Enchanted Air Read online

  They have never seen

  the dancing plants

  of Cuba.

  WHEN I WAS A WILD HORSE

  The next time I draw a picture,

  it’s the same gold-winged

  rumba dancer, but this time

  she’s on horseback, smiling,

  and somehow I know

  that I am both

  the flying rider

  and the swift

  steed.

  After that, whenever adults

  ask me if I plan to be an artist

  like my father, I answer:

  No, I will be

  a wild horse

  above green hills,

  flying. . . .

  MI MAMI CUBANA

  On the streets of Los Angeles,

  strangers ask me if my mother

  is a movie star.

  Her beauty makes men

  turn their heads, while envious women

  advise her to wear a crimson hibiscus

  behind one ear, just like all the other

  exotic foreign stars.

  But Mami is shy.

  She would rather tend a whole garden

  than wear a single boastful blossom

  in her dark, wavy hair.

  Homesick, she listens to Cuban music.

  Homesick, she sings to herself in Spanish.

  Homesick, she tells stories about the island.

  Homesick, she sews flowery tropical

  mother-daughter dresses,

  even though Mad and I prefer

  to run around outdoors wearing shorts,

  and never matching

  at all.

  When Mami gives us pretty dolls,

  we toss them into a closet.

  Instead, we play with insects, snails,

  and earthworms.

  But Mami expects us to iron bedsheets,

  and set the table, while all I want to do

  is read tales of adventure.

  As I read The Black Stallion, White Fang,

  and The Call of the Wild,

  I notice that the heroes are always boys.

  Luckily, Mami assures me

  that I can do anything a boy can do.

  She lets me and Mad fill our room

  with living creatures.

  Caterpillars, tadpoles, lizards,

  stray cats and dogs, a rabbit,

  and wild, wounded birds.

  Mami understands us after all.

  Somehow, she knows that even girls

  who have to cook, clean, sew, and iron

  also need the freedom to heal

  injured wings.

  DAMAGED AIR

  Los Angeles is smoggy.

  We have to burn our trash

  in a backyard incinerator.

  No wonder the air feels cursed

  by smoke.

  No wonder Mami is still homesick

  for blue sky

  cleaned

  by tropical storms.

  One by one,

  she tries a dozen arts:

  developing photos in a darkroom,

  spinning soft clay on a potter’s wheel,

  shaping hard metal into jewelry. . . .

  One by one,

  she masters more and more

  English words, and conquers more

  and more of her fears, even learning

  how to drive a car, although she never

  dares to try the speedy freeway.

  Slowly, on side streets,

  she takes us to parks with streams,

  where we gather wild watercress

  for bitter salads.

  Still homesick, Mami finally enters

  the starstruck dreams of Hollywood,

  but she does not act.

  No, the only role she plays is real,

  her true feelings on display

  as entertainment

  for strangers.

  The name of the ugly program

  is Queen for a Day, a game show

  where competing women cry and plead,

  until one of them receives

  a gold crown,

  and a wish.

  On TV, Mami weeps, begging

  for an airplane ticket

  to visit her mother

  in Cuba.

  But she loses.

  Instead, the audience chooses

  another crying woman, a blonde

  who only wants a washer-dryer,

  a familiar wish,

  American-made,

  and modern.

  Metallic. Hard. Cold.

  Solid.

  KINSHIP

  Two sets

  of family stories,

  one long and detailed,

  about many centuries

  of island ancestors, all living

  on the same tropical farm . . .

  The other side of the family tells stories

  that are brief and vague, about violence

  in the Ukraine, which Dad’s parents

  had to flee forever, leaving all their

  loved ones

  behind.

  They don’t even know if anyone

  survived.

  When Mami tells her flowery tales of Cuba,

  she fills the twining words with relatives.

  But when I ask my

  Ukrainian-Jewish-American grandma

  about her childhood in a village

  near snowy Kiev,

  all she reveals is a single

  memory

  of ice-skating

  on a frozen pond.

  Apparently, the length

  of a grown-up’s

  growing-up story

  is determined

  by the difference

  between immigration

  and escape.

  THE GEOGRAPHY OF LIBRARIES

  Spoken stories are no longer enough

  to fill my hunger.

  I crave a constant supply

  of written ones, too.

  Each week, I check out

  as many library books as I can carry,

  so many that I feel like a juggler,

  balancing

  stacks

  of entrancing

  pages

  in midair.

  When I’ve finished reading

  every book in the children’s section,

  I begin sneaking into the library’s

  grown-up zone, where travel books

  help me dream

  of islands.

  OTHER JOURNEYS

  Some summers,

  we manage to travel,

  even though Dad

  has to borrow money

  for visits to Cuba,

  where Mami can finally see

  her family, and I can feel

  at home with my second self,

  the invisible twin who belongs

  to this wild tropical farm

  instead of a modern

  city.

  DIFFERENT

  During the school year,

  there is only one of me,

  a misfit bookworm

  with long braids,

  worried eyes,

  a broken tooth

  that makes me look

  like a vampire,

  and report cards

  that I have to hide,

  so I won’t be

  insulted

  and teased.

  When teachers complain that I’m bored,

  they make me skip a couple of grades,

  so now, overnight, I’m suddenly

  so much younger

  than everyone else

  in a class

  where I know

  no one.

  Now there is only one place where I can

  truly belong, this endless stack

  of blank pages in my mind,

  an empty world

  where I scribble

  more and more poems,

  while I walk back a
nd forth

  to my city school,

  wishing

  for farm life,

  and a self that feels

  natural.

  HORSE CRAZY

  Dad and Mami say that what I want

  doesn’t make sense—not when we live

  in a busy city like Los Angeles.

  They insist that I can only take art classes

  and ballet, not horseback riding.

  But I’ve read enough travel adventures

  to know that, sometimes, common sense

  is not something truly

  worth making.

  So I ride in my daydreams.

  I gallop.

  I fly!

  EARTHBOUND

  Certain summers have only huge,

  flightless wings, like ostriches

  or emus.

  This year, my parents decide

  that all we can afford is a road trip,

  a long, exotic drive through hot deserts

  to Mexico, where Mad and I climb

  the Pyramid of the Sun

  and the Pyramid of the Moon.

  In tropical jungles, wild green parrots

  remind me of island skies, and in villages,

  I meet the pleading gazes of legless beggars

  who endlessly chant una caridad

  por el amor de Dios.

  Charity, for the love of God.

  Kindness.

  MYSTERIES

  One after another, afterlife visions

  astound me.

  At a village funeral,

  there are festive fireworks,

  and all the mourners wear white

  instead of black.

  Underground, in the eerie catacombs

  of Guanajuato, I flee from las momias,

  the mummies that aren’t really mummies

  at all, just grinning skeletons,

  posed in agonized positions

  that come back

  in nightmares

  to haunt me.

  Later, along the green banks

  of a quiet river in Oaxaca,

  Mad and I make friends

  with a boy named Pancho,

  who rides his own burro,

  a donkey that makes me

  so envious, I can’t believe

  that Pancho envies me.

  He thinks my city life

  with cars and bicycles

  must be so much more

  exciting

  than his donkey.

  Is there any way that two people

  from faraway places

  can ever really

  understand each other’s

  daydreams?

  RUNAWAY HORSES

  The only souvenir I want in Mexico

  is a palm-leaf raincoat like Pancho’s.

  The dry, brown leaves feel scratchy,

  but when tropical rain pours down,

  I know how it feels to be a tree

  that belongs to nature.

  After Dad paints the stone ruins

  of Monte Albán, we drive to the dreamlike

  shores of Lake Pátzcuaro, in Michoacán,

  where the wide nets of fishermen are shaped

  like graceful

  butterfly wings.

  Soon, in a village on the rugged slopes

  of Volcán Paricutín, we rent horses,

  so we can ride up the volcano to see

  a church steeple

  that survived the flow

  of fiery lava.

  The volcano is hard and dark,

  a stark landscape that makes my horse

  shudder, but the sunlit church steeple

  looks like something dreamed

  by Don Quixote.

  My frightened horse

  runs away with me,

  galloping

  back downhill.

  By the time we reach the village,

  my hands are sore from clinging,

  but I haven’t fallen off, so I feel

  as if I have absorbed

  a new power,

  the invisible

  shadow

  of courage.

  HOMECOMING

  By the time we cross the dusty

  US border, we’ve spent every

  centavo of borrowed travel money,

  and all we have to eat

  is bread with goat milk caramel,

  and all I ever plan to wear

  is my palm-leaf raincoat,

  even though the dry fronds

  are already

  starting

  to crumble.

  NEWS

  At home, I begin to suspect

  that the expense of airplane tickets

  was not my parents’ only reason

  for wandering around Mexico

  all summer, earthbound,

  instead of flying

  through the enchanted air

  to Cuba.

  Revolution.

  Violence.

  Gunfire.

  Danger.

  Our old black-and-white TV flickers,

  as if it has a conscience

  and is reluctant

  to keep showing

  one horror after another.

  People in Cuba are fighting.

  It’s a civil war to overthrow

  a dictator.

  Are some of Mami’s many cousins

  killing

  others?

  I wish the TV would turn

  into a book with obedient pages

  that could be flipped quickly

  to reach the next

  story.

  WHAT AM I?

  At school, all the teachers and students

  seem angered by Cuba.

  WHAT ARE YOU?

  they ask.

  It’s a question that requires fractions,

  and I don’t like math.

  Do I have to admit

  that I’m half Cuban and half American,

  or should I go even further, and explain

  that Dad’s parents were born in the Ukraine,

  part of Soviet Russia?

  Or am I just entirely American,

  all the fractions left behind

  by immigration from faraway nations?

  WE WERE LIKE SANTA CLAUS

  ON THAT POOR LITTLE ISLAND,

  my teacher vows.

  She kneels down and speaks directly

  into my ear, as if confiding a terrible secret.

  SUCH INGRATITUDE, she adds.

  Clearly, it’s an accusation.

  Even though I don’t understand,

  somehow I end up

  feeling guilty.

  Why should such an ignorant grown-up

  imagine

  that she knows me?

  MORE AND MORE SECRETS

  My gentle parents, who never yell,

  now spend more and more time

  whispering.

  I hear the sound

  through solid walls.

  It seems even louder

  than shouting.

  Even louder

  than the TV news

  with its conscience,

  all that flickering.

  SPIES

  Our Skunk Hollow neighborhood

  is usually friendly.

  Mami knows the names of the mailman,

  milkman, breadman, brushman,

  knife sharpener, and Avon lady.

  Mami is polite to

  every door-to-door salesman,

  even the ones who toss dirt

  onto our floor, so they can demonstrate

  vacuum cleaners.

  But sometimes, friendly neighbors

  become nosy.

  An old woman who peeks out

  from behind her curtains

  loves to tell on me

  if I ride my bike too fast,

  or don’t look both ways

  before crossing the street.

  When I make fr
iends with a girl

  who likes to play on the edge

  of the dangerous freeway,

  someone tattles, and soon

  I’m in trouble.

  Our neighborhood

  can sometimes

  turn unfriendly.

  Are people staring

  from behind ruffled curtains

  because I’m so disobedient,

  or because they know that Mami

  is from Cuba?

  INVESTIGATED

  One day, Mami receives a phone call

  that makes her look terrified.

  She calls Dad and begs him to rush home.

  A few minutes later, two men in suits

  knock on our door.

  Luckily, Dad is home by the time Mami

  has to face two grim agents

  from the Federal Bureau

  of Investigation.

  FBI.

  Just like on TV.

  Only somehow, now

  we are suddenly

  the bad guys.

  What’s wrong with receiving

  phone calls, letters, and packages

  from Cuba?

  Are we supposed to care less

  about Mami’s family on the island

  than Dad’s family—my grandma

  and grandpa, aunts, uncles,

  and cousins

  who live so close

  that we see them

  every Sunday?

  Can one half of my family

  really be so much worse

  than the other?

  If only I could just be myself,

  instead of half puzzle

  and half riddle.

  AFTER THE FBI

  All the magic

  escapes

  from the air

  in our cozy home,

  as if a floating balloon

  has popped, leaving nothing

  but a lifeless flap

  of colored

  plastic.

  MY OWN QUESTIONS

  If only I could be the one

  investigating.

  I would ask why the men in suits

  insisted that they already have a file

  for Dad, a file that could put his name

  on a dreaded blacklist, so that no

  museum or art gallery

  will ever exhibit

  his paintings.

  The agents said they knew that Dad

  took an art-history correspondence class

  from a Communist UCLA professor

  during World War II.

  The agents didn’t care

  that when he took the class,

  Dad was a sailor on an unarmed

  merchant marine boat, bravely

  carrying food for hungry sailors

  on US Navy warships.