Clap When You Land

by Elizabeth Acevedo

“Don’t let it stain you,” Tía’s always said. But can’t she see? This place we’re from already has its prints on me.

But I learned young, you do not speak of the dying as if they are already dead. You do not call bad spirits into the room, & you do not smudge a person’s dignity by pretending they are not still alive, & right in front of you, & perhaps about to receive a miracle. You do not let your words stunt unknown possibilities.

I am beginning to learn that life-altering news is often like a premature birth: ill-timed, catching someone unaware, emotionally unprepared & often where they shouldn’t be:

since I was a chamaquita on his knee.

Ok now I'm not digging the Spanglish

I did not laugh with him. He must have realized his laugh was like one of those paper shredders making a sad confetti of my hopes. He did not apologize.

They never do

I am so accustomed to his absence that this feels more like delay than death.

Tía says I’m in shock. & I think she is right. I feel just like I’ve been struck by lightning.

When you learn life-altering news you’re often in the most basic of places.

Outside the day is beautiful. Mami cries. The sun is shining. The breeze a soft touch along my face. Mami is still crying. It’s almost as if the day has forgotten it’s stolen my father or maybe it’s rejoicing at its gain. Mami is still crying, but my eyes? They remain dry.

I am theirs. You can see them on me. But I am also all mine, mostly.

Fight until you can’t breathe, & if you have to forfeit, you forfeit smiling, make them think you let them win.”

Playing chess taught me a queen is both: deadly & graceful, poised & ruthless. Quiet & cunning. A queen offers her hand to be kissed, & can form it into a fist while smiling the whole damn time.

Can you be from a place you have never been? You can find the island stamped all over me, but what would the island find if I was there? Can you claim a home that does not know you, much less claim you as its own?

But even when Mamá was alive, Tía was the other mother of my heart.

My head fills with memories not my own, that paint her for me.

What does an essay on The Tempest matter? What does an analysis of the Hoover presidency matter? What does an exam in trigonometry matter? Which one of those things will explain mechanical failure? Which one of those things will ease how difficult it feels to breathe?

I feel as if I lose him again every morning I wake up.”

& I wonder what will happen to the phone if I drop it into the filled sink. Will it float on suds or be weighed down to the bottom? How does the water learn to readjust around the new object? Could we nestle the phone in rice, revive it into ringing again?

Now we're forcing metaphors But I guess this is something a teen would do

“His real family is here. What’s left of him will be buried here.”

REAL family? She knows

“He was ours first. & he will be ours last.

Oh she knows

But we won’t be the ones there to see him buried.”

Nah she shouldn't be able to make that decision for Yahaira

My father had another wife, & I know my mother could not have known. Could not have been the type to stay, while her husband strayed year after year after year.

Yeah that's what we think

ignored the family he left behind.

GIRL. 9 MONTHS YOU GOT

Yahaira & I will figure this out on our own.”

Oh so NOW you include her

I have a sister. I have a sister. I have a sister. There is another person besides Tía of my blood in the world.

Mami says I’m being rude by turning family away. I tell her her family is being rude by asking for money. Mami says this is what family does, helps each other. I tell her our family should be helping us plan the funeral.

Mami tells me, you don’t know how he’s embarrassed me. I want to cover my ears like a little girl—

I’m the child her father left her for in the summers. While she is the child my father left me for my entire life.

I think of how the word unhappy houses so many unanswered questions.

Yano was a great father to you, & I know you loved him, but he wasn’t always a great husband.” & I don’t know how one man can be so many different things to the people he was closest to.

“She was my friend. His other wife. I actually met him through her.” He married the other woman after her, so it wasn’t technically legal. But the other woman didn’t know that until much, much later.

WTF

The squares do not overlap. & neither do the pieces. The only time two pieces stand in the same square is the second before one is being taken & replaced. & I know now, Papi could not move between two families. When he was here—he was mine, when he was there he was theirs. He would glide from family to family, square to square & never look back.

How can you lose an entire person, only to gain a part of them back in someone entirely new?

& for the first time I don’t just feel loss. I don’t feel just a big gaping hole at everything my father’s absence has consumed. Look at what it’s spit out & offered. Look at who it’s given me.

I look at the scraps of a body they have piled into a casket & called a man. I know the remains are strewn around us. In this everyday life of the left over.

Such a funny phrase, pay respects. As if suffering is a debt that can be eased by a hug & a head nod. I have no need for this currency of people’s respect:

I cannot fold any of their respects into my dress’s pockets. I cannot tie these respects together into a bouquet to lay at my father’s headstone. Their respects are quick-footed & I am sludging through this hardened mud of loss.

For the rest of my life I will sit & imagine what my father would say in any given moment. & I will make him up: his words, his advice, our memories.

They are beautiful. I love them. I love you. You are the only thing that does not hurt.

I am so afraid of liking her. Of wanting her to be my family. My heart cannot afford any more relatives.

& for a moment I want to smack her hard. For wearing my face. For looking like a Yahaira-lite version of me. For so clearly being my father’s daughter. & then guilt swamps over me. I am the one he left her for.

It is hard to remind myself I am not playing against my sister. We are on the same team, I tell myself. Even if I don’t actually believe that.

at the grave site the casket is lowered the earth again welcoming a song home

the ground ruptured my father’s body fills the hole dirt is thrown on the casket filled up & made whole again but not the same

& I can tell she is worried that our relationship will be another thing we need to mourn & bury. Sometimes, I look at her & it hits me that she is the only person who can understand what I feel, but she is also at the root of the hurt I’m feeling.

It is a tiring thing to have to continue forgiving a father who is no longer here.

Her family was always first. The real one that I merely interrupted.

Camino is uncharacteristically quiet. I want to whisper in her ear, “I know, I know. I know this fear. You’re okay. I’m here. I got you.”

That maybe a bad husband can still be a good parent. That maybe he tried to be the best he knew how to be. That he hurt her got caught up there’s no excuse. But he is not here. He is not here. We are all that’s left.

Eh