the sugary air across
the yarda and through
our windows
and into
our noses
and into
an
ahh.
Mami lights a candle daily
to a small statue of La Virgen de Guadalupe
and a picture of Tío Pedro faded in a frame.
His whole face is a smile.
His big wavy hair is like Mami’s
but shorter
and he’s got a reddish-brown
hair donut around his mouth
Mami doesn’t have
except for one whisker
that grows under her chin.
Can I light the match? Por please?
Con cuidado not to get burned, hijita.
She prays for protection under her breath
while she fusses with the roses
in the vase and the little milagrito
metal charms of hands and hearts
scattered at La Virgencita’s feet.
As I stare at Mami’s altar
I notice each time, we are
the brown of this Virgen
the morena of her
painted ceramic skin.
I spot the slice of moon
and the winged angel
that holds her up.
My favorite part.
I smile to think maybe
La Virgencita is a bird.
Virgencita llena eres de gracia …
Mami, excuse me, but I think …
… protégenos con tu manto.
La Virgencita has wings
like her baby angel.
Mami giggles
and pokes my panza.
Maybe she is hiding them in her robes!
Or behind her arms!
Our giggles tumble together
under La Virgencita’s patient eyes.
Mami. Is Tío Pedro with her?
Mami’s smile melts.
She nods her head a little
and stares into her brother’s picture.
Yes, mi’ja. He is with her now.
Ms. Martinez teaches me magic.
She casts the vocabulary words
all fourth graders should know
onto the white board
for us to squeeze into memory.
The funnest game.
I love to loop and lift
the lines to make shapes
mean something
on my paper.
Words in English
I don’t know at first
but the more I draw the curves
and lines, then hear the way they
sound out loud, the more alive
they are in my head.
Words like:
intonation or fortune
energy or angle
anguish or freedom
myth or alchemy
are the almost spells
I spell
with ink.
From my cushy bed
Saturday-morning sounds
are a blast of rancheras
swooshing into our house
leftover music from
Omar’s ritual car wash
and el paletero’s bell
ring, ring, ringing
and Papi’s calling,
¡Para arriba, Betita Plumita!
Los quince de Tina are today!
I squeeze my ojos shut
but my ears are two nets
snatching more sounds
the tiny cackle of Amparo’s baby brother
and the fart noises I know she makes
by catching air in her armpits
make me giggle
before Papi tickles my toes really awake.
I tumble out of my blankets
follow the smell of huevitos
and café coming from the kitchen
thinking about
my cousin Tina’s
round yellow dress.
I run into Papi
spin, spin, spinning
Mami away from the stove
he tucks her into a cheek-to-cheek
two-step ranchera
then pulls me
into a close snug.
I bury my face
into Mami’s squishy belly
feeling my mouth stretch
into the sappiest jelly grin
as I bounce
along to their
two-step ranchera strides.
When we sit to eat
I bring my paper and crayons.
Mami slides me my dish.
With a wink from Papi
I drift into my drawing.
Tina in her quince dress
her straight blue-black hair
that I use two colors to get just right.
I draw myself in my new
dusty-rose dress
holding her hand
my mouth so open
a fly is about to go inside.
Six raids in the last two days, Papi chews.
Where?
In the factories just over the tracks.
People say there will be more.
This administration is out to get us.
But this is a sanctuary state.
A what, Mami?
Papi clears his throat and
almost whispers,
A “sanctuary” is a place where cranes can’t get caught.
Caught for doing what?
They look at each other
and then at me.
I can tell I’m not supposed to ask
by the way their worried eyebrows
push down
on their blabber-mouth eyes.
For just wanting to fly, Plumita.
So can we get caught too?
Betita, Mami quiets me, eat up, cielito.
We have to get to church early
before the ceremony. Mira, look
at this beautiful bouquet I made from
our rosales for Tina to offer La Virgen.
I look down without their answer
and quickly draw a bouquet of flowers
in Tina’s other hand.
The only wordspell I have time to cast
is my curly name and the date
on the bottom.
Betita-September 15
I looove Tina’s fancy dress
big and bouncy golden-yellow satin
with sparkly flowers at the hem.
Her fanciness courtesy of
Mami and Papi
the padrinos of that dress
’cause they paid for all
but the last one hundred dollars
Tina’s dad, Tío Juan, threw in.
Tío Juan is Papi’s brother
and the first crane to fly here
a long time ago.
He helped Papi find a job in
construction, and Tía Raquel,
Tina’s mamá, helped Mami
find work taking care of babies.
They are part of the flock we have here.
Tina shows me her Gram page
with all the facial tutorials
she likes and uses me
to test them out.
Then we take pictures and videos of our
slathered green avocado faces
and cucumber eyes
she posts to her Gram story
and we wait for the likes to pop in
from her almost one thousand followers!
Funny to think what she might look like
in an oatmeal mask and poofy sparkly dress.
But right now
our happiness
is big and wide because she looks like Belle
dancing a waltz with gruff Tío Juan
in her Beauty and the Beast backyard ballroom.
Paper flowers all around the tall rented canopy
yellow ribbons woven into the chain-link fence.
Tía Raquel stops her running around
long enough to get weepy happy
and wipe her tears with the
corner of her plaid apron
over her lacy navy dress.
A bunch of Tina’s school friends
are here wearing so much makeup
and tiny dresses so tight, they look really old
like grown-up old.
Tío Desiderio is on guard
at the bar, making sure some
of her pimply-faced guy friends
don’t try to get beer.
Most of the smaller kids
are weaving in and out of tables
between the older tíos and tías sitting
on folding chairs and fanning themselves
because of the late-summer heat, but not me.
My eyes are drinking up Tina
floating
and
gliding
like a dancing crane.
I tug on Mami’s
dress and point at Tina and
then right back at me.
One day, I wish to have a
backyard Beauty and the Beast
ballroom crane quince
like Tina.
By the way Mami squeezes
my round cheeks
with her manicured fingers
I think she wants one for me too.
At aftercare pickup
Papi says,
Now that you are a fourth grader
it’s time for you to know
the meaning of the word
“Cartel,” a cardboard sign
to announce something
as in “for sale”
or “car wash here.”
But also,
a group of men who sell
drugs
guns
and people
sometimes.
A cartel hurt Tío Pedro
made him disappear
when he didn’t give them
the money they wanted
and then, wanted to come
for us too
though we had nothing
to do with it.
It’s why we can’t see
Abuelita Lola anymore.
We were lucky Tío Juan
petitioned for us
to be here before we knew
of cartels.
Petition?
It’s like getting on a wait list.
For what?
To fly free, Plumita.
When I ask Papi
if the men in cartels
are cranes like us
he says,
It’s impossible, Betita
because their souls
are so mangled
they have forgotten
how to be birds.
In Ms. Martinez’s class
Amparo invites me to play
a mapping game on a globe.
She tilts her round head
and her floppy ponytail whips
to the side when she asks.
I am always ready
to play with Amparo.
She explains,
Okay, Betita,
first I’ll find a random place
then I’ll spin the globe
and you have to find it.
Ready … Madagascar!
I find it easy.
Here!
This big island floating
in the sea next
to Africa.
When we switch
I run my fingers over
the bumps on the globe
that mean mountains
and continents
and make my fingers dance.
I start at Alaska
and feel the ridges
run into the Rocky Mountains
then turn into the Sierra Madres
the bumpy mountains connected
like a curvy spine
all the way down
the back of North America.
These are all the places
Papi said cranes fly.
Amparo snaps,
C’mon, Betita, give me a place!
Without looking I say,
Here, find Aztlán
and spin.
She squeezes
her hazel eyes
almost closed at me.
She knows it’s a trick question
but she goes along.
Ay, your papi says Aztlán
doesn’t exist in real life anymore.
That the Aztecs left it a long time ago.
Yes it DOES exist, tell me
where is it now?
She rolls her eyes but answers,
Okay, we are rebuilding it here in East LA.
Amparo points to LA on the globe
then she places her hand over
her chest and says,
También in here.
I get cartwheel happy
because Amparo
has been listening
to Papi’s stories!
She knows
she is a crane too!
On Monday
Papi must be late. It’s six p.m.
and aftercare closes at six fifteen.
The ticks on the clock
are honey-slow tocks
I try not to count.
I wonder if Papi’s broken a wing
on the skyscrapers he helps build
with hammers and steel?
I wonder if Papi forgot
I am waiting and rushed
to the restaurant with too
many dishes to wash?
But that has never happened.
Ms. Cassandra, the teacher’s aide,
bends the creases of her forehead
near her phone when Papi doesn’t answer.
So she calls Mami, who is the nanny
of toddler twins with bright red cheeks
who can’t fly.
Ms. Cassandra gives me a tissue
to soak up my teariness because Mami
can’t come for me right now either.
She can’t leave those babies
until their parents get home.
Papi is coming, I whisper to myself.
I’ll tuck my wings close and wait.
When the hand of the clock
is past six fifteen and there is no Papi
the sun is still so bright outside.
Principal Brown drives me
to Mami’s work
as far away as forever from school
though close to where
Principal Brown lives.
She tells me,
Everything will be okay, Betita.
Your father probably got caught up.
I’m not sure.
I want Papi.
Where Mami works is so big
it could be a scraper Papi built.
As we arrive, Mami is closing
the wide wood front door behind her.
She wraps one arm around me.
Betita, nada pasa. Todo está bien.
Her face doesn’t match her words.
Something is happening, and it isn’t okay.
I don’t get to see inside.
I don’t get to meet the twins.
I don’t get to
see how
those who aren’t cranes live.
Thank you, Principal Brown. Mami’s voice breaks.
You’re welcome. Please let me know
if there is anything else I can do,
she tells Mami.
We walk to the bus stop
and watch Principal Brown drive off.
Mami is on the phone
now a faucet of drip-drop
tears falling on the pavement.
When I ask her what happened to Papi
she shakes her head
as if to say,
Not now, Betita.
From a string
of weeping words
I learn
someone named ICE
put Papi and other hammer workers
in a cage
and Mami doesn’t know
how to set him free.
I cry to think of Papi
unable to fly.
On the bus, Mami says
here in El Norte
there are walls we were not
supposed to cross.
We are sin papeles
undocumented, her voice trembles.
A word that means
“without permission.”
I remind Mami this is
the land of the cranes.
We have wings
that can soar above walls.
Sí, mi amor, but not
when they have cages
and can stop us from flying.
She sweeps me into
a one-handed hug and
kisses the top of my head.
I watch the traffic turn
from smooth to crowded
through the window of the bus
taking us home.
That night
I crawl into Mami and Papi’s bed
smell for Papi on his pillow.
I stare at Mama’s Virgen altar.
Will I ever see him again?
I take scissors and cut out a square
from his baby-blue pillowcase
tuck the cloth into my blouse
and secure it with a safety pin
near my heart.
I cut out another little piece
and put it on Mami’s Virgencita
smoosh it between the moon
and the angel
and pray for protection.
Please, Virgencita, don’t
take Papi with you too.
Mami is in the living room
with Amparo’s mom, Diana.
They are two cranes murmuring.
She arranges for Diana
to get me after school
until Mami comes for me
at their casita just next door.
Diana will never be able to carry
Amparo
her baby
and me
on her
tiny
shoulders.
Could I fly without Papi?
my crane poem
the one about
a poet bird, Juan Felipe