carpenter at work, trusting the unspoken—the felt and seen—which was more reliable anyway? So that’s what I did every summer day, until kindergarten began.

  A Name That Is a Mask

  Malvern was only an hour outside Philly, but it was a whole different universe. The woods, donkeys, and horses didn’t account for the half of it. We had moved to a monolingual, pale world. Its language uniformity was so complete as to be creepy, zombie-esque. How the shopkeepers and mailmen spoke English confidently and pronounced all their vowels the same exact way. How within houses I visited, the kids, parents, and elders shared the same language and never paused for translation or to remember a word. Though Malvern folks didn’t pray to ancestors like mom did, I could tell that if they did, even their ghosts would speak English. My Ingles was as good as the next Malvernite’s but mom’s wasn’t, and I sensed trouble ahead.

  At kindergarten roll call the teacher pronounced my Q the English way, so my name sounded like slime. After squinting at some error in the attendance book, she swapped the letters in my middle name. “Algeria?” All the kids screamed “Ewwwww!” because they’d heard of an African country like that. “Algeria? Algeria!” I told them it was Alegría and meant happiness in Spanish. “Then why’s it sound ugly?” a boy snorted. By the time the Pledge of Allegiance arrived, I had stopped correcting them. “Alegría” was amputated from my book reports and homework like a gangrenous toe. I had to contain the damage to “Quiara” and “Hudes.”

  According to mom there had been a Ciara, a few Kiaras, and many Chiarras before me but never a Quiara. She invented a conjugation of “querer” to mean beloved. Whenever a classmate mocked my name, my guts coiled hot as a stovetop. Still, beneath the burn of mockery, I harbored a superhero’s secret because I was a brand-new word.

  Alegría was chosen not for its sunny meaning but to honor Ricardo Alegría, a Puerto Rican anthropologist. Mom described the Taíno ceremonial grounds he uncovered and documented. Never having been to the island, I couldn’t really imagine petroglyphs or standing stones. Before El Profesor, mom explained, our island’s indigenous roots had been silenced. But then Alegría wrote his books on the Taínos. “A library shelf holds tremendous power, Quiara. If it’s not written down, it doesn’t exist.” Though she had never attained college, she talked with reverence about books and scholarship. “El Profesor brought us into the light. He was a revolutionary, so your middle name, Alegría, is revolution masked as happiness.”

  Hudes came from dad, of course. Dad rarely spoke about Jewish stuff, his surname being no exception. If it was rooted in some language or meant anything, it was news to me. All I knew was that the u was squishy, like in “beautiful” or “cute,” but strangers said it the double-o way like “moo” or “boot.” A silent u in Quiara and a spherical u in Hudes. A name that broke its own rules.

  * * *

  —

  Three weeks into kindergarten mom brought a birthday cake to school, spongy yellow layers intercut with jam. She had jarred the stuff herself after picking wild raspberries on the farm. A shag carpet of icing covered the thing. Hundreds of florets had been piped individually, painstakingly, as she hummed boleros into the night.

  The kids saw mom’s copper skin and loose bouncing afro and turned to me. “Are you adopted?” a boy asked. My guts stove-coiled and I shook my head no. “Then what are you?” he said, genuinely curious. Truth was, I hadn’t a clue. To me, Puerto Rico was a past-tense island. Jewish was murkier, no place at all, and dad shrugged any time the word was spoken. A group of classmates circled around, anticipating my answer. Their eyes buzzed with excitement. I resented that in this English-only town, mom’s skin tone and molasses vowels rendered her a headline. And that my difference from her now signified anything at all. “So? What are you?”

  “I’m half English, half Spanish,” I ventured, as if made not of flesh and blood but language. And it felt okay. The kids seemed satisfied by my declaration.

  An English Cousin Comes to Visit

  Over a year in, and still no titis had pulled up in a caravan. Back in Philly, mis primas y tías had always passed through, rotating between our stoop and Ginny’s, swapping babysits and gossip. But not once did they visit the farm, so what guests we had fell in line with Malvern’s way: English only.

  But Simon, my cousin from dad’s side, came from Philly for the weekend. Considering how few playmates I had on the farm, and how few friends I’d met at school, the chance to show an older boy—a city kid—my personal wilderness was thrilling. I was back to my old brat pack self, showing off tree-climbs, plunging a thorn into my arm to elicit a pearl of blood, then savoring Simon’s delicious “Ewwww!”

  The beehive was hidden beneath a clump of wet leaves, in a distant patch of woods halfway past the cow pasture. I led the way along the path to the algae pond, mud squishing between my bare toes. I knew the second I stepped on it: the papery texture underfoot, the crinkle of a collapsed hive. Bees emerged from their home like a soul leaving a body. A buzzing cloud overtook me. “Run!” Simon screamed as electric pain rippled everywhere. We bolted out of the woods, hollering past unimpressed cows. I screamed from terror and pain and Simon screamed, sure he was watching me die. I couldn’t outrun them. It was ten minutes to home if we ran at top speed. There were hundreds of them—a killing amount. They found my pinky finger, knee, and neck. They clouded my forehead, hovered at my crown, clasped in my hair. “Your shirt! Your shirt!” Simon hollered. Looking down, I saw my sweater covered in dead bees. They dangled from the yarn, sequins of death. I ripped off my sweater mid-stride, threw it behind me, and for one blessed breath the terror paused, the bees quieted, and there was only a strange, tangential thought: I am naked. This is my belly. These are my flat pink nipples and he is seeing them. Then the grass found my cheek and rest found my body.

  * * *

  —

  I came to, limp in dad’s arms. How much time had passed? Dad kicked the screen door so hard it unhinged, and was careful not to knock my head as he fed me through the frame. He strode to the nearest bed, placed me down atop the blankets, and gently pulled my clothes away to see how the bees had undone me. “Not my underwear,” I whispered, too weak to hold them in place. As the two of them gazed down, I saw Simon’s fear blossom into curiosity, then mischievous excitement. He made a scandalized O of his mouth, pointing at my hands, which made their best fig-leaf cover.

  I wished mom would catch my soul’s distress call, just as she’d caught messages from other spirits in distress. She needed to come quick, close the door against all glances, heal me with eucalyptus oil and feminine hands. A million times she had dressed, bathed, and healed me, and each time her eyes told me what my body was: no more or less remarkable than grass, plant, or pebble.

  Either my distress call got lost
in the transom or mom got stuck in traffic coming home.

  Turns out I was not particularly allergic and the constellation of bumps never really swelled. We spent the afternoon in my room, headaches coming and going. Simon and I recounted the event over and over, no embellishment necessary. How many stings had I racked up? “Hundreds,” he declared with widest eyes, spooked by the recounting. We marked each sting in blue pen as we tallied. Then it was time to check my torso, but I lifted my shirt only halfway. Simon looked at me, the hope in his eyes bright. He had seen my nipples plenty, as had every kid in Philly. In my hydrant days, I happily frolicked in the only bathing suit I owned: my Wonder Woman panties. But today, I told Simon two stings were hidden from view and he added them to the count, disappointed as he drew his hash marks. Then I climbed into bed and pulled the covers tight, the day’s tumult making my head throb.

  My body means something different to others than to me. That’s what I lay there thinking. It’s not that I resented what my body meant to Simon: a curiosity, a potential game of doctor maybe, the low-level scandal of a cousin’s private parts. Whatever, back in Philly the brat pack was always doing grown-folks shit, oftentimes initiated by me. What bugged me was that his curiosity happened atop my wound, that in a moment of pain, I didn’t set the score on what me meant.

  I faked sleep for hours. When Simon waved goodbye, we were two helium balloons that had lost our lift. We never did finish tallying the bee stings.

  Language of the Forest

  Mom’s bonfire live-in with a hippie on the run was, in the end, a spectacular failure. When I was in second grade they split, and mom and I returned to the old Philly block, two suburban discards.

  Dad’s every other week. Dad’s on weekends. Dad’s every other weekend. Dad’s once a month, if that. The R5 tracks became my compass. Trains left on the 12s, 32s, and 52s. I was a migrant in my own life. I was told to find an aisle seat near the conductor, clip my nails if a man sat next to me, and if that didn’t repel him, move immediately. But rules be damned, I rushed for the window each time, leaning my head against the smooth glass. Dust always dotted the panes’ exterior from dirty rain that had dried, and I would stare past it as though my life lay beyond—a blur in the distance, going, going, gone. Mom had done this commute and grown exhausted. Now, the route being mine, I felt not tired but cold. The air-conditioning, the glass. I might have been scared on the hourlong ride or on the isolated platform waiting to be picked up. I might have been saddened by a family rent in two. But my ear and forehead propped against the cool windowpane? Anesthetic.

  Conductors nodded hello, tipped their SEPTA caps, called me by name, even stopped the train if they saw me sprinting to the platform. But their smiles barely masked it. Damn-ass shame, their eyes told me as they punched my ticket. An unattended nine-year-old commuter.

  Mom’s Spanish was no longer reserved for backyard rituals, just out of dad’s earshot. Now an hourlong gulf stretched between English me and Spanish me and in all those migrations I discovered the disparity. How the fifteen minutes from 30th Street Station to Overbrook was rubble, graffiti, broken factory windows, junk tires piled high. How three minutes later, by Merion, the Main Line was an oasis of gleaming brick, emerald lawns, restored wrought iron. The sudden change sickened me, for what it implied about mom, my titis, Abuela, and primas. My Perez women were messy derelict squalor. My English dad was manicured Americana.

  * * *

  —

  Mostly my urban childhood, interrupted, resumed. Our tumbledown twin home had sat loyally waiting. Cobwebs had multiplied in unreachable corners. Floorboards creaked louder, with the same cracks so wide you could pass a note to the floor below. The second-floor landing was still haunted so you had to bolt upstairs before the spook snatched your ankles. The alley’s padlock was rusted shut, no key in sight. Titi Ginny hadn’t waited for us. She had a new North Philly address now, nearer to Abuela. Without two titis on one block, my Perez cousins didn’t come around as much. Same block, same rooms, everything different.

  But I still spent weekends and after-schools at Abuela’s, where Spanish surfed on bus fumes—crashing on every corner and through open windows. I relaxed in mom’s return to anonymity. She was neutral once again, and neutrality, Malvern had taught me, was a luxury. Still, even in Philly, mom and I occasionally required explanation.

  “Are you looking for extra hours? We just lost our nanny.”

  “I’m her mother. Have a blessed day.”

  * * *

  —

  It felt like my life’s intact boat had crashed, boards splintering off and drifting in disparate directions. It was baffling, watching parts of myself get further and further from each other. I rifled the back corners of mom’s drawers, unlidded high-shelf shoeboxes. Anything for a clue as to what had happened, our family’s before or our after. A stack of old boxes in the basement beckoned. The juiciest secrets, I knew, were housed in the bottom one. In it was an old upholstered photo album that I squirreled to my bedside and gazed at nightly. Picture by picture, my parents’ love affair unfolded. I slid favorite snapshots from cellophane sleeves, fingering their matte finish and round corners. Here mom and dad were, barely twenty, hiking atop a waterfall or collecting driftwood on a late-autumn beach. There they were at the Rainbow Gathering, launching canoes into a pine-edged pond, the braid down dad’s bare back so long it grazed his woven belt. Here were four openmouthed kisses in a photo booth. Or mom’s nine-month belly anchoring a naked body, her sumptuous breasts backlit in a window. But the candid of them standing with dinner plates at some party mesmerized me. I became convinced it was this shot that held the answer, so I studied it day after day. Dad was possibly still a teen and mom had just pushed into her twenties. Arms wrapped together, they’d become a single universe. Their bodies were lithe, draped in vaguely Indian fabrics, sexy. Mom, dark and luminous, smiled into the camera and imagined a grand tomorrow there; dad stared diagonally down and away, hoping the warm saturated aura of the woman beside him could patch up his terror. The weaving cling of their arms reminded me of parachuters plummeting in formation. They were as hypnotized by love as a midnight fawn is by headlights.

  The breakup went like this, or so mom blurted out in unsolicited tirades: while she was off earning rent money, dad invited a punk-rock sculptor into their bed. When that affair soured, the sculptor’s best friend filled the vacancy.

  “That’s not true, mom. Susan and Sharon were dad’s friends.”

  “I have the letters. They’re in a stack of boxes in the basement. You want to read them?”

  “No.”

  “He left them around everywhere, practically begging me to discover. But when a woman wants to be blind, it’s amazing what she refuses to see.”

  “Susan taught me to use a glue gun and assemble found objects into art. Sharon lent me her rock-climbing shoes and I scaled a sixty-foot cliff. Those are things friends do, mom. I hung out with them and dad. Men and women can be friends.”

  “The fact that he had you buddying up to his playthings…Don’t talk about shit you don’t know, Quiara. I know. I know!”

  “Well, they never yelled at dad like you always did!”

  “Óyeme bien, Quiara. I never liked hanging with the hippie crowd. All that weed, tu me entiendes, I’m not into that. But I decided to surprise your father and show up at one of their gatherings unannounced. All heads turned my way like uh-oh….Pues, this uppity chick, the squeaky-voice fake-smile type, introduces herself and will not leave my side. This lady is hell-bent on embarrassing me, all night picking fights, criticizing my advocacy work en el barrio. Because she had graduated college and traveled to Nepal, that made her some kind of expert on Hispanics? Fuck off, bitch. Another white feminist with all the answers. Everyone knew, Quiara. The whole party was hip to your dad’s affairs. They had played matchmaker, puedes creer? While I was busting my ass putting groceries on the table…”
Mom sighed a bunch of times in quick staccato, then lowered her voice to truth register: alto. “I’ll always love your father, because he gave me you.”

  “So what did you do? At the party?” I asked.

  “Gave that bitch a piece of my mind. Don’t question my integrity, puñeta, when I been on the ground, busting my ass for a community you don’t know shit about, because you volunteered at Habitat for fifteen minutes!” Then she sighed some more. A babalao had warned her, mom said. She’d gone for an unrelated consultation and he’d read the divination chain and asked inquisitively, “You’re happily married?” “Very,” she had responded. “When you return home tonight, you will have no marriage.” Mom had laughed in the babalao’s face. “Y mira lo que pasó, Quiara,” she said. “Look what happened. Orula doesn’t lie.”

  I zoned her out. It was too much. Her torrents too exhausting. And these words—“Orula” and “babalao”—that she lobbed my way, explosives on a battlefield, and I didn’t even know what they meant. But in their plosives and round vowels, I sensed a new language emerging from mom. One that, apparently, she wasn’t pausing to explain.

  * * *

  —

  I determined to get dad’s take straight up, like I’d done with god. He met me at the train for a weekend visit and with each curve of the country road I wrestled my nerves. Did you have an affair with…Too accusatory. Did you cheat on…Too blunt. Did you have sex with…No way. Finally, we pulled into the driveway and my time was up. “Did you take off your clothes and get under the covers with Susan?” Even I was embarrassed by the naïve wording. For a second, I worried he’d misinterpret my question as a birds-and-bees inquiry. But the way he slumped when switching off the ignition meant he knew.