and us together
for just a second.
Magda is better than my best friend
strange maybe
because we aren’t anything alike.
I wear my curly hair
cola de caballo long
or pulled back in a bun
and love the flowing cotton skirts
girls have to wear to dance bomba.
She wears her bright brown hair
short
T-shirt, jeans, and high-top Vans
skater boy style
and hardly dances.
She only drums.
She is a smaller
eleven-year-old than others
maybe because her growing
hasn’t kicked in yet.
But the power in her hands is so big
the sound bounces off the drum
fills the room
and sinks into your bones.
She’s by far the best drummer in our
bomba performance group, Farolitos,
and the best at smiling.
Magda knows how to work up
the crowd at shows
with a quick flash
of her wide white teeth.
I think I dance the best
when she drums.
When I make a move
and mark it with my twirling skirt, a piquete,
she hits the drum right at that moment.
Like an echo, but better because it’s as if
she can read my mind and finds
my next move before I do.
She is my best echo.
Before our last performance
a couple of weeks ago
Magda waited for one of the
bathroom stalls to be free.
Auburn-haired Aurora says,
You can’t really be in the girls’ bathroom.
Magda chuckles back. Course I can. I’m a girl.
She knew what Aurora was hinting at
because others often asked her
about how much boyness
she had versus girlness.
Mima was in the bathroom too
brushing my hair into a tight bun
that stretched my eyes
like rubber bands
and we quietly looked on.
Aurora raised her screechy voice and blurted,
My mom says you hate yourself and that’s
why you want to be a boy.
Magda flushed red
to the tips of her ears.
She turned her back to Aurora
rubbed her hands in her face
as if to stop tears from coming
all of us stood silenced, in shock.
Wait a minute, Aurora!
Mima lets my hair go
and marches over to the girls.
Magda has more love for herself
than any of us.
She knows herself so well
she can be anyone she wants.
And you can tell your mami
I said that.
It was a good thing Mima was there.
Thoughts stalled in my mind
like a broken-down car
but my uneasy thoughts
wanted to drive off
and think of happy things
like how fun it is
for Magda and me
to learn to ride skateboards
or
hold our tongues so that normal words
sound like bad words
or
play echo when we perform.
Magda smiled big
grabbed Aurora and hugged
her with one arm
gave her a little nudge
on the head as if to say,
You booger—knock it off.
I looked to Magda
when we were alone
in the bathroom.
Scanned her
for what she must be feeling.
The right words blocked in my boca
by my bitten nails.
Couldn’t describe how bad I felt
for having stayed quiet
for letting Mima speak for her
for not knowing how to
defend her from Aurora la rudeness
who has chisme caught in every breath.
Of all people, Aurora, whose light skin
makes that big brown mole
at her temple look
like it’s a third eye
and who squeals each time
she sees Iván like some loca.
I found Magda’s two dark brows
lifting like umbrellas
Oh, I just learned this hambone
two-three rhythm like in clave.
You wanna learn?
I squeaked,
You okay, Magda?
She didn’t answer, instead
she grabbed my hands, and our
eyes locked like a pinky swear
in a never-mind-Aurora kind of way.
We both grinned like two weirdos
each ounce of discomfort
smacked away
in a hand-warming hambone
two
then three
then two
then three
pulse …
Mima says yerbitas can heal us.
Drunk or eaten herbs
can cure what bugs you:
fever, sniffles, headache, nerves,
cramps, bellyache, toothaches,
and growing pains.
She learned this from her mother, Yeya,
who learned it from her mother
who learned it from her mother
like that
all
the
way
down
a long line of herbal women in Mexico
and she teaches me too.
She grows them
in the garden.
Sometimes in little pots out back.
This is how I love them best
so I pick at them
with the tips of my
nail-less fingers.
Snap a tender twig
right from the plant
and eat it in the sun.
I watch Mima make tinctures
strong teas, and salves
for friends and clients who are sick.
Funny thing, they do get better.
She got rid of my
molluscum contagiosum—warts on my chin and feet—
by smothering each wart
with dragon’s blood—a stinky red sap
from a Mexican tree
that smells like a cross
between feet and barf.
She gave Luis, Magda’s dad,
a tea so strong, it stopped
his flaming bowel from making
him fold over in pain.
Tonight, I’m working on a list of all the herbs
I know and what they’re good for
and typing them right into my tablet
in case I can use it for a science report:
Yerba Buena—bellyache and foggy brain
Arnica—bruises and sprains
Rosemary—poor eyesight and dandruff
Lemon Balm—jumpy nerves and cold sores
Manzanilla—bellyache and insomnia
Dragon’s Blood—warts, moles, acne, and other wild bumps
Maybe one day, aside from a dancer
I’ll be an herbalist too.
Flor is the name Mima
has called my down-there girl parts
since I was very little
when she taught me to wash myself.
She held a mirror between my legs
let me inspect between the petals
and ask questions:
Why does it look like that?
Why is this button here
and opening there?
This little one here is for your pee—remember to wipe front to back to keep it healthy.
This one here is your birth canal—the place where babies pass as they are born—which leads to the uterus where they grow.
And this button here is only for you—it’s your happy button. You get to choose when to push it.
Our flores are women’s most magical parts, mija. Aren’t we lucky?
I didn’t think too much
about it all back then
and am only sometimes reminded
when I feel a sparkly tickle in my flor
when we go down a big hill
or I’m on a carnival ride.
Lately, the tingle happens
when I think of Iván.
Butterflies flutter first in my panza
and then they make their way down
in a
trickle
to
my
flor.
I wonder if anyone can tell
that my flor is sparkling?
But then I remember
what Mima said,
It’s only for me.
I’m relieved that
nobody can.
My father is a drum.
Big barrel chest
that he uses to practice the rhythms
of his congas when he’s not near them
where a big barrel voice pops out
when he sings or yells for me to come.
Gentle as earth beneath my feet
when I curl up to him when
Juju gets me so mad I could cry
or when I can’t find the drum in me.
He says,
Sing from your breath and from your heart.
Kae, Kae, Kae, Yemayá olodo
Kae, Kae, Kae, asesú olodo
And when I do, it is better.
My drum’s in tune.
Hands so rough and calloused
you’d think he pounded nails
for a living but he is
a conguero.
His living is music.
Percussive pak, pok, dum, dim
fills our house daily.
Probably why I came out
dancing.
From the start
Mima’s heartbeat
Papa Drum’s music
like my soundtrack
and so I dance and sing along.
Up late on a Saturday night.
Juju sleeps.
Luna wanes.
The dancers come into
our room again
not dressed as brightly.
As I watch them pirouette
I can hear Mima and Papi
speaking in the dining room
outside our bedroom.
Their voices vibrate
harmonica-like
through paper walls.
I can tell it is something
intense because of the
singsong way that their
voices climb and fall
whisper and punch
and I tune in.…
Mima, please slow down with her. She’s too young to be dealing with all of this grown women’s stuff.
Are you blind, amor? Haven’t you seen how her body is developing?
You should be encouraging her to be a better artist, a better dancer, a better student, not a grown woman.
She can be all those things and still celebrate the healthy development of her body.
I guess I just don’t want my little girl to go. Can’t you let her come to it on her own and not because you want it a certain way?
Her changes are going to happen whether we like it or not. Es la ley de la vida.
But don’t you think she needs her privacy? A little space?
Yes, but she can only get so much when she and Juju are crammed into that room.
I mean from you and this moon ceremony.
From me? Wait one second, amor. I’ll be damned if MY daughter comes into her womanhood in ignorance of her body and her connection to the universe.
But she’s just a little girl, Mima.
Yes, a BLOSSOMING little girl who is almost twelve and very soon will be a woman. She is going to need all of her power, all of her self-knowledge, and all of her community when it comes.
I hear a bang
like someone slammed the dining room table
and I can’t tell if it’s Mima or Papi.
I hear scrambling and complaints about
a glass of spilled water.
Then they are quiet.
Though I wish Mima
would listen to Papi
I wonder what all of my power looks like
and how much of me there is left to know.
Juju was born
with a broken heart
and blue eyes.
He came the night of a big storm
so tiny he looked brittle
and was sort of ugly.
Mima said he looked
like a baby bird who’d fallen from its nest
or more like a viejito ruso, a Russian old man
with his white skin, bald head, and light eyes.
No one could explain exactly why
he was so fair, so unlike
the bronze of our skin
except for Mima, who said that
five hundred years of colonization
gave him those colors
and that he would brown up in no time.
And he has, though that was never the worry.
The doctors said only
open-heart surgery could repair
his tetralogy of Fallot—a heart br o k en
in
four
places.
Mima cried so much
partly because her herbs
couldn’t fix him
mostly because there was a risk
that he could die on the table.
But he didn’t.
He came back like a
little bolt of lightning.
I would sing songs to him
to stop him from crying
and because Papi says
that music can heal us too.
I like to think that it worked
because now his heart is all sealed.
He is as dorado as me
though still has those crazy blue eyes
and his mouth moves faster than
Sunday morning
I come into our bedroom after breakfast.
Mima’s got the trash can turned upside down
and everything’s scattered on the floor
like fallen flower petals on the ground.
She and Juju search for something
like they often do for his lost Lego pieces
but this time, Mima is crying quietly.
What’d you break now, Juju? I begin to scold
but she looks up and freezes my words
with a cold how-could-you look.
Then I see that she’s got the tiny
pieces of our faces in her palm—
our eyes and smiles,
hair, bodies,
my eleventh birthday cake—
cut into strange triangles,
wonky squares, and rhombuses.
I didn’t think you hated us so much, mija?
Then I begin to tear apart
to see Mima so upset because
of my moment of flaming coraje.
I manage to tremble quietly,
I was just mad.
At what, Celi? What did we ever do?
I can’t bring myself to tell her
what I really want to say at first.
Answer me, Celi—qué?
I close my eyes
too heavy with tears now
and the words stumble from me:
I don’t want to share
what happens to my body
with the whole world!
It’s nobody’s business.
You have no right, Mima.
It’s my bod
y!
I crack open my eyes
to see a gash of hurt rip across
the onyx of her wet eyes,
But, mija, you should have nothing to hide
from Papi and Juju and me.
It is a beautiful thing, what’s
happening to you.
She mutters sweetly with lots of spaces
between each word, which collide inside of me.
She comes to hold me
but I push away.
Juju’s mouth drops open
and Mima’s pierced heart
drains the softness from her cry.
Her weep deepens
but I don’t care.
Mima kneels down
picks up a piece of the torn photo—
it’s half of her face—and shows it to me,
We are a family, Celi. You came from my blood.
There is no use in trying to cut us out or push me away
because nothing will ever change that.
She begins to move toward the door
but swoops up my tablet
and takes it with her.
I fling myself
onto my bed and
scream
into my pillow.
I feel a Lego piece
hit
my back
when Juju leaves
to go look for Mima.
Magda catches me hiding as I watch Iván
do skateboard tricks outside La Peña.
Luckily Aurora the pest is not around
drooling all over him.
So Magda settles next to me
to follow him as
he swishes
glides
skips
scratches up the concrete planter.
Iván is Black-xican—Black and Mexican
mixed like me.
A little different than my
Black-Puerto Rican-Mexican-ness
but with the exact same deep amber in our skin
and reddish-brown honey in our eyes.
Painted on the underside of his skateboard deck
is an Aztec calendar on one end
and a Black Panther on the other.
We hear him tell his friend
that he and his Mexican dad
painted that board
together
before his dad left.
Mima and Magda’s mom, Teresa,
sit and talk in La Peña’s café
while they wait for our bomba class to end.
They are friends since college
from their Xicana Power organizing days
when they started to learn about being Mexica
about our Aztec ancestors
and lost history.
Teresa’s a chiropractor
easy harmony with herbalist Mima.
They reconnected when they went for
their doctorate degrees at NCHU—
Northern California Holistic University—
while pregnant with us and studying in their fields.