With the Fire on High

by Elizabeth Acevedo

And sometimes focusing on what you can control is the only way to lessen the pang in your chest when you think about the things you can’t.

“I think you should write about the one that scares you most. Taking risks and making choices in spite of fear—it’s what makes our life story compelling.”

It’s wild to miss someone so much, and yet in order to care for them you have to constantly say goodbye.

People say that you’re stuck with the family you’re born into. And for most people, that’s probably true. But we all make choices about people. Who we want to hold close, who we want to remain in our lives, and who we are just fine without.

The world is a turntable that never stops spinning; as humans we merely choose the tracks we want to sit out and the ones that inspire us to dance.

Not all Black women, and Latinas, look the same.”

mofongo

This stuff is complicated. But it’s like I’m some long-division problem folks keep wanting to parcel into pieces, and they don’t hear me when I say: I don’t reduce, homies. The whole of me is Black. The whole of me is whole.

“Emma Santiago,” I say, using her government name because it’s the only way to get ahead of her tantrums.

Some days I’m convinced Babygirl has an old soul, the kind of spirit that makes me imagine she was meditating and holding yoga poses in my belly.

Sometimes I think boys are just like babies when it comes to something they want—and they need to be told no, firmly and without qualification.

“In a couple of months you’ll be an adult. I trust you with that child; I should trust you with yourself.”

But the fear you have for someone else’s life always eclipses the fear you have for your own.

And ain’t that what it means to be a sister? Holding things tight when the other one is falling apart?

We all smile at Babygirl, who shows off her teeth as if she knows she has a coven of women holding her down, and that she can be anything and everything we dream for her.

’Buela walks through the world with her hands palms up; she takes what’s given to her in stride and never complains or cries.

We look beautiful and hood and excited to see the world, and none of us are hiding from this world seeing us. All of us shining despite what it took us to earn our way here.

And I know the past isn’t a mirror image of the future, but it’s a reflection of what can be; and when your first love breaks your heart, the shards of that can still draw blood for a long, long time.

We talk all the time and mostly we just sit silently. And that’s probably the nicest part.

I mean, he’s a Giants fan, for God’s sake, but he makes me feel like a woman. Not only a mother so many times removed.”

much patience with me when I’m moping. “I feel like I’m being pulled in a hundred directions and my feet are stuck in cement.”