DIAL BOOKS
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, New York
First published in the United States of America by Dial Books for Young Readers,
an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2021
Copyright © 2021 by Elisabet Velasquez
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
Ebook ISBN 9780593324493
Cover art © 2021 by Fanesha Fabre
Cover design by Theresa Evangelista
Design by Jason Henry | Adapted for ebook by Michelle Quintero
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
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CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Epigraph
Introduction
Fall 1996: Bushwick, Brooklyn
How I Got My Name: Sarai
Mami
How We Got Our Names: Estrella
Papi
Lucky
We Ain’t Afraid
Neighbors
Curiosity Killed the Catsatisfaction Brought It Back
I Ask Questions About Puerto Rico
Leaving Gates Avenue
How We Got Our Names: Hookerbocker Ave
Today in Bible Study: Trinity
Sarai’s Got Talent
Roster
The Cool Puerto Rican English Teacher
How We Got Our Names: Mami’s Job
Off the Books
How We Got Our Names: Homegirls
The Neighborhood Is Changing
Storytime with Señor Maví
Can I Be Puerto Rican?
If Being Boricua in Bushwick Is a Feeling—It’s the Best Kind
Being Boricua Is Not Just a Feeling
How We Talk: Boricuas
Pronunciation
Plancha
Good Hair Days, Bad Hair Days
God & Lucifer
Estrella Turns Seventeen
The Daily News Says
Devotional
We’re Sorry the Welfare Office Is Closed and Will Reopen When You Have No Bus Fare to Get Here
Toy Drive
Birthdays Are the Worst Days
We Not Catholic
I Think We May Be Homeless
Things You Can’t Do to Survive: Break the Rules
Things You Must Do to Survive: Break the Rules
Sacrificio
Brooklyn Wela
Things We Don’t Talk About: Color
¿Pastelón O Pernil?
Things We Don’t Talk About: Color
When Someone Asks if You Hungry the Answer Is Always No Even When It’s Yes
Hood Credit
Fiao
Mami Is Pregnant
Baby Pictures
God’s Not Dead, He’s Still Alive
Hotel, Motel, Holiday Inn
Women, Infants & Children
How We Got Our Names: Tropical Fantasy
Side Hustle
Leave Before You’re Left
How We Got Our Names: Angry Bitches
El Bodeguero
Good Jobsbad Jobs
Erasure
How We Got Our Names: Five Dollar Shoe Store
Pork-Fried Rice Money
How We Got Our Names: Danny
Visiting Danny at the Group Home
Antonio
The Apartment on Troutman Street
The News Says Bushwick Has a Drug Problem
Planning
G
To Steal or Not to Steal
A Real G
911 What’s Your Emergency
This Is the Day That the Lord Has Made, Let Us Rejoice & Be Glad in It
Your Silence Will Not Protect You
Today in Bible Study
We Don’t Know Who the Landlord Is But We Know He Don’t Care
The Corner Boys
My Life as a Bible Story: David & Goliath
Career Day
In Living Color
Estrella Wants to Get Paid to Have Sex
Prayer
How Mami Lost the Baby
Good Days
Kumbaya
Professional Spanish Knocks on the Door
Danny Is Kidnapped
Bushwick Library
Books We Read
You Got Potential
Ask Me Anything Day with Ms. Rivera
My Life as a Salsa Song: La Vida Te da Sorpresas
Code Switch
New Words/Ironic/: Something That Is Exactly the Opposite of What Is Meant or Expected to Happen
New Words/Preservation/: To Keep Alive or in Existence
How We Got Our Names: Neighborhood Watch
116th Street Festival
Qué Bonita Bandera
The Puerto Rican Day Parade on Knickerbocker Avenue
We Make the News
The Mayor Says: I Don’t Think Youth Programs Will Help
If You Care to Look Closely
The War on Roaches
Graduation Day
My Life as a Salsa Song: Un Verano en Nueva York
Estrella Got Plans to Make It Out
Piragüero vs. the Limber Lady
Summer Lunches
New Words/Affection/: A Feeling of Liking and Caring for Someone or Something
Yellow Tape
How We Got Our Names: Jefferson Street
My Life as a Salsa Song: Periódico de Ayer
The News Article Is About How Hopeless We Are: New York Times, October 6, 1993
If the News Article Was About Police Brutality
If the News Article Was About How Hopeful We Are
The Block Is Hot
Voices
We Ran Out of Toothpaste
Back at the Welfare Office
Talk Proper
How We Talk
How Mami Talks to People with Power
Good Jobs
BCW from A to Z
New Words/Addiction/: The Repeated Involvement with a Substance or Activity Despite the Substantial Harm It Now Causes
Bell Atlantic Is Bringing Us Together
Silent Treatment
This Is Your Brain on Drugs
How We Got Our Names: Cracking Up
Fall Down Seven Times
Get Up Eight
Rehearsal
My Body
Tag
The Magic Church Bus
They Have Cable
For All Have Sinned and Come Short of the Glory of God
New Words/Glamour/: An
Attractive or Exciting Quality That Makes Certain People or Things Seem Appealing
First Jobs
Question for the BIC Pen I Use to Write Down Mami’s Appointments on the Calendar
Today in Bible Study
Needles
New Words/Scoff/: To Laugh and Talk About a Person or Idea in a Way That Shows That You Think They Are Stupid or Silly
New Words/Evaluation/: A Systematic Determination of a Subject’s Merit, Worth and Significance
Medicaid
Living the Dream
My Life as a Salsa Song: La Cura
After School the Piano Player from Church Is Waiting for Me
Sarai Should Have Known Better
The Piano Man Has a Family
My Life as a Bible Story: Lot’s Wife
What Estrella Knows About Justice
Jesus Our Lord & Savior
What Lala Knows About Justice
What the Men Know About Justice
My Life as a Salsa Song: Usted Abusó
The Last Time I Call the Chatline
New Words/Statistic/: A Fact or Piece of Data from a Study of a Large Collection of Numerical Data
Tony’s Pizza
New Words/Resentment/: A Feeling of Anger Because You Have Been Forced to Accept Something That You Do Not Like
Things We Don’t Talk About: Puerto Rican History
Things We Don’t Talk About: What Happened to Mami
Church Boy
Pickup Lines
First Kiss
End of Summer
I Hate My New High School
The Cool White English Teacher
Stranger Danger
New Words/Investments/: Spend Money Now to Make Money Later
Class Clown
Second Person
An English Quiz I Ace
Tone Goes Missing
Squatters
How We Got Our Names: Raid
The New York Times
Bell Atlantic Is Tearing Us Apart
Losing My Virginity
Mami Thinks I Am Still a Virgin
Estrella Goes Missing
If Being Boricua in Bushwick Is a Feeling It’s the Worst Kind
Acknowledgments
Estrella Is Back
Got a Secret, Can You Keep It?
Love
How We Got Our Names: Tag
How to Go Missing
Silence
Happily Ever After
Mami Threatens to Send Estrella to Puerto Rico
Aguadilla
Bori Wela Is Dying
Estrella Goes to Live with Papi
I Miss Estrella
We’re Going to Puerto Rico
Rafael Hernández Airport
A Tale of Two Puerto Ricans
Puerto Rican History
The Houses in Puerto Rico
What Happened to Mami
How We Talk: Try Me
Visiting Bori Wela in the Hospital
In Case of Emergency: Learn Puerto Rican History
Getting to Know Yougetting to Know All About You
Tío Richie Wants to Talk Puerto Rican History
Diasporican Blues
What Happened to Mami
Mami & Papi’s Life as a Salsa Song: Periódico de Ayer
My Life as a Salsa Song: Todo Tiene Su Final
Bochinche
Imagination Gone Wild
Playing Hooky
The 411
Estrella Gives Birth
When We Make It
How We Honor Our Dead
Holy Walls
Estrella Is Not the Same
New Words/Postpartum Depression: A Feeling of Deep Sadness, Anxiety, Etc., That a Person Can Feel After Giving Birth to a Child
Psychological Evaluation
We Visit Estrella at Woodhull Hospital
Estrella Wants Me to Know
Brooklyn Wela Adopts the Baby
Birthdays Are Still the Worst Days
One Day Church Boy Starts Acting All Funny
Gaining Weight
I Am Pregnant
Mirror
I Tell Estrella I Am Pregnant
Understanding Trinity
New Words/Detonate/: To Explode with Sudden Violence
Disciplina
Breaking Up with Church Boy
About the Author
First Prenatal Appointment
Sonogram
Baby Pictures
At the Counselor’s Office
I Am a Dangerously Bad Example
First Day at the School for Pregnant Girls
Mami Said I’m a Woman Now
There Is No Room in the Budget for Books
The Writing Assignment Is to Imagine Future You Writing to Present You
Baby Shower
C-Section
I Give Birth to Hope
Visiting Hours
Sorpresas Te da La Vida
How We Got Our Names: Postpartum Depression
What if Making It Looks Like This
Acknowledgments
Resources
Poems in Conversation
About the Author
Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought.
—Audre Lorde
Poetry Is Not a Luxury
Dear Reader,
When We Make It is based on my life growing up in Bushwick, Brooklyn, at the height of the “war on drugs” and as gentrification accelerated. Like Sarai, I am a first-generation U.S. born Puerto Rican. My family also navigated mental illness, houselessness, and food insecurity, and lived significantly below the poverty line. Making it was often both as simple and as complicated as hoping the pantry box included a really good name-brand cereal, or having heat in the dead of winter.
I wrote this book as a way to acknowledge these truths and to honor those who’ve experienced the same. Some of the poems in When We Make It touch upon sexual assault, abuse, mental illness, miscarriage and pregnancy. And so, there may be poems that hit close to home, poems where you might want to pause and take a break after reading in order to process. Please take the time you need.
I also hope there will be poems that make you laugh and that fill you with wonder and hope.
I am only here because I remembered who I was. I was born already forgotten. This book is for those born with stories already erased. May we return to them in whatever way rings true. This book is also for anyone who feels their emotions before they can name them. For anyone who still may not have all of the language but has their story. Your story is all the language you need. And of course, this is only one story of many. I urge you to write yours. All of our stories are pivotal & necessary on our way to making it.
Thank you for reading,
FALL 1996
BUSHWICK, BROOKLYN
“QUE CANTE MI GENTE”
—“MI GENTE”
HÉCTOR LAVOE
HOW I GOT MY NAME
SARAI
Let’s start the story where abandon meets faith.
Aight, so, boom. Check it.
I’m named after a homegirl
in the Bible who couldn’t have kids.
Her man Abram was all like:
Yo, Sarai, God promised me I would be the Father of Nations.
Sarai was all like:
Nah B, you must be buggin’, you know I can’t have no babies.
Our pastor says faith is believing in something
you can’t really see.
According to Mami,
we should never put our faith in men.
Mami was pregnant with me when Papi bounced
for some new c
hick & told Mami to have an abortion.
Abram got himself a new chick, too.
Got her pregnant and all that.
I guess Mami identified with Sarai’s fear and doubt—
& so I was born out of Mami’s faith & hope.
MAMI
Mami is a round woman.
A square by any other definition.
No-nonsense, Pentecostal
with no patience for her own children most days.
There are three of us in total.
Danny, Estrella & Me. I am the youngest.
My sister Estrella said Mami’s depressed.
File this under “shit we don’t talk about.”
Pentecostals, we’re just supposed to pray
the sadness away.
¡Fuera! The pastor demands on prayer night.
¡Fuera! I imagine sadness is a bad singer
being kicked off the show
by el Chacal on Sábado Gigante.
Apparently, Jesus & Don Francisco
can save anything.
Once during church testimonio,
Mami gave Jesus mad credit
for saving her from Papi’s fists. ¡Amén! ¡Aleluya!
Now, Papi lives in the Bronx with his new wife.
Estrella uses the payphone
to collect call him all the time.
She says Papi is also Christian now
& that God forgave him
for beating on Mami & so we should too.
But Mami’s eyes never close right during prayer service
& I wonder what kind of God you have to be
to receive praise from the hands responsible for that.
HOW WE GOT OUR NAMES
ESTRELLA
Estrella was named after another woman
Papi was cheating on Mami with.
Nobody says that out loud though. But I can tell
by the way my sister’s name jumps off of Mami’s tongue
like one of those side chicks
on The Ricki Lake Show.
On my father’s tongue, Estrella matters.
Her name is a sloooow dance in Brooklyn.
Her name is a bullet that didn’t kill nobody.
Her name is the beeper alert that gets a call back.
Estrella is three years older than me.
She is sixteen but her body is not.
She got that it’s not my fault,
I thought you were older kind of body.
She is the kind of beautiful
that dique puts men in danger
or that makes men want to be dangerous.
The kind of beautiful Mami always wanted to be.