Clap When You Land

by Elizabeth Acevedo

  the fastest escape route to get by El Cero

  without having to go near him. Vira Lata wags his tail at me.

  I wish he was more inclined to bare his teeth.

  Even from a distance, I see El Cero’s eyes dip down

  to where my nipples are cold as I tread.

  & I know, the most dangerous thing on this beach

  has nothing to do with the dark.

  The most dangerous thing

  is standing right in front of me.

  El Cero is not a man to be trusted. Or a man to show fear.

  Without lowering my head, I calmly walk past him,

  snatch my shorts up, & suck my teeth in his direction.

  Vira Lata must read my mood.

  He comes over to rub against my leg,

  & I pat him once to let him know I’m all right.

  I want nothing to do with the crowing roosters,

  or the viejos lighting candles, & Tía watching the news,

  & people crowding the patio,

  & the prayer circles, & the watchful eyes, &

  the whispers about Papi being dead.

  But whatever it is El Cero wants from me

  I know it will be worse

  than the momentary discomfort at Tía’s house.

  Because El Cero will attach conditions to his condolences.

  Papi didn’t like that I’ve had boys

  flirting with me since I was twelve,

  but he would have had to be around

  to stop them, or to keep me

  from flirting back. Plus he was never

  as strict as he pretended.

  I don’t mess with dudes from the barrio

  who love gossiping at the domino bars

  about the girls that they’ve slept with.

  I usually only flirt

  with the international boys from school.

  The ones with American accents,

  their blue passports & blue blood

  both stamped with prestige & money;

  those are the boys I switch my hips at.

  Not because they’re cute or interesting—

  they’re often obnoxious & only want a taste

  of my gutter-slick tongue & brownness;

  they act as if they could elevate my life with a

  taste of their powder-milk-tinged pomp.

  No, I date those boys because they are safe.

  They can’t dance bachata or sing Juan Luis Guerra,

  can’t recite Salomé Ureña or even name the forefathers;

  they wrap their flag around their shoulders like a safety blanket,

  & if a heart has topography,

  I know none of these boys know the coordinates

  to navigate & survive mine’s rough terrain.

  In other words, these boys would be no distraction.

  Papi was a tiguerazo.

  A hustler. A no-nonsense street-smart guy.

  He could sell water to a fire hydrant,

  sell a lit match to a burning gas station.

  Papi comes from here: Sosúa, Puerto Plata,

  República Dominicana. & he’s always said

  he never wanted me or my tía

  to polish boots or sell lottery tickets, to know

  hunger or the anger of going without.

  & so our poor isn’t as poor as our neighbors’.

  But it definitely isn’t as rich as my classmates’.

  It’s the poor of an American sponsorship.

  The poor of relying on Western Union

  & a busy father & money that mostly goes to tuition;

  the poor of secondhand Nikes, leather repainted to look new.

  Papi was a hustler: a first cousin to sweat,

  a criado of hard work. A king who built an empire

  so I’d have a throne to inherit.

  El Cero is not the kind of hustler Papi was.

  El Cero hustles bodies; eagle-eyes young girls

  from the time they are ten & gets them

  in his pocket with groceries & a kind word.

  When those girls develop & show the

  bud of a blossom, he plucks them for his team.

  & although most people here won’t admit they think like me,

  a woman should be able to sell whatever she wants to sell.

  But not if it’s at the insistence of a man. This man.

  Word on the street is El Cero always gets a first taste

  of the girls who work for him. Before he gussies them up

  & takes them by the resort beach in cut-off tanks & short shorts

  so the men from all over the world who come here for sun

  & sex can give thumbs-up or -down to his wares. His women.

  Not women, yet. Girls.

  So, no. El Cero is not the kind of hustler Papi was.

  He has no code.

  The sweat that makes his money is not his own.

  Even now, as I stare at the setting sun & walk away,

  he calls out, “Camino, you know, I’m here for you.

  Whatever you need. Some extra money, or a shoulder

  to cry on. Just let me know. Your father’s life, it’s such a loss.”

  It is a warm evening. But my skin feels kissed by cold.

  Whatever Papi was paying him each year I think El Cero

  is still expecting. Even though I don’t have a dime

  to my name. I know there are other ways he’d accept payment.

  I know he would love nothing more

  than to have me further

  in his debt.

  I know what El Cero sees when he looks at me:

  This hair, the curls down my back,

  lightened by sun & always tangled.

  This thin body, better fed than most, curved softly

  in the places that elicit dog whistles & piropos; swimming

  has kept this body honed like Tía’s oft-sharpened machete.

  I am pointy angles: knees & elbows,

  sharp cheekbones & jaw, jagged tongue—

  although the last is not the water’s fault.

  My skin is the same color as Tía’s, as Mamá’s.

  If Papi’s photo was shot in black & white,

  I would be cast in soft sepia: shades of golden brown.

  I am a girl who does not look like a woman.

  I am a girl who looks like a girl.

  I am a girl who is not full-fledged yet.

  & that’s exactly what El Cero counts on.

  A girl, easy to convince into a trade she doesn’t want,

  easy to sell to the men who do.

  I used to go to school with El Cero’s little sister.

  Back then he wasn’t El Cero yet. He was just

  skinny Alejandro, Emily’s older brother.

  Back before the fever that swept in with a hurricane.

  Back before the deaths, the illness.

  Back before Papi put me in private school. Back before it all.

  Cero’s little sister had a big gap-toothed smile,

  a gap that wasn’t just because we were both seven

  & missing teeth.

  Cero’s little sister was my friend.

  The first to raise her hand in class, to volunteer

  to read out loud. She waved at everyone & everything:

  the pregnant gutter cats, the women

  who sold ointments & socks, the drunkards on the

  corner singing off-key.

  The dengue fever came with the rain.

  Tía didn’t have enough hands to try to heal them all.

  Not even her own stubborn sister who said she was fine.

  Not the little girl who was her niece’s

  good friend. There were lots of funerals

  that October. Rumor is, after Cero’s sister died

  he was never the same. Before I learned to fear him,

  there was one memory that kept coming back,

  the one I cannot shake even as I shake when he approaches:<
br />
  Cero has never appeared young to me. Always this same

  age, this same face. But he would come to school

  to pick Emily up. & she would stop

  everything she was doing & run to him, arms spread wide.

  He would catch her, swinging her in circles. & I was jealous.

  Jealous I didn’t have a consistent male figure like Cero in my life.

  Tía has kept the TV on since the accident.

  She hasn’t blown out the three big candles

  under a picture of my father

  on the ancestral altar.

  This morning, divers began

  pulling up pieces of the plane.

  Papi loved the water, could hold his breath

  longer than anyone. The news coverage has died down;

  they say any chance of survivors has too.

  It’s been seventy-two hours, & I go to school on Monday

  even though Tía tells me I should stay home. I want normal.

  But my teachers do not ask me for homework, do not ask me questions.

  In the afternoon, El Cero sits on a crate

  near where my bus drops me off. Later he is outside the

  bar I have to walk past to get to the beach.

  I try not to dread that he seems to appear on every corner.

  But it feels like El Cero has sullied any sense of safety.

  & since most of his dealings happen at the resort next door,

  I know that he won’t be leaving me or this sand alone;

  like a too-skinny cat who knows you hold scraps

  in one hand & a smack in the other, I give him a wide berth.

  For dinner, I warm the days-old stew that I still can’t stomach.

  At this point, we have no reason to hope but I can’t say the words

  because then it will become real.

  Tía & I both act

  like not talking about it

  will make it not true.

  I help her grind & dry

  herbs. We mend towels

  & watch TV quietly.

  Once or twice when I walk

  into the living room, I hear her

  murmuring on the phone;

  she’s always quick to hang up;

  I think she’s been making

  funeral arrangements

  but knows she can’t tell me. Knows

  my shoulders are too narrow

  to bear that news just yet.

  Camino Yahaira

  Some people play chess, but I played chess.

  Not like your abuelito at the park plays chess.

  No offense to anybody’s grandfather. It’s just,

  my ranking’s more official than your abuelito’s.

  Last year my FIDE ranking was higher

  than the year I was born, well over the 2000s.

  I scrubbed kids weekly at citywide competitions

  & was on a travel team for national tournaments.

  Until last year.

  I’m not the best student at A. C. Portalatín High School,

  but I was one of the best chess players in the entire city.

  & I ensured our team won titles,

  & the school loved me for it; so did the neighborhood.

  I got us into the newspapers & on late-night TV

  for something other than drugs or poor test scores or gentrification.

  But last year, things changed. & so did I.

  So did chess. & if the game taught me one thing,

  it’s once you lift a pawn off the board,

  you have to move it forward. It cannot return where it was.

  Papi was a good chess teacher.

  He was not a good chess player.

  Evidenced by how terribly he hid things.

  You could always tell his next play.

  At least, that’s what I used to think.

  When Papi is in DR we do not speak often,

  but I never had to reach him

  the way I did one day last summer.

  It felt like he might be

  the only person to help me make sense

  of The Thing That Happened.

  The thing I still find hard to talk about.

  I called his cell. He didn’t answer.

  I sent him a text, & no response.

  I tried his email, but one day later

  my inbox was still empty.

  I realized Papi always travels for negocios,

  but I didn’t have a single work number.

  I called Tío Jorge to ask, but he

  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,
<
br />   & 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,