Call Me Maria Read online

like the eloquent pig Wilbur

  in Charlotte’s Web.

  Who is responsible

  for these crimes

  in the barrio? Who needs

  a Puerto Rican accent, a second

  last name, or the answer

  to the question,

  Where are you from?

  desperately enough

  to break into a basement

  apartment, #35½ Market Street,

  to steal it

  from a fifteen-year-old girl

  named María?

  She is so subtle, this thief,

  that practically

  your entire childhood is gone

  before you really notice.

  You have heard of these strange things

  happening to other people,

  in exciting places like San Francisco

  or Miami, but not

  in this barrio,

  and not to you.

  Finally,

  you decide to report

  these losses to the police.

  We recognize the M.O.,

  the officer tells you,

  it is a serial thief

  who slips through our hands

  every time. There is nothing

  anyone can do to stop him, yet

  it is a matter

  of time. Only time will tell

  who has taken

  your childhood, María.

  All we can do is wait and see,

  wait and see

  if we can catch this thief,

  in time, maybe we will.

  To this day

  the crimes in the barrio

  continue day-by-day,

  week-by-week,

  and year-by-year.

  It is all still a mystery

  that may not be solved

  in my time.

  I climb the stairs and stand outside the open door

  of Uma’s apartment where I can see my friend

  kneeling at the window, waiting, for a lover

  whose only true passion is his own face in the mirror.

  Heartbroken, her tears must sting like hard little grains

  of rice, like wedding rice thrown at her face.

  The bride wore red, Uma had told me

  about a marriage ceremony in her country. But I will wear

  a white dress made of silk and lace when I marry in America.

  Uma’s mother sits in her room

  reading the letters of her dead husband,

  instructions from the grave,

  while her daughter kneels at the window waiting,

  waiting for what?

  For her American prince to rescue her?

  Peering over Uma’s hunched shoulders

  I can see a little child wearing a red dress and a white cap,

  playing on the sidewalk, suddenly

  spooling out from her mother, almost into the traffic,

  then quickly pulled back to safety by her voice,

  out and back,

  like a yo-yo on an invisible string.

  Uma! The mother calls

  from the darkened room, the back bedroom

  thick with incense, where the faces of dead relatives

  speak to Uma’s mother from their gilded frames,

  telling her how to live in this land of too much freedom,

  and what to do about her daughter

  who has fallen in love with a boy

  who loves only himself. Uma!

  and Uma is reeled in toward her mother

  like a small golden fish, thrust into a sealed world

  of sandalwood smoke, of prayer rugs, veils,

  and memories.

  Uma, I had warned my friend,

  he will break your heart. The papi-lindo cannot love

  anyone but himself, and all his conquests are little mirrors

  he puts up in his room so he can see himself

  through each girl’s eyes. But when he made a song

  of her name Uma, mi bonita Uma, ven, ven, ven,

  she went to him like an arrow to the target,

  up the stairs into his arms she raced,

  wearing a blue sari trimmed with tiny silver stars and moons;

  her skin of dark honey, scented with the steamed perfume

  of rose petals, leaving a trail like a comet’s tail

  up the stairs, down the hallway,

  and into his apartment.

  Afterward, she brought me

  the words he had spoken in her ear: mi amor, mi vida, Mamacita.

  Words spiced with adobo, with sofrito, and cooked over an open fire.

  I am his life, is this not what it means, María? No, Uma,

  to him you are only a new taste on his tongue, the flavor

  of new spices — el sabor del día.

  Uma, now kept in

  by your mother’s fears, you wait each afternoon for the sight

  of him, leaping off the bus like an action hero, scaring the pigeons

  roosting on the window ledge. But he does not

  even glance up, because he is only looking at his own feet

  in their fancy Italian shoes, at his own reflection

  in the dirty storefront window of the bodega. He is only

  lusting after the expensive car that drives by, locked tight

  and armored against the dangers of the barrio.

  Uma, come down the stairs and be my friend.

  I will tell you about the Emancipation Proclamation, about the Alamo,

  the Louisiana Purchase, and Eleanor Roosevelt. We will

  memorize the names of all the presidents. We will

  look at the map together, make lists of cities

  we will see someday; cities with names

  like songs: Albany, Carmel, Phoenix, San Francisco,

  Baton Rouge. Someday we will drive to the capitals

  of Europe, the Middle and the Far East without crossing the ocean.

  We’ll go to Rome, Georgia, to Cairo, Illinois,

  and to Paris, Texas —

  we will drive a convertible all over the world

  and never leave America.

  Yet I say nothing.

  I cannot speak, nor step into the other world beyond the doorway,

  where Uma’s mother chants her ancient prayers. Ghosts

  are calling out to Uma in her native tongue today,

  pulling her to their side.

  Uma sways back and forth,

  as if there were a rubber band attached to her spine. Uma

  in her white funeral sari, gathering

  her heavy veil of la tristeza

  over her head, holds tight, tight to the window ledge, stays

  on her knees at her window — waiting for the living to call her back

  to her American life in Spanish or English

  or both?

  I go back downstairs

  and play the best salsa song I know, loud. Loud! I play the tune

  that forces your hips and feet to move, even against your will.

  I turn up the volume

  with the door and windows wide open, sending

  the canción up like a spell against death, against sadness, up

  and up one flight of stairs: Come down, Uma,

  let’s paint our nails red and practice dancing salsa. I will

  teach you some new Spanish words, Uma: ¡Bailar, cantar, vivir!

  I say these words like a prayer, a spell against la tristeza.

  I chant them like I have heard Uma and her mother do,

  adding them to the song already climbing the stairs.

  And for once my father is right! Music can

  change the world, one heart at a time. Un corazón, dos, tres,

  then, maybe, the entire universe.

  At the threshold of my door

  stand Uma and her mother holding hands, black streaks of kohl

  running down their cheeks from tears, but trying hard to smile.

&nbs
p; “My mother,” says Uma, “wonders if you will teach us

  how to dance the salsa.”

  Uma’s mother extends one hand to me, and we become

  a salsa triangle. “It’s all in the hips,” I remind them,

  “it’s all in the hips.”

  Ms. Coronado likes to quote complicated scientific facts

  about the beauty and wonder of the natural world

  while we take turns at the microscope.

  If the DNA of one single human cell were stretched out,

  it would measure six and one-half feet! Ms. Coronado

  is only five feet tall so she stretches her arms

  way above her head to make her point,

  Listen to this. The average human being contains

  ten to twenty billion, that’s billion with a B, people,

  miles of DNA! She gets high on these facts,

  and the kids make fun of her behind her back,

  but she is a popular teacher because she knows

  how to make anything interesting, even hours

  spent waiting for an amoeba to replicate itself.

  Yes! Ms. Coronado is as excited as if we had cloned

  a human being. This is poetry, people, this is a poem

  written by Mother Nature!

  The rest of her speech on DNA does not reach my ears

  because my lab partner’s comment to the tall girl, all angles

  and stick-straight hair, a girl made of lines and a plane, hovering

  over us, comes to me clear and complete. I cannot move

  from my position between them — her perfume

  is like a sticky silk web drawing us in. He says to her

  over my bent head that I resemble the tadpole floating

  in the labeled specimen jar sitting on the shelf

  at our station, a bloated, brown little thing.

  Reaching for it over my head, the geometric girl

  shakes the jar so the small, blind creature

  somersaults and cartwheels, then lingers midway

  as it falls and rises,

  falls and rises,

  in its liquid world.

  Ms. Coronado places her hands on my shoulders —

  she has something to say:

  The closer you look at the most ordinary thing,

  bee’s wing — she interrupts herself — her attention

  on my head —

  Listen people,

  an average human being has about 100,000 individual hairs

  on her scalp, she says in wonder, almost to herself.

  Look at a cockroach leg or a fruit fly abdomen,

  it is a work of art! Look closely,

  the closer you look the more beauty you will see.

  There is a kaleidoscope of dazzling colors

  in an insect’s eye, more gorgeous

  than a homecoming queen’s

  rhinestone crown. Each hair

  grows about nine inches every year!

  Ms. Coronado then asks me for a single hair from my head

  that she will place under the microscope;

  then she will have everyone in class line up behind me

  to see it become poetry.

  This will be on the next quiz!

  The follicle is like a seed under the ground, it rises

  through the dermis and subcutaneous tissue

  which is rich in fat and blood vessels, fertile!

  The hair shaft is like a little blade of grass

  burrowing through the epidermis into the sunlight!

  Look close, people.

  María has at least 100,000 of these beauties

  sprouting from her beautiful head.

  Ms. Coronado meant to help me, to save me

  from turning into an ugly toad in the minds of my classmates,

  but for days I was teased about the tropical rain forest

  on my beautiful head.

  I looked up the parts of a human skin cell —

  the words sound like a song in another language:

  Dermal papilla, dermal basale, stratum spinosum, stratum

  corneum, epidermis, dermis … and …

  as I look at the illustration

  of a cross section of skin — I have a Ms. Coronado moment:

  People, listen to this: We are all made up of the same thing

  under our epidermis.

  The subject of a sentence (underlined) is the part talked about.

  “María, please read some of your poems to our class.”

  (I do not say this aloud: Oh no, Mr. Golden. I am afraid

  of what my classmates will think. I will be the subject

  of their insults.)

  They will say:

  The girl thinks she is an American.

  María thinks she is good in English.

  The girl can’t write.

  María speaks with an accent.

  The poems have an accent

  just like María’s.

  The poems are ugly.

  She is ugly.

  The teacher likes María.

  María is the teacher’s little pet.

  He will say to the class, you are fools.

  The class will laugh at María. They will

  hate her

  and her poem.

  Find the subject in these sentences:

  Their laughter

  is what María Alegre fears,

  also their mockery

  of her still-thick accent,

  and their teasing

  about her poetry.

  She will turn into María Triste.

  They are silent.

  They are waiting

  for her to read her poems.

  When she finishes reading

  she is amazed by what she hears.

  Applause!

  People are looking at her

  in a different way

  “In our society poets are often ignored,” Mr. Golden says,

  “and almost always poor. Yet they are never unemployed.

  They are always at work, on the job,

  looking for the truth.

  María, you are a poet,”

  Mr. Golden declares.

  yelling, I love the rain! I love the rain! María, come out and play! Out of the top half of my basement window, I watch her running down our block, a manic look of happiness on her face. She loves it when it rains hard. The world belongs only to the crazy people then, she says. She is splashing water on purpose, jumping into puddles.

  I knew that in a minute she would be dragging me into her latest craziness. Maybe we’ll walk to the deserted playground, slide and swing in the rain, or maybe we will take a bus to the mall and annoy people by walking around dripping wet, her high-top sneakers squeaking. Or maybe I will ask her to stay in with me tonight and just be quiet. I will tell her about being called a frog in class today, and about making a poem from a single strand of hair. Whoopee will offer to brush my hair. She will teach me how to twist it and turn it into braids and dreadlocks. We will look up magic spells so we can turn some people at school into warty frogs. And although we will not find a spell to turn enemies into frogs, we learn that frogs were considered symbols of good luck in ancient Egypt. They were embalmed and kept around the house. There is a picture of a tiny frog mummy that makes Whoopee decide we should make frog mummies out of papier-mâché to give as party favors at Ms. Coronado’s annual fiesta. She will love the idea of frog mummies and maybe, Whoopee suggests, maybe even a frog piñata filled with chocolate frogs!

  My friend Whoopee, who doesn’t believe she is beautiful herself, will make me laugh and look at myself in the mirror while she transforms me from María Triste into María Alegre. Whoopee is magic.

  Regalos de Navidad. As a Christmas gift, my mother sends me a CD of El Gran Combo featuring “Silent Night” in Spanish, “Noche de paz, noche de amor.” This will not be a night of peace in the barrio, Mami. All around me on this Christmas Eve, the night begins t
o fill with the hot sounds of music from stereos and radios, hot enough to melt the ice and snow that has accumulated this long winter keeping us sealed in our separate spaces. All our neighbors’ doors will be open tonight in our building. Papi is rehearsing his high-volume version of “Feliz Navidad” in his room. The wall we share is vibrating just a little as he kicks up the tempo.

  My grandmother sends me two pictures of herself when she was about my age. In one photo, Abuela is standing under a graceful palm tree. It is a moonlit night on the beach. The sea in the background is smooth as a black mirror. The palm tree bends toward her like a skinny admirer with wild hair. She is wearing a shiny black evening gown, hoop earrings peep through her dark curls. She is holding a large hibiscus blossom in her hand. Her smile is mine. I see my eyes on her face. But I will be taller. In the other picture, her chin is resting on her hands as she gazes dreamily beyond the camera, looking like a movie star of the past. She always told me that I looked exactly like she did at fifteen, but our resemblance is less obvious in the close-up photograph. I may never pose in a glamorous evening gown under a perfect silver moon, Abuela, nor on the seashore of a tropical island, in a perfect black-and-white world, but I will have a Noche de paz, noche de amor among my new friends here tonight.

  The circle, y’all should know,

  is a universal shape. You find circles everywhere

  in this world of ours, and indeed, in our entire universe.

  Just take a look around, says Mr. C. in his soft voice

  laced with a thick Southern accent

  that makes the girls giggle — they like to say the C

  stands for “cute” — and the boys

  want to sound like him, y’all.

  Y’all hush and listen to me.

  Circles are everywhere. Can anyone name

  the circle that you live on, the circle that warms

  and lights our days, the circle that illuminates

  our nights? He turns to the chalkboard

  and draws a circle. Let us look

  at a shape y’all will recognize, the good ole pie,

  it’s what taught you how to share

  in grade-school, folks, how to be fair

  to one another by using fractions. Remember?

  Mr. C. faces us and does a silly little tap dance

  while reciting:

  One-half for you, one-half for me,

  or if there are more than two, one-third for him, one-third

  for me, one-third for Sue.

  We all groan when Mr. C.

  makes up his silly math rhymes. We put our heads down

  on our desks when he sings and dances.

  Mr. C. is tall