Friday, August 24
The summer is made for stoop-sitting
and since it’s the last week before school starts,
Harlem is opening its eyes to September.
I scope out this block I’ve always called home.
Watch the old church ladies, chancletas flapping
against the pavement, their mouths letting loose a train
of island Spanish as they spread he said, she said.
Peep Papote from down the block
as he opens the fire hydrant
so the little kids have a sprinkler to run through.
Listen to honking cabs with bachata blaring
from their open windows
compete with basketballs echoing from the Little Park.
Laugh at the viejos—my father not included—
finishing their dominoes tournament with hard slaps
and yells of “Capicu!”
Shake my head as even the drug dealers posted up
near the building smile more in the summer, their hard scowls
softening into glue-eyed stares in the direction
of the girls in summer dresses and short shorts:
“Ayo, Xiomara, you need to start wearing dresses like that!”
“Shit, you’d be wifed up before going back to school.”
“Especially knowing you church girls are all freaks.”
But I ignore their taunts, enjoy this last bit of freedom,
and wait for the long shadows to tell me
when Mami is almost home from work,
when it’s time to sneak upstairs.
I am unhide-able.
Taller than even my father, with what Mami has always said
was “a little too much body for such a young girl.”
I am the baby fat that settled into D-cups and swinging hips
so that the boys who called me a whale in middle school
now ask me to send them pictures of myself in a thong.
The other girls call me conceited. Ho. Thot. Fast.
When your body takes up more room than your voice
you are always the target of well-aimed rumors,
which is why I let my knuckles talk for me.
Which is why I learned to shrug when my name was replaced by insults.
I’ve forced my skin just as thick as I am.
Is Mami’s favorite way to start a sentence
and I know I’ve already done something wrong
when she hits me with: “Look, girl. . . .”
This time it’s “Mira, muchacha, Marina from across the street
told me you were on the stoop again talking to los vendedores.”
Like usual, I bite my tongue and don’t correct her,
because I hadn’t been talking to the drug dealers;
they’d been talking to me. But she says she doesn’t
want any conversation between me and those boys,
or any boys at all, and she better not hear about me hanging out
like a wet shirt on a clothesline just waiting to be worn
or she would go ahead and be the one to wring my neck.
“Oíste?” she asks, but walks away before I can answer.
Sometimes I want to tell her, the only person in this house
who isn’t heard is me.
I’m the only one in the family
without a biblical name.
Shit, Xiomara isn’t even Dominican.
I know, because I Googled it.
It means: One who is ready for war.
And truth be told, that description is about right
because I even tried to come into the world
in a fighting stance: feet first.
Had to be cut out of Mami
after she’d given birth
to my twin brother, Xavier, just fine.
And my name labors out of some people’s mouths
in that same awkward and painful way.
Until I have to slowly say:
See-oh-MAH-ruh.
I’ve learned not to flinch the first day of school
as teachers get stuck stupid trying to figure it out.
Mami says she thought it was a saint’s name.
Gave me this gift of battle and now curses
how well I live up to it.
My parents probably wanted a girl who would sit in the pews
wearing pretty florals and a soft smile.
They got combat boots and a mouth silent
until it’s sharp as an island machete.
Pero, tú no eres fácil
is a phrase I’ve heard my whole life.
When I come home with my knuckles scraped up:
Pero, tú no eres fácil.
When I don’t wash the dishes quickly enough,
or when I forget to scrub the tub:
Pero, tú no eres fácil.
Sometimes it’s a good thing,
when I do well on an exam or the rare time I get an award:
Pero, tú no eres fácil.
When my mother’s pregnancy was difficult,
and it was all because of me,
because I was turned around
and they thought that I would die
or worse,
that I would kill her,
so they held a prayer circle at church
and even Father Sean showed up at the emergency room,
Father Sean, who held my mother’s hand
as she labored me into the world,
and Papi paced behind the doctor,
who said this was the most difficult birth she’d been a part of
but instead of dying I came out wailing,
waving my tiny fists,
and the first thing Papi said,
the first words I ever heard,
“Pero, tú no eres fácil.”
You sure ain’t an easy one.
Cleaning an office building in Queens.
Rides two trains in the early morning
so she can arrive at the office by eight.
She works at sweeping, and mopping,
emptying trash bins, and being invisible.
Her hands never stop moving, she says.
Her fingers rubbing the material of plastic gloves
like the pages of her well-worn Bible.
Mami rides the train in the afternoon,
another hour and some change to get to Harlem.
She says she spends her time reading verses,
getting ready for the evening Mass,
and I know she ain’t lying, but if it were me
I’d prop my head against the metal train wall,
hold my purse tight in my lap, close my eyes
against the rocking, and try my best to dream.
Tuesday, August 28
Mami has wanted me to take the sacrament
of confirmation for three years now.
The first year, in eighth grade, the class got full
before we could sign up, and even with all her heavenly pull
Mami couldn’t get a spot for Twin and me.
Father Sean told her it’d be fine if we waited.
Last year, Caridad, my best friend, extended her trip in D.R.
right when we were supposed to begin the classes,
so I asked if I could wait another year.
Mami didn’t like it, but since she’s friends with Caridad’s mother
Twin went ahead and did the class without me.
This year, Mami has filled out the forms,
signed me up, and marched me to church
before I can tell her that Jesus feels like a friend
I’ve had my whole childhood
who has suddenly become brand-new;
who invites himself over too often, who texts me too much.
A friend I just don’t think I need anymore.
(I know, I know . . . even writing that is blasphemous.)
But I don’t know how to tell Mami that this year,
it’s not about feeling unready,
it’s about knowing that this doubt has already been confirmed.
It’s not any one thing
that makes me wonder
about the capital G.O.D.
About a holy trinity
that don’t include the mother.
It’s all the things.
Just seems as I got older
I began to really see
the way that church
treats a girl like me differently.
Sometimes it feels
all I’m worth is under my skirt
and not between my ears.
Sometimes I feel
that turning the other cheek
could get someone like my brother killed.
Sometimes I feel
my life would be easier
if I didn’t feel like such a debt
to a God
that don’t really seem
to be out here checking for me.
“Mami,” I Say to Her on the Walk Home
The words sit in my belly,
and I use my nerves
like a pulley to lift
them out of my mouth.
“Mami, what if I don’t
do confirmation?
What if I waited a bit for—”
But she cuts me off,
her index finger a hard exclamation point
in front of my face.
“Mira, muchacha,”
she starts, “I will
feed and clothe no heathens.”
She tells me I owe it to
God and myself to devote.
She tells me this country is too soft
and gives kids too many choices.
She tells me if I don’t confirm here
she will send me to D.R.,
where the priests and nuns know
how to elicit true piety.
I look at her scarred knuckles.
I know exactly how she was taught
faith.
When You’re Born to Old Parents
Who’d given up hope for children
and then are suddenly gifted with twins,
you will be hailed a miracle.
An answered prayer.
A symbol of God’s love.
The neighbors will make the sign of the cross
when they see you,
thankful you were not a tumor
in your mother’s belly
like the whole barrio feared.
When You’re Born to Old Parents, Continued
Your father will never touch rum again.
He will stop hanging out at the bodega
where the old men go to flirt.
He will no longer play music
that inspires swishing or thrusting.
You will not grow up listening
to the slow pull of an accordion
or rake of the güira.
Your father will become “un hombre serio.”
Merengue might be your people’s music
but Papi will reject anything
that might sing him toward temptation.
When You’re Born to Old Parents, Continued Again
Your mother will engrave
your name on a bracelet,
the words Mi Hija on the other side.
This will be your favorite gift.
This will become a despised shackle.
Your mother will take to church
like a dove thrust into the sky.
She was faithful before, but now
she will go to Mass every single day.
You will be forced to go with her
until your knees learn the splinters of pews,
the mustiness of incense,
the way a priest’s robe tries to shush silent
all the echoing doubts
ringing in your heart.
The Last Word on Being Born to Old Parents
You will learn to hate it.
No one, not even your twin brother,
will understand the burden
you feel because of your birth;
your mother has sight for nothing
but you two and God;
your father seems to be serving
a penance, an oath of solitary silence.
Their gazes and words
are heavy with all the things
they want you to be.
It is ungrateful to feel like a burden.
It is ungrateful to resent my own birth.
I know that Twin and I are miracles.
Aren’t we reminded every single day?
Mami was a comparona:
stuck-up, they said, head high in the air,
hair that flipped so hard
that shit was doing somersaults.
Mami was born en La Capital,
in a barrio of thirst buckets
who wrote odes to her legs,
but the only man Mami wanted
was nailed to a cross.
Since she was a little girl
Mami wanted to wear a habit,
wanted prayer and the closest
thing to an automatic heaven admission
she could get.
Rumor has it, Mami was forced to marry Papi;
nominated by her family
so she could travel to the States.
It was supposed to be a business deal,
but thirty years later, here they still are.
And I don’t think Mami’s ever forgiven Papi
for making her cheat on Jesus.
Or all the other things he did.
Tuesday, September 4
And I already want to pop the other kids right in the face.
They stare at me like they don’t got the good sense—
or manners—I’m sure their moms gave them.
I clip my tongue between my teeth
and don’t say nothing, don’t curse them out.
But my back is stiff and I’m unable to shake them off.
And sure, Caridad and I are older
but we know most of the kids from around the way,
or from last year’s youth Bible study.
So I don’t know why they seem so surprised to see us here.
Maybe they thought we’d already been confirmed,
with the way our mothers are always up in the church.
Maybe because I can’t keep the billboard frown off my face,
the one that announces I’d rather be anywhere but here.
Leads the confirmation class.
He’s been the head priest at La Consagrada Iglesia
as long as I been alive,
which means he’s been around forever.
Last year, during youth Bible study, he wasn’t so strict.
He talked to us in his soft West Indian accent,
coaxing us toward the light.
Or maybe I just didn’t notice his strictness
because the older kids were always telling jokes,
or asking the important questions
we really wanted to know the answers to:
“Why should we wait for marriage?”
“What if we want to smoke weed?”
“Is masturbation a sin?”
But confirmation class is different.
Father Sean tells us we’re going to deepen
our relationship with God.
“Of your own volition you will accept him into your lives.
You will be sealed with the gift of the Holy Spirit.
And this is a serious matter.”
That whole first class,
I touch my tongue to the word volition,
like it’s a fruit I’ve never tasted
that’s already gone sour in my mouth.
Father Sean lectures
I wait for a good moment
whispering to C:
X: You make out with any boys while you were in D.R.?
C: Girl, stop. Always talking about some boys.
X: Well if you didn’t kiss nobody, why you all red in the face?
C: Xiomara, you know I didn’t kiss no boy.
Just like I know you didn’t.
X: Don’t look at me like that. I’m not proud of the fact
that I still ain’t kiss nobody. It’s a damn shame, we’re almost sixteen.
C: Don’t say damn, Xiomara. And don’t roll your eyes at me either. You won’t even be sixteen until January.
X: I’m just saying, I’m ready to stop being a nun. Kiss a boy,
shoot, I’m ready to creep with him behind a stairwell and let him feel me up.
C: Oh God, girl. I really just can’t with you.
Here, here’s the Book of Ruth. Learn yourself some virtue.
X: Tsk, tsk. You gonna talk about this in a church,
then take his name in vain. Ouch!
C: Keep talking mess. I’m going to do more than pinch you.
I don’t know why I missed you.
X: Maybe because I make you laugh more than your
stuffy-ass church mission friends?
C: I can’t with you. Now, stop worrying about kissing and boys.
I’m sure you’ll figure it out.
Caridad and I Shouldn’t Be Friends
We are not two sides of the same coin.
We are not ever mistaken for sisters.
We don’t look alike, don’t sound alike.
We don’t make no damn sense as friends.
I curse up a storm and am always ready to knuckle up.
Caridad recites Bible verses and promotes peace.
I’m ready to finally feel what it’s like to like a boy.
Caridad wants to wait for marriage.
I’m afraid of my mother so I listen to what she says.
Caridad genuinely respects her parents.
I should hate Caridad. She’s all my parents want in a daughter.
She’s everything I could never be.
But Caridad, Twin, and I have known each other since diapers.
We celebrate birthdays together, attended Bible
camp sleepovers with each other, spend Christmas Eve
at each other’s houses.
She knows me in ways I don’t have to explain.
Can see one of my tantrums coming a mile off,
knows when I need her to joke, or when I need to fume,
or when I need to be told about myself.
Mostly, Caridad isn’t all extra goody-goody in her judgment.
She knows all about the questions I have,
about church, and boys, and Mami.
But she don’t ever tell me I’m wrong.
She just gives me one of her looks,
full of so much charity, and tells me that she knows
I’ll figure it all out.
Without Mami’s Rikers Island Prison–like rules,
I don’t know who I would be
when it comes to boys.
It’s so complicated.
For a while now I’ve been having all these feelings.
Noticing boys more than I used to.
And I get all this attention from guys
but it’s like a sancocho of emotions.
This stew of mixed-up ingredients:
partly flattered they think I’m attractive,
partly scared they’re only interested in my ass and boobs,
and a good measure of Mami-will-kill-me fear sprinkled on top.
What if I like a boy too much and become addicted to sex
like Iliana from Amsterdam Ave.?
Three kids, no daddy around,
and baby bibs instead of a diploma hanging on her wall.
What if I like a boy too much and he breaks my heart,
and I wind up angry and bitter like Mami,
walking around always exclaiming how men ain’t shit,
even when my father and brother are in the same room?
What if I like a boy too much
and none of those things happen . . .
they’re the only scales I have.
How does a girl like me figure out the weight
of what it means to love a boy?
Wednesday, September 5
Night before First Day of School
As I lie in bed,
thinking of this new school year,
I feel myself
stretching my skin apart.
Even with my Amazon frame,
I feel too small for all that’s inside me.
I want to break myself open
like an egg smacked hard against an edge.
Teachers always say
that each school year is a new start:
but even before this day
I think I’ve been beginning.
Thursday, September 6
My high school is one of those old-school structures
from the Great Depression days, or something.
Kids come from all five boroughs, and most of us bus or train,
although since it’s my zone school, I can walk to it on a nice day.
Chisholm H.S. sits wide and squat, taking up half a block,
redbrick and fenced-in courtyard with ball hoops and benches.
It’s not like Twin’s fancy genius school: glass, and futuristic.
This is the typical hood school, and not too long ago
it was considered one of the worst in the city:
gang fights in the morning and drug deals in the classroom.
It’s not like that anymore, but one thing I know for sure
is that reputations last longer than the time it takes to make them.
So I walk through metal detectors, and turn my pockets out,
and greet security guards by name, and am one of hundreds
who every day are sifted like flour through the doors.
And I keep my head down, and I cause no waves.
I guess what I’m trying to say is, this place is a place,
neither safe nor unsafe, just a means, just a way to get closer
to escape.
Is not what I expected.
Everyone talks about her
like she’s super strict
and always assigning
the toughest homework.
So I expected someone older,
a buttoned-up, floppy-haired,
suit-wearing teacher,
with glasses sliding down her nose.
Ms. Galiano is young, has on bright colors,
and wears her hair naturally curly.
She’s also little—like, for real petite—
but carries herself big, know what I mean?
Like she’s used to shouldering her way
through any assumptions made about her.
Today, I have her first-period English,
and after an hour and fifteen minutes of icebreakers,
where we learn one another’s names
(Ms. Galiano pronounces mine right on the first try),
she gives us our first assignment:
“Write about the most impactful day of your life.”
And although it’s the first week of school,
and teachers always fake the funk the first week,
I have a feeling Ms. Galiano
actually wants to know my answer.
Rough Draft of Assignment 1—Write about the most impactful day of your life.
The day my period came, in fifth grade, was just that,
the ending of a childhood sentence.
The next phrase starting in all CAPS.
No one had explained what to do.
I’d heard older girls talk about “that time of the month”
but never what someone was supposed to use.
Mami was still at work when I got home from school and went
to pee, only to see my panties smudged in blood. I pushed Twin off
the computer and Googled “Blood down there.”
Then I snuck money from where Mami hides it beneath the pans,
bought tampons that I shoved into my body
the way I’d seen Father Sean cork the sacramental wine.
It was almost summer. I was wearing shorts.
I put the tampon in wrong. It only stuck up halfway
and the blood smeared between my thighs.
When Mami came home I was crying.
I pointed at the instructions;
Mami put her hand out but didn’t take them.
Instead she backhanded me so quick she cut open my lip.
“Good girls don’t wear tampones.
Are you still a virgin? Are you having relations?”
I didn’t know how to answer her, I could only cry.
She shook her head and told me to skip church that day.
Threw away the box of tampons, saying they were for cueros.
That she would buy me pads. Said eleven was too young.
That she would pray on my behalf.
I didn’t understand what she was saying.
But I stopped crying. I licked at my split lip.
I prayed for the bleeding to stop.
Final Draft of Assignment 1 (What I Actually Turn In)
Xiomara Batista
Friday, September 7
Ms. Galiano
The Most Impactful Day of My Life, Final Draft
When I turned twelve my twin brother saved up enough lunch money to get me something fancy: a notebook for our birthday. (I got him some steel knuckles so he could defend himself, but he used them to conduct electricity for a science project instead. My brother’s a genius.)
The notebook wasn’t the regular marble kind most kids use. He bought it from the bookstore. The cover is made of leather, with a woman reaching to the sky etched on the outside, and a bunch of motivational quotes scattered like flower petals throughout the pages. My brother says I don’t talk enough so he hoped this notebook would give me a place to put my thoughts. Every now and then, I dress my thoughts in the clothing of a poem. Try to figure out if my world changes once I set down these words.
This was the first time someone gave me a place to collect my thoughts. In some ways, it seemed like he was saying that my thoughts were important. From that day forward I’ve written every single day. Sometimes it seems like writing is the only way I keep from hurting.
Is the same every school year:
I go straight home after school
and since Mami says that I’m “la niña de la casa,”
it’s my job to help her out around the house.
So after school I eat an apple—my favorite snack—
wash dishes, and sweep.
Dust around Mami’s altar to La Virgen María
and avoid Papi’s TV if he’s home
because he hates when I clean in front of it
while he’s trying to watch las noticias or a Red Sox game.
It’s one of the few things Twin and I argue about,
how he never has to do half the cleaning shit I do
but is still better liked by Mami.
He helps me when he’s home, folds the laundry
or scrubs the tub. But he won’t get in trouble if he doesn’t.
I hear one of Mami’s famous sayings in my ear,
“Mira, muchacha, life ain’t fair,
that’s why we have to earn our entrance into heaven.”
Twin is easier for Mami to understand. He likes church.
As much of a science geek as he is,
he doesn’t question the Bible the way that I do.
He’s been an altar boy since he was eight,
could quote the New Testament—in Spanish and English—
since he was ten, leads discussions at Bible study
even better than the priest. (No disrespect to Father Sean.)
He even volunteered at the Bible camp this summer
and now that school’s started he’ll miss
the Stations of the Cross dioramas his campers made
from Popsicle sticks, the stick figure drawings
of Mary in the manger, the mosaic made of marbles
that he hung in the window of our room,
the one that I threw out this afternoon while I was cleaning,
watched it fall between the fire escape grates. For a second,
it caught the sun in a hundred colors
until it smashed against the street.
I’ll apologize to Twin later. Say it was an accident.
He’ll forgive me. He’ll pretend to believe me.
For as long as I can remember
I’ve only ever called my brother “Twin.”
He actually is named after a saint,
but I’ve never liked to say his name.
It’s a nice name, or whatever,
even starts with an X like mine,
but it just doesn’t feel like the brother I know.
His real name is for Mami, teachers, Father Sean.
But Twin? Only I can call him that,
a reminder of the pair we’ll always be.
Although Twin is older by almost an hour—
of course the birth got complicated when it was my turn—
he doesn’t act older. He is years softer than I will ever be.
When we were little, I would come home
with bleeding knuckles and Mami would gasp
and shake me: “¡Muchacha, siempre peleando!
Why can’t you be a lady? Or like your brother?
He never fights. This is not God’s way.”
And Twin’s eyes would meet mine
across the room. I never told her
he didn’t fight because my hands
became fists for him. My hands learned
how to bleed when other kids
tried to make him into a wound.
My brother was birthed a soft whistle:
quiet, barely stirring the air, a gentle sound.
But I was born all the hurricane he needed
to lift—and drop—those that hurt him to the ground.