Forest World Read online

fronts of houses painted bright colors

  while the backs are like skeletons, open

  to a blaze of sky wherever parts of walls

  are missing.

  When we pass along the edge of the rough gray

  coral stone Malecón seawall, I stare at teenagers

  who dance around in groups, or sit alone,

  sadly watching endless waves

  as the blue water rolls toward Miami.

  I imagine they’re dreaming of travel,

  just like Mamá, when she left home

  without me.

  My brother

  absorbs our shared

  sibling shock

  by staying busy

  instead of talking to me.

  Eyes anxious, fingers nervous, he empties

  his backpack, exposing gifts of such value

  that I can hardly believe the dazzling show.

  Soap, shampoo, lotion, all the things

  that are so impossible to find here in Cuba.

  Like a magician revealing a rabbit,

  Edver unpacks a microscope—exactly the kind

  Papi has always wished for, a dissecting scope

  that will magnify delicate antennae, mandibles,

  and wings, exposing all the secrets of insects.

  Then, Edver begins to wave his hands around

  like whirlwinds as he describes—in a language

  neither wholly Spanish nor completely inglés—

  the best way

  to slap

  a blob of dust

  onto a thin glass slide, then slip it under

  the amazing microscope’s magical lens

  so that we can detect a whole spider

  the size

  of a mosquito’s

  eye.

  ¡Increíble!

  Incredible!

  And yet, I believe him, just as I believe

  in this impossibly marvelous reality of powerful

  binoculars that my brother hands to me, declaring

  that they’re a special gift just for me, from our mother . . .

  even though from his eyes I can tell

  she said nothing about me.

  Nothing at all. Nada.

  Sister Shock

  EDVER

  At our friendly aunt’s crumbling house,

  I demonstrate biological detective work

  using the dissecting scope

  as I try to think of easy ways

  to play games of amazement

  with this mysterious puzzle

  of a long-lost

  instantly rediscovered

  Lazarus sister.

  I soon learn that dust mites don’t impress Luza,

  so I yank a dark strand from my head,

  and sit down to show clear differences.

  My hair is curly, hers straight.

  Maybe we’re not related after all, but we do

  have the same reddish-brown skin, black eyes,

  fierce glares, and reversed names.

  Luza

  started as Azul.

  Blue.

  Leave it to Mom to introduce us

  by letting us figure out our own version

  of truth.

  Adopted?

  Half?

  Foster?

  We seem so close in age,

  but Abuelo and his sister—

  our tía, a great-aunt—

  both insist that Luza and I

  are only one tiny

  barely noticeable

  year

  apart.

  That makes her twelve,

  practically a teenage

  stranger.

  I’ll definitely need this microscope

  to find any bizarre little ways

  that we might turn out to be

  similar enough to ever hope

  for some sort

  of unusual

  family disaster

  friendship.

  Or do I even want to understand Luza

  and why Mom left her?

  Wouldn’t it be easier

  to just pretend that this girl

  is a stray quirk of nature,

  like one of those half-unicorn

  half-human centaurs

  in my dragon game?

  Microscopic

  LUZA

  I don’t care about peering at a sliver

  of dark curl from Edver’s messy

  bird’s-nest head.

  He’s only eleven.

  The difference between his age

  and mine

  is like the gap between believing

  in rabbits

  that spring from magicians’ hats,

  and knowing

  that I can create my own

  form of power, lo real maravilloso,

  marvelous reality—a style my teacher calls

  magic realism.

  Art.

  Sculpture.

  Architecture.

  Dreams made visible!

  Shapes molded from mud, trash, junk,

  all sorts of wasteful ugliness turning beautiful

  simply from contact with creative human hands,

  my fingers and palms hungry for meaning,

  especially when this ordinary world

  makes no sense.

  So while Tía coats her face with a gift of lotion,

  and Abuelo peers into the treasured microscope,

  I gaze out a window with these new binoculars,

  feeling even more alone than before I met

  my wealthy hermano americano

  with his fancy presents

  and luxurious sports shoes.

  Those basketball shoes he wears

  probably cost as much as Abuelo’s

  entire annual retirement pension—six dollars

  each month, and six times twelve months makes

  seventy-two dólares per year, or as we cubanos

  like to joke, setenta y dos dolores, painful sorrows,

  not dólares, not money. Just a trick of spelling,

  but it makes a huge difference.

  This view from my aunt’s window is almost

  as tragic as my disappointing brother.

  Tumbled balconies.

  Crumbled sidewalks.

  On both edges of the jaggedly potholed street,

  banana and avocado trees send powerful roots

  down into broken concrete, where tiny rootlets

  grip slim cracks and split the hardness,

  forcing this city world to make room

  for natural growth.

  On a peeling garden wall, someone has painted

  a mural of upside-down-flowerpot hats

  worn by people who don’t seem aware

  that jungle vines spill out over the brims,

  with coiled tendrils clinging to eyes and ears,

  making everything green, as if nature

  is reclaiming lost territory.

  The art festival must have started!

  Someday soon, maybe my trash statues

  will be included, all my tiny traces of hope

  emerging from mosaics of broken things,

  ugly things, microscopic shards

  of possibility.

  Rules

  EDVER

  Don’t talk politics.

  No showing off.

  Never eat too much.

  No gross jokes.

  Never brag about owning

  a lot of modern stuff

  or being able to afford

  to fix broken parts

  of our house,

  or the way

  we shop

  for unlimited mounds of groceries

  in magnificent, overflowing

  supermarkets.

  Those were just a few of Mom’s stern orders

  when she dropped me off

  at Miami International Airport

  and let me figure out everything else on my own—

  airpo
rt security, departure gate, and then

  the arrival: passport, customs, questions.

  So I’m trying to be mature and obey

  every rule, just to show that I’m truly

  responsible, so that maybe she’ll

  give me my phone back.

  Avoiding politics is easy, because I never really

  understood why the small country of my birth

  and the huge nation of my daily life

  ever hated each other so much

  anyway.

  Most of the other instructions are even easier.

  I can’t be a show-off without my phone,

  since my only real skill is flying around

  in dragon form, torching snotty trolls

  with blazing flames that send my score

  soaring.

  Burps, farts, ogre poop,

  even the funny parts of that game

  aren’t available over here.

  All I have is my own sense of humor,

  jokes that I have to keep secret, as I imagine

  my sister in armor,

  a clumsy knight who can’t ride

  her racing snail, a swift creature that hops

  on one thick, slimy leg. . . .

  Pretending I’m not hungry is something else,

  a painful challenge, almost torture.

  Mom warned me that while Tía is an eye surgeon,

  doctors in Cuba only get twenty dollars

  per month, just like everyone else.

  So I’m not supposed to fill my belly

  with her precious food rations—the carefully

  measured amounts of rice, beans, and bread

  that every islander receives.

  I’d gobble at least three burgers

  if I were home, and I’d be playing on my phone

  while Mom stares at her laptop, but instead,

  I’m stuck here at this unnaturally noisy table,

  surrounded by people who talk, talk, talk,

  instead of

  politely

  ignoring

  one another.

  My Spanish is fine, but I don’t know all the gestures

  and facial expressions.

  Each time my sister rolls her eyes, it looks

  like a secret message

  written in code,

  because she has at least fifty different

  eyebrow positions for showing how disgusting

  she thinks my game is

  after listening to my enthusiastic Spanglish

  description.

  Qué bárbaro, Abuelo says, laughing

  as I chat about green elf dientes

  and the stinky dedo del pie fungus

  of giant centipedes.

  Bárbaro means cool, not barbaric,

  so I know my grandpa has a sense

  of humor, at least when it comes

  to elf teeth and toe fungus.

  After that, Abuelo and I keep dreaming up

  truly cool gross stuff, and then we switch

  to amazing scientific facts, like el almiquí,

  a species of solenodon found nowhere else

  on Earth, only in the wild parts of Cuba.

  Everyone thought the strange little nocturnal

  underground animal was extinct, until my grandpa

  was part of a team of biologists who rediscovered

  exactly

  one

  survivor.

  They named the lone almiquí Alejandrito,

  because one animal is an individual, not just a group.

  Alejandrito had poisonous saliva, so Abuelo

  couldn’t touch his rat-shaped body or pointy

  cartoon nose, for fear of getting bitten.

  So he just watched the little creature

  from a distance,

  taking photos and scribbling notes,

  back in the slow days

  before computers and cell phones,

  using film and a pen.

  The good news is that just three years ago, in 2012,

  seven more Cuban solenodons were discovered!

  So it looks like this is one more Lazarus species

  that actually stands a chance of real-life

  survival.

  When Luza suddenly wanders

  into the conversation, she comments

  on how shadowy the negatives of Abuelo’s old photos

  look, like a ghost animal captured on paper,

  an eerie memory of the last male almiquí

  searching for a lonely

  female,

  only it wasn’t the last after all

  so no one should ever lose

  hope.

  It’s rule number one of cryptozoology.

  Never be certain of total extinction.

  Always remain willing to accept

  amazement.

  Maybe that’s how I’ll try to think of Luza,

  as someone who claims to be my relative,

  but is really just a living fossil, left over

  from my parents’ dead marriage.

  Resolver

  LUZA

  Resolve.

  Solve problems.

  Invent.

  It’s the way Papi taught me to adapt

  to scarcity and hardships.

  No soap?

  Trade part of your rice rations

  with a neighbor who receives gifts from Miami.

  Not enough food?

  Grow bananas and avocados on the sidewalk.

  Vanishing wilderness?

  Appoint yourself guardian of a forest, patrol

  on your horse, carve a rifle from wood,

  frighten poachers into thinking

  you have bullets.

  Disappointing long-lost brother

  whom you almost wish you’d never

  rediscovered?

  Ignore him, and imagine

  a more satisfying crypto-sibling

  hidden deep inside your own

  private mind,

  sculpted and painted

  from daydreams,

  like the secret wishes

  of some other

  more generous

  world

  in a more serene

  time.

  Life in the Electronic Stone Age

  EDVER

  Noticing that my aunt has a computer

  but no Internet

  is like being on a planet

  in the same enormous universe

  as Earth,

  but so many light-years away

  that I’ll never

  be able to return

  home.

  There are old movies, jazzy music,

  and exactly two games, silly ones

  for little kids, not even worth playing.

  So instead of staying cooped up

  in that boring house, I agree to walk around

  with Luza, looking at all the old junk art she calls

  magic realism.

  Statues at the Art Festival

  LUZA

  Red tongues pierced by swords,

  rooster-people, centaurs, mermaids,

  children shaped like boomerangs.

  That last sculpture is easy to interpret.

  The boomerangs are Miami kids like Edver,

  taken away by grown-ups and now sent back

  to meet their abandoned families

  for the first time.

  Why didn’t our mother invite me to Florida

  instead of sending my brother here

  on his own, a confused boomerang boy

  traveling

  alone?

  Lost but Not Found Yet

  EDVER

  Statues of centaurs and mermaids

  make me think of Mom, with her grants

  for studies of obscure species

  that were believed to be gone forever

  until a few survivors were found

  by various international

&nbs
p; research teams.

  Terror skinks in New Caledonia.

  Painted frogs in Colombia.

  The Lord Howe Island stick insect, known only

  from one shrub on Ball’s Pyramid islet,

  the world’s most isolated lump of coral.

  A giant Palouse earthworm,

  three feet long, pale, and squirming,

  assumed to have been killed off

  simply because it buried itself

  fifteen feet deep, where no one ever

  thought to search.

  Mom isn’t picky about which creatures

  she photographs and describes

  for scientific and popular magazines,

  just as long as they’re Lazarus species,

  proving that natural miracles are possible.

  Borneo, Ecuador, Brazil—why doesn’t she ever

  take me with her on adventurous work trips?

  If I’m old enough to travel to Cuba alone,

  then I’m wise enough to be trusted

  in other jungles.

  Right?

  She can’t hold the whole bicycle-skateboard-phone

  crash

  against me

  forever.

  Can she?

  Maybe meeting Luza and Dad is some sort of test!

  If it is, I’ll pass; just watch. I’ll be careful.

  Or maybe Mom has a boyfriend, or she’s a spy,

  or she’s cryptic herself, hiding because of

  some terrible

  secret.

  The Warmth of Coldness

  LUZA

  I stroll into an unusual statue

  that’s actually just a huge blue glass cube

  with a person-sized opening on one side.

  From inside all that blueness, the whole city

  looks like refreshing sky, but this trapped air feels

  so hot and stuffy that I rush right back out

  to explore the next exhibit, an artificial beach

  built just across from the real one.

  Best of all, on a corner near the seawall,

  some rich foreign artist has constructed

  an ice rink!

  Hot and cool, caliente y fresco,

  a temperature duel . . .

  My soul turns toward poetry, the only way

  to build a breezy sky-sculpture

  inside my heated mind.

  Spin!

  EDVER

  Abuelo says the rink is a symbol of the recent

  thaw in Cold War hostility between Cuba

  and the US, but my sister calls it marvelous reality,

  and I just think it’s icy weirdness, like everything else

  in my life.

  Still, the temptation is too great to resist, so we wait

  in a long line of strangers who take turns

  borrowing skates—some look like European tourists,