With the Fire on High

by Elizabeth Acevedo

I wanted to give Babygirl a nice name. The kind of name that doesn’t tell you too much before you meet her, the way mine does. Because nobody ever met a white girl named Emoni, and as soon as they see my name on a résumé or college application they think they know exactly what kind of girl they getting. They know way more about me than they need to know, and shit—I mean, shoot—information ain’t free, so my daughter’s name isn’t going to tell anybody any information they didn’t earn.

although our names do have similar letters, mine is full of silverware-sharp sounds: E-Mah-Nee. Hers is soft, rolls off the tongue like a half-dreamed murmur.

It’s like our entire apartment had been holding its breath, but now that Babygirl’s returned, even the breeze coming in through the window heaves a sigh of relief. ’Buela and I sit on the couch with Babygirl between us listening to her baby-sing about Moana, PAW Patrol, and cookies. Our dinner is forgotten; Bobby Flay is put on mute. For the rest of the night Babygirl is front and center, the candlelight we read the world by.

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.

You can’t make too much space for a father like mine in your life. Because he’ll elbow his way in and stretch the corners wide, and when he leaves all you have is the oversized empty—the gap in your heart where a parent should be.

What would I do without ’Buela? She’s the starch in my spine, the only hand here to unfurl the wrinkles from my brows, the arms that hold me when I feel like I’m collapsing. I can’t imagine a life without her. My thoughts must show on my face.

Most of my father’s beliefs are based on hard facts that every now and then are seasoned with hyperbole.

I’ve had a lot of things to feel ashamed about and I’ve learned most of them are other people’s problems, not mine.”

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.

There’s so much I want for her that sometimes I think the seams of my skin aren’t enough to contain every hope I have.

“What would you do to elevate the mac and cheese?” I place a hand on my chest, offended. “Absolutely nothing. Baked mac and cheese doesn’t need elevation, degradation, hateration, or nothing else. It’s perfect in its purest form. Although we could add some gouda.”

I feel like the sunlight sneaking over the hill is also sneaking inside me.

feel like I’m being pulled in a hundred directions and my feet are stuck in cement.”

She looks like the kind of woman who will break a stereotype down the middle and hold one half up for white kids and one up for black ones. And maybe I’m stereotyping her, too. Pretending to know what kind of woman she is because of the kind of women who have hated on me, and Angelica, and all the black and brown girls we know from home; who have shaken their heads and tsked their teeth, and reminded us we weren’t welcome in their part of the city, on their side of the bus, in their world.