Clap When You Land

by Elizabeth Acevedo

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:

I’ve always loved that phrase for birthing: dando a luz giving to light. I was my mother’s gift to the sun of her life.

There is an artist my mother loved, Juan Gabriel, who was once asked in an interview if he was gay. His reply: What’s understood need not be said.

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?

Papi had another wife. I found the marriage certificate. The date on the form was a few months after my parents’ own marriage here in the States.

for a Haitian parent to bring their child to a Dominican hospital to give birth.

How does an overeducated orphan become an obstetrician in a place where most girls her age become pregnant

Tía taught me to dance at the ceremonies. To the drums of the santero. She taught me a person moves not only with their body but with their spirit.

How the words can push space between two people; how it’s close to impossible to collapse that space.

That maybe a bad husband can still be a good parent. That maybe he tried to be the best he knew how to be.