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Dogs tame easier than people. It is why there will always be yanquis trying to convince you you’re a mutt instead of a man. Don’t you believe them, Benigno.
she’d given me a stern order to never look back, not even if you’d forgotten your keys.
Dios tiene su plan, she’d said. If God had wanted you to have your keys, He would’ve made sure you remembered them when you left.
“I built a tank bigger than my room in the tenement, and I don’t even get to live in it.”
In the same way I resented everyone who’d ever stood by while Farty Walsh tortured me at the furnaces, el tritón leered at me because I’d watched. And I’d done nothing to stop it.
What I said next came out in Spanish. Because all my truest thoughts were in Spanish and because I knew he understood it.
“To give you my name is to give you the last of myself, and humanity has taken enough from me. My name is my own. You may not have it.”
That man’s brain train only runs in one direction. Don’t leave much room for considering consequences once he’s fixed himself on something he wants.”
“Inside every showman is two people—the one on the poster and the one you leave offstage. Poster Sam can charm the pants off the governor. But Offstage Sam is ruthless. Chases what he wants like a hound on the hunt.
“My guess? Sam just assumed it was out to get him. Which oughta tell you something about how that man sees the world.”
“Thank you as well. For el guisado.” I puffed a short laugh. “You didn’t like it.” “But it was kind of you,” he said, not laughing. “And kindness is its own food.”
“You heard the whistle, and so you came to soothe my ears with music.” I cleared my throat and pulled my cap lower over my eyes. “So?” He tilted his head thoughtfully and, in English, said, “So, your name suits you too, Boy Named Kind.”
My cell is haunted by a man who would destroy me by my ears—and guarded by another who would relieve me by them. Our elders were not wrong. But you were also right.
“You are a welcome sight, Benigno. I never expected to find an ally in this dreadful place.” I reach for humor as well and add, “You are a rather pleasant sort of barnacle.”
I’d never known a love like that—the kind that paved a road through Hell and motored you to freedom.
Onstage, that’s the act, but offstage, I get to have Emmett and a family who loves us like there ain’t nothing wrong with us. Because there ain’t.”
Everything else in my life is so damn hard already, couldn’t God give me one less complication?”
Revealing your truth is like swimming, Benigno. It may not come naturally or easily. But in still waters, it can be learned,”
Despite the wisdom of my harmony, despite everything I believed possible, my heart is cultivating a pearl. For a human.
“Some are neither maid nor man. A good many are both, though Spanish and English have yet to accommodate such realities,”
“Do you mean to say you do not cry?” I crumpled the wrapping. “What does that matter?” “It matters,” he insisted. “Salt water has healing properties. That is why our tears are made of it. Why should you hold them in?”
think you have not yet grieved.” “Of course I’ve grieved—” “If that were true, then your eyes would not have forgotten how to perform their most basic function,” he said with more concern than judgment. “Like the armored sea cradle, you are protecting yourself.” “From what? ¿El cuco?” “From a pain that has followed you here and demands to be felt.”
we age too slowly to behave like time is a thing you can outswim if you fill it up with enough doing.”
I think I am the fish, and he is the net.
Brown, Puerto Rican, and inverted, I was a walking composite of undesirable traits, and every time he said I was something more, I wanted to shake him, make him understand that I couldn’t survive in this stupid town if I believed I was better than the petty allowance of scraps I lived on. More treacherous than hoping for a seat in Ornamental was believing in a world where Río wanted me.
feel it—the quiver of his pulse through the water, swift as a sailfish—and dare to wonder if his heart beats this way for me.
“You make me feel like I’m kissing the tides.” “Benigno,” he whispered back. “You make me feel like I am holding the moon.”
“My whole life, I’ve never loved anyone like I love you,” I whispered. “How can you expect me to cast you back to the water when I’ve only just found you?”
That humanity had a disease. It took meeting Río to figure out what it was. It tricks folks into thinking the only way to survive a lifetime getting pissed on, is to piss on somebody else. It locks a person in jail or some other institution for being different unless they’re willing to get on a stage and let folks pay three jitneys to call ’em ‘freak’ to their face.”
“Ain’t no being free on the outside if you ain’t free on the inside. Though I bet you’d’ve convinced us without making a goldang speech.”
“Sonia”—I squeezed her arm—“you deserve a better man than me.” “Aw, Benny.” She gave a watery chuckle and wiped her nose on her handkerchief. “Different man, yes, but not better. Ain’t no better man than you.”
I’d dropped my English because Spanish has so many words for declaring love, and I needed to use them all before it was too late. And though his tears were invisible in water, we both wept to the sound of promises whispered like prayers through the glass about a future where time couldn’t chase us, where my heart would beat for him for as long as he wanted it—until the oceans boiled and the rivers dried. Por los siglos de los siglos.
Because as the company cheered and Río smiled at them from the floor of the tank, I realized that, just when I thought I’d lost my faith in everything, I believed in my family.
