The Truth of Dare
EDVER
The one thing we’re really good at sharing
is adventure, so we sneak out at night to peer up
at owl eyes, and we scramble up slopes by day
to splash in rocky pools beneath waterfalls.
We take turns gathering bugs
to stare at under the microscope.
My prize is a hawk moth that looks
exactly like a hummingbird, and Luza’s
is a cicada with eyes the color
of tomatoes.
But when we play truth or dare,
I’m not brave enough to reveal secrets,
so I claim all the imaginary prizes
for feats of foolishness, like jumping off
waterfall cliffs.
It’s kind of funny how my courage starts
with cowardice.
Hovering
LUZA
Each time I dare my brother to call our mother
on the wall phone, I hover and listen, but she’s
always gone,
traveling to some distant land,
her answering machine a long list
of destinations spoken in English.
“Hi, I’m doing fieldwork in Fiji, talk to you
when I get back.
Hey, I’m on a volcano in Japan, see you soon,
Edvercito.
Wow, this is my first trip to Argentina!
Hope you’re having fun with la familia.
Hola. Tell your sister I’m sorry for everything,
and I promise we’ll talk, oh, and remind Yoel
that I have big news for La Selva—all he needs to do
is fill out those forms, they should be there by now.
I sent them with a courier.
Give Abuelito a hug, and kiss Jutía,
if that funny old wiener dog is still alive.
By the way, after a great deal of back-and-forth
between lawyers, the bicyclist decided
not to sue after all, as long as I agree to pay
all the hospital bills, so listen, m’ijo, you got off easy
this time, but he could have pressed charges.
You would have been the least violent kid
in juvenile hall—in other words,
the most pummeled. (That means beat-up,
in case you haven’t been studying
all those vocabulary words
I put in your backpack!)”
So much about Edver, but NOTHING about me.
Not one real message for my ears,
only that quick lie about being sorry,
and the feeble promise to talk.
If I could turn back time, I’d be two years old,
searching the forest again, trying to find
my mother, who had just abandoned me,
taking my baby brother. . . .
I’d locate her this time, then I’d reach up
and pummel her with my tiny
fists.
Forms?
EDVER
What does Mom mean?
Dad won’t explain.
He just grins and shrugs,
as if they share a secret.
Is this why she left him,
because he’s so silent,
the quietest Cuban
who ever lived?
“Fill out the forms.”
That could be anything!
Adoption, custody, foster parents,
or who knows what other form
of family torture?
Luckily, Dad feels so bad about leaving me
wondering
that he decides to spend lots of time with me
doing other things.
My favorite moments are the ones
filled with actions, instead of words.
We walk around the forest, studying bugs,
leaves, and seeds of all sorts, even peeking
inside holes in wood,
to find grubs and worms
that can be
identified.
El baile de los viejitos
LUZA
When Dad goes back to his solitary work,
and Edver once again feels left out, our shared
confusion
makes us grouchy.
We have to get away from our thoughts,
so Abuelo takes us down to the village,
all three of us mounted on big Rocinante,
while Dad goes off on his routine patrols
riding little Platero.
In town, we eat surprisingly well, considering
the general scarcity of food, because all we have to do
is stand around inside el Club de los Abuelos,
a senior center where white-haired ladies feed us
whatever they have—rationed rice, garden produce,
wild fruit, and sweets, all sorts of treats
made from homegrown sugar,
chocolate, spices, and coffee.
Next, we dance.
Abuelo is the one who invites me to star
in el Baile de los Viejitos, the Dance of Little Old Folks.
So I twirl and leap with a cane, pretending to sway,
lose my balance, almost fall, totter feebly,
move as if my back hurts, my bones creak,
my mind wavers, and still, despite all that pain,
I feel
so exhilarated
that the lively dance steps
ABSOLUTELY BURST
from my aching body,
while an ear-to-ear SMILE
never leaves my brightly painted
old lady lips!
Funny
EDVER
The secret of el Baile de los Viejitos
is making young dancers appear to be old,
not the other way around.
It’s a really weird kind of humor,
the sort Abuelo loves, because instead of just
making fun of himself, he’s also teasing us.
He says we’ll be old someday, and then
we’ll understand.
I don’t really believe him, because the world
seems like such a mess that if this were a game,
I wouldn’t expect to survive, but it’s real life,
so I laugh out loud
each time my sister’s cane
taps a loud rhythm
that matches the size of her clunky
thick-soled, old lady shoes!
Boys My Age
LUZA
I feel like a fantastic dancer
until other children show up,
but this awareness of the presence
of the grandsons of real old ladies
suddenly makes me self-conscious
about my white wig and flowered apron.
Introducing my brother to school friends
is a huge decision.
What if he offends them with his show-off
rich-kid shoes
and foreign ways?
But the girls are so excited to finally meet
un americano who isn’t a tourist!
Everything has to be explained to Edver,
especially names, because islanders
had to give up saints’ names
during the years when religion
was illegal, so now many parents
are still in the habit of inventing new words
instead of choosing old-fashioned ones
that carry all the risks of history.
Danía’s name is a mixture of Daniel and María.
Yamily rhymes with the English word family,
because all her brothers floated away to Miami.
Dayesí—da, yes, sí—means yes, yes, yes
in Russian, English, and Spanish.
It’s a name that grew out of the craziness
of never knowing whether poor little Cuba
would end up in the shadow of one enormous
bossy foreign nation
or the other.
I’m too shy to spend much time with boys,
but a dark-eyed dreamer called Yavi
loves to tease me,
so he follows me around,
pretending to be friendly,
when really all he wants to do
is show off his fancy clothes
and modern gadgets, all sent to him
by relatives in Florida.
His name means Ya vi, “I already saw,”
but he never says exactly what his mamá
looked at while she attached two old words
together, turning them into a new one.
As soon as Yavi meets my brother, I can tell
that they share the same sense of humor,
filling up any awkward silences
with fartlike noises and real burps.
Yavi’s eyes make me nervous,
so I rush away from him, guiding Edver
on a tour of the ration shop, with its nearly
empty shelves, followed by a tourist store
overflowing with luxuries, and a restaurant
where foreigners come to drink
sweet mountain coffee, and eat
rare foods that the rest of us
can’t afford, unless we grow
the vegetables ourselves,
and raise the chickens,
and gather
wild spices.
Connected!
EDVER
Staring girls with weird names
make me feel like racing away,
but Yavi says he owns a computer,
and has IntERnet—global, not just
the island’s local IntRAnet!
So while my sister tries to show me things
she thinks are interesting—like her school,
a park, the post office, a church—all I can do
is hop up and down inside my mind
while I wait for a chance
to run across the street
with Yavi, and sit down
to face familiar flares
of dragon flames, roaring
from ravenous mouths. . . .
If there’s a forbidden satellite dish,
it must be well hidden behind all those
flowering red flame trees, yellow hibiscus,
and purple jacaranda.
But the connection is dial-up,
soooooooo
SLOOOOOW
but still
so amazingly
satisfying!
Now here I am, right back where I belong,
inside my normal world, the cryptic one
that’s hidden deep inside
this computer screen.
Nerviosa/Nervous
LUZA
I’ve never broken such an absolute rule.
Everyone knows el IntERnet is peligroso,
dangerous, forbidden, banned,
off-limits to the general public,
available only in certain places
to special people.
Rocking chairs, a lace tablecloth,
Yavi’s dozing great-grandma, it all seems
so ordinary, except for the way my bold brother
taps his fingers on a magical keyboard
to make imaginary creatures appear. . . .
When he and Yavi finally finish
their endless game of growling battles,
I venture to ask the question that haunts me.
If I spell certain words, will I see Mamá’s picture
and be able to write a letter that will reach her,
maybe even receive an answer, hear her voice
on paper, print it, and hold a mystery in my hand
forever?
Passwords
EDVER
I know them all, because I’m the one
who used to help Mom set up her pages,
albums, profiles, and blogs, not to mention
spending plenty of lonely hours
spying on her, trying to see
who she knows,
chats with,
flirts with,
maybe even
dates.
Creeps?
Mean men?
Losers.
I wouldn’t be surprised.
Why else would she keep her private life
so secretive lately, hiding some of it so well
that even I can’t hack the new accounts,
break complicated codes, and find her friends’
unfamiliar faces?
When I see how many followers she has now,
I know she’s been busy tapping away at her laptop
while sitting on beaches in Fiji, volcanoes in Japan,
and grassy savannahs in Argentina.
Grants, research, articles in science journals,
all of it is right here in front of me, a detailed record
of her movements and interests.
Nothing at all about the son she sent away
for a whole summer, or the daughter
she abandoned forever.
Luza is standing right behind me,
looking over my shoulder. I wonder
how she feels, seeing her absence
from Mom’s online
mind.
Maybe the word genius needs
a new definition, something
that measures mountains of emotions,
not just separate, tiny
thoughts.
Scheming
LUZA
Silent room.
Sorrowful reality.
What would Mamá say
if we unite
to invite her
to visit us?
Will she see our plea
as an opportunity
or a complaint?
I need a magnet to draw her close,
something to attract her scientific curiosity!
When I explain my idea to Edver, he shakes
his head slowly, then pauses, shrugs, grins,
and says that it’s possible, maybe we could
really lure her, but only with a wildlife
emergency.
Name any animal, my wily brother suggests.
We don’t want her to see
that our newly discovered species
is a lie.
Jewel beetle?
Dragonfly?
Golden silk orb-weaver?
Tree frog?
Anole lizard?
Scorpion?
Gradually, a lost-and-found image drifts
back into my vision, a memory of tiger swallowtail
butterflies, soaring between mango trees
while we were hitchhiking,
such a colorful cloud
of striped wings. . . .
Edver stands up, tells me to sit down,
then shows me how to type NEW PAPILIO,
making everything capitalized, a SHOUT
for our mother’s ATTENTION.
Papilio—the genus name of swallowtails!
I look over my shoulder and see Edver
smiling—he approves, so he must
actually think this trick might work.
Now let’s add the location, he instructs.
La Selva. The Jungle. On la isla,
but he warns me
not to name Cuba,
because that makes
the puzzle
too easy.
We’ve created a challenge,
a dilemma, a problem.
Will she solve it?
Does she play games?
There are so many jungles in the world,
so many islands, how will she know
which place we mean?
We haven’t used our names,
and she won’t recognize Yavi’s
online account.
But Edver seems so confident.
&nb
sp; He swears he understands how her mind works.
She’ll see NEW PAPILIO and feel driven, he promises.
Obsessed, she’ll need to find out if this might be
a Lazarus species, one that was extinct
until NOW, this moment
of magically real
rediscovery.
No Way
EDVER
It’s perfect.
A secret.
Right here on this familiar World Wide Web
of words, where nothing is ever really
private.
Mom will know which island we mean, won’t she?
If anyone else sees it, they’ll be confused, won’t they?
My sister and I wait.
Electronic silence.
No response.
Mom’s not reading her phone,
all those messages, comments, posts,
boasts, and praise from her friends
and from strangers.
So she must be out in another jungle
someplace remote, with no connection.
There aren’t too many countries
where the Internet is still restricted,
but there are plenty of places without
any way to make contact.
Too poor.
Too isolated.
Too small.
Just huts.
When the maddening screen silence continues,
I grow restless and start to roam all over her pages,
until I notice her status: IN A RELATIONSHIP!!!
All caps.
Three exclamation marks.
Yikes, this is serious.
So that’s it—the explanation for my surprise trip
to Dad’s house. Mom must have sent me away
just so she could be alone with some guy.
Who is he, and why doesn’t she want me
to meet him?
Maybe he hates kids.
Yeah, it was probably his idea
to get rid of me for the whole summer
or even longer.
Creepy
LUZA
Mamá’s boyfriend is hideous, his face distorted,
the grin too big, like a giant staring into a river
where water becomes a rippling,
racing mirror.
Somehow, I feel like I might have seen him before.
Maybe in an article, one of those scientific magazines
Papi sometimes receives as gifts from traveling
researchers?
Edver explains that strange photos are the result
of taking one’s own picture too close up—un selfie feo,
an ugly self-portrait, smug, arrogant, presumido,
stuck-up.