Forest World Read online

but most are locals who’ve never seen ice unless

  it was in a freezer, or a snow cone.

  Twirling makes me dizzy enough to fall

  but I don’t, because a smiling fisherman

  lets me and Luza both hang on to a pole

  that helps us balance, while he pulls us to

  the edge of the rink, sliding

  toward safety.

  Divided

  LUZA

  One fisherman’s friendliness

  saved us from crashing . . .

  but right across a wide avenue,

  standing on the seawall,

  skinny men send colorful kites

  out over the waves, delivering hooks

  into the gaping mouths of distant fish.

  In this land of inventar y resolver,

  even a child’s toy can be transformed

  into a tool, by someone who is

  hungry.

  Two worlds.

  One for tourists.

  The other for everyone else.

  Abuelo helps me show my cold brother

  the tangled combination, with quaint

  old streets where costumed dancers

  called los Gigantes—the Giants,

  leap and swirl on stilts,

  while raggedy women

  beg for soap,

  and starving dogs

  follow bored children

  as they wait for their parents,

  who stand in endless ration lines

  just so they can collect

  one fist-sized roll of bread

  per person

  per day.

  While we’re away from home,

  Abuelo and I can’t get our rations,

  and we don’t have much money,

  but we wouldn’t feel right

  being fed by Tía for more

  than one day, so I announce

  that I’m hungry, just to see

  what my rich foreign brother

  will do.

  Confusion

  EDVER

  I don’t understand girls.

  My sister wants me to buy food,

  but as soon as she sees how much money

  Mom gave me, she roars into anger-mode

  just as abruptly as if someone had flipped

  a switch.

  All of this would have been easier if our mother

  had bought a special gift for Luza on her own,

  instead of just giving me those binoculars

  for myself, then putting me in a position

  where it seemed natural to pretend

  that they were a present for Luza.

  I’m getting pretty tired of trying to meet

  expectations.

  If I had my phone, it would be so easy

  to turn into a dragon

  and escape.

  Wealth

  LUZA

  When half of a family is rich

  and the other half is poor,

  how can the two parts ever feel

  united?

  My brother claims that in Miami

  he’s barely average, with nothing

  but a cell phone and skateboard,

  surfboard, games, clothes, food,

  a computer, and plenty

  of television.

  That’s all he’s ever owned, he explains,

  with a deep sigh that makes him sound

  helpless.

  I guess I can figure out the rest.

  No Papi, no Abuelo, no forest.

  It’s hard to believe, but he swears

  that he envies me!

  Survivors

  EDVER

  I survived emigration—the leaving of a country,

  and immigration—the entering of another place,

  but Luza survived

  staying.

  We’re the same, in that one way,

  our decisions made for us by grown-ups

  long ago.

  To keep myself from crying in front of

  my tough big sister, I think of the sixty million bison

  killed in the US in the 1870s, and how just one

  man, a Kalispel Indian named Walking Coyote,

  made such a difference by rounding up

  thirteen survivors

  to start his own herd.

  He was a wildlife conservation superhero

  long before saving animals from extinction

  became popular, and now there are plenty

  of bison again, but only because one person

  was smart enough to plan ahead.

  It’s the same with California condors,

  extinct in the wild by 1987, then brought back

  by superhero zookeepers, who bred and babied

  the last twenty-seven captives, even training them

  to stay away from trash so they didn’t

  swallow poison.

  Sometimes I watch condor chicks

  in their wild nests, spied on by a webcam

  that makes everyone feel like a scientist.

  Is that the sort of thing Mom does

  when she travels, sets up those cameras

  then sits back and watches?

  Why can’t she pay as much attention to me

  as she does to birds and bugs? Like those last

  two huge Lord Howe Island stick insects that had her

  so fascinated, when they were zoo-bred,

  and soon exploded

  into a population

  of eleven thousand eggs

  that yielded seven hundred

  survivors.

  Now the insects will need to be protected

  from rats, if they’re ever released back

  into the wild, on the world’s smallest island,

  where they were found under a single shrub

  at the top of the only rocky peak.

  Those rats came from ships,

  and ate the insects because they were

  big, and as crunchy as lobsters.

  That’s how I feel sometimes,

  huge and strong because I’m eleven,

  but also weak and vulnerable

  because I’m

  me.

  Weirdness

  LUZA

  Whenever we switch to English, my brother

  uses words like strange, bizarre, creepy, eerie.

  I want to think that it’s just beautiful magic realism,

  the way

  our mother

  took one of us

  and left

  the other.

  But I can’t.

  I know it’s not marvelous reality,

  but cruelty, or selfishness, or illogical

  weirdness, some variation on the theme

  of survival

  for herself.

  Just imagine!

  Edver says she leaves him with babysitters

  from an agency, sometimes for weeks, or even

  one whole month at a time, strangers,

  different immigrant women

  from Haiti, Romania, or Korea,

  people Edver has to pretend

  to understand.

  So maybe I was the lucky one all along,

  even though when I think about

  growing up with a mother,

  I still can’t help wondering

  how her voice would have

  sounded, singing

  a lullaby.

  Blackout

  EDVER

  My first Cuban apagón.

  I’ve heard of them forever.

  Lights out.

  No electricity at all.

  Dark streets.

  Voices, instead of faces.

  The sounds of people walking

  beside an eerie clip-clop

  of horse-drawn vehicles

  at midnight.

  Only a few occasional headlights.

  Old cars grumbling, as if they expected

  better roads, with signs and lights

  ins
tead of banana trees

  and avocados.

  Luza sets a rocking chair out on the sidewalk

  under a canopy of rustling leaves, using

  her new binoculars to stare up at a blaze

  of glittering stars.

  Fire in the sky, bundled up

  like mysteries made of energy.

  Watching the stars, she starts telling stories,

  making them up as she goes along,

  first talking about giant fireflies

  and glow-in-the-dark dogs,

  then turning each weird creature

  into a poem or a song.

  So this is what it’s like, I realize—being young

  and ancient at the same time, feeling prehistoric,

  truly caveman cool in one way, but also

  sweaty and tired and scared

  right here in my real life.

  Time travel.

  Space travel.

  Family travel.

  They all seem equally odd—just that short flight

  across the few dozen miles of ocean that separate

  my world from my sister’s.

  Singing, Singing, Singing

  LUZA

  My voice isn’t special,

  but melodies and rhythms help me

  fade from harsh reality

  into a serenade

  of dreams. . . .

  Wondering, Wondering, Wondering

  EDVER

  Each song leads me into a fantasy

  of family disaster.

  Is the bicyclist I hurt really okay?

  Because no else’s thoughts and feelings

  ever seemed this real until tonight,

  when suddenly

  I have nothing to hear

  but voices.

  Mind travel.

  If only I could figure out how to visit Mom

  and ask her why she’s such a coward,

  smart and bold in every way except facing up

  to her abandonment of Luza. And now she’s

  sent me away, but she stayed right there

  in Miami, defending me from lawyers

  and lawsuits, while avoiding the only

  family truth that really matters

  to me and my

  surprise sister.

  On Our Way

  LUZA

  In the morning, we drink strong coffee,

  hug Tía, and set off without tickets,

  because all the buses and trains

  are so crowded that we’d have to wait

  a whole week.

  So we hitchhike as usual,

  on a roadside packed with people

  whose faces are exhausted, their bags,

  boxes, baskets, and bundles all piled up

  in neat rows of patience.

  Are there really places where every family

  owns a car, and gasoline is plentiful,

  and no one ever has to stand in line

  to wait, wait, wait,

  while sweating?

  I imagine that if I lived in a land like that,

  my art would be photographs of real life

  viewed under the microscope,

  or through the magic

  of binoculars and telescopes,

  instead of mosaics

  pieced together

  from trash piles.

  Time Traveler

  EDVER

  I can’t believe we’re hitching rides

  like hippies in some old movie!

  A boxy Russian Lada,

  then a sleek 1957 Chevrolet,

  horse-drawn Volkswagens,

  flatbed farm trucks,

  so many vehicles

  take turns

  carrying us,

  moving us,

  bringing me

  closer

  and closer

  to meeting Dad. . . .

  But what if he doesn’t care?

  He didn’t even come to the airport.

  Maybe he was glad that Mom took me away

  when I was a baby—what if they didn’t even

  fight about the separation?

  Dad probably chose Luza

  because he knew I’d be trouble,

  the kind of kid who crashes into strangers

  while skateboarding.

  Thinking all this yucky stuff

  while riding in an oxcart

  makes me feel like a zombie fossil,

  one of those weird scientific curiosities

  that gets eroded out of its own

  layer of stone, then washes up

  somewhere else, so that paleontologists

  find dinosaur bones jumbled together

  with woolly mammoths and cavemen,

  creating the illusion of closeness in time,

  but really they’re just out of place,

  tricky and mixed up.

  Zombie fossils don’t belong where you find them.

  Just like me.

  I’d call home and demand a quick return flight

  to my real world, if only I had a phone

  and a signal.

  Strangers

  LUZA

  I’m not afraid of the drivers who pick us up.

  Some are foreign tourists in rented cars,

  others just ordinary Cubans

  who need help paying for gas.

  Many of the sugarcane fields we pass

  are overrun by thorny scrub, because tractor fuel

  is so scarce that working the soil is impractical

  unless you have mules or oxen.

  But everything isn’t ugly and hopeless. . . .

  When we pass towering mango trees,

  I spot a migration of magnificent

  yellow-and-black-striped

  tiger swallowtail butterflies

  that swirl through the air

  like daydreams!

  Maybe science isn’t so boring after all.

  If my sculptures never get exhibited, I could be

  an entomologist like Papi, studying caterpillars

  with their amazing ability

  to grow and change.

  I wonder if butterflies recognize themselves

  while they’re still all wrapped up

  inside motionless cocoons,

  waiting,

  waiting,

  waiting,

  like hitchhikers

  on a lonely roadside.

  Coevolution

  EDVER

  Mom taught me that whenever a narrow flower

  evolves a longer and longer shape,

  the beaks of hummingbirds

  gradually change too.

  All it takes

  is a few million years.

  So now, as we bump along in a horse-drawn wagon,

  I picture invisible satellite signals beaming down

  from outer space, useless in this isolated place

  where people still depend on one another’s

  voices

  for entertainment.

  Could I ever adapt to these electronic limits?

  I guess all it would take is the rest of my life

  to learn how to survive in phoneless

  silence

  like my sister.

  Quiet Hills

  LUZA

  Nightfall,

  the clip-clop

  of horse hooves.

  Rhythmic flashes

  from dancing

  fireflies.

  Around each curve

  the rising moon.

  Abuelo’s long folktales, his stories

  of glow-in-the-dark dogs and magical horses. . . .

  My brother’s fingers twitch as if he’s longing

  to send phone messages back to his real home.

  What was Mamá thinking, forcing un americano

  to spend time with los cubanos, sharing

  our quiet isolation?

  Ghostly

  EDVER

  The missing phone feels


  like a phantom limb

  after an amputation

  during a disaster.

  No painkillers.

  No antibiotics.

  Just wishes.

  Time

  is so much slower

  here.

  So I lean into the night breeze

  inhaling minutes, hours,

  light-years. . . .

  Caged

  LUZA

  By morning, all three of us are talking about

  convergent evolution.

  Octopus eyes and human ones,

  separately developed, yet eventually

  becoming similar.

  Is that how Edver and I ended up

  so much alike

  yet also completely different?

  When we finally reach a town at the foot

  of our mountains, all the morning markets

  are already bustling with hungry women

  trying to sell handmade lace to tourists,

  musicians playing songs in exchange

  for soap, vendors chanting about ice cream,

  and a poacher offering a rare parrot,

  trapped inside

  a tiny cage.

  Sharing

  EDVER

  The eyes of the parrot

  haunt me.

  I pull cash out of my pocket

  and buy the bright green bird,

  planning to set it free as soon as we reach

  the edge of town, but when I flash

  all that American money,

  I know

  I’ve forgotten my instructions.

  Never

  show off!

  So I spend a bunch more on good food

  and strong coffee, half of it bought

  in a fancy restaurant for tourists,

  and the rest from a street vendor

  who sells slices of pineapple

  and fresh guava pastries.

  I buy so much that there’s plenty to share

  with all the other hitchhikers

  on our final ride in the back of a beat-up

  old Russian army truck, four-wheel drive,

  roaring, rumbling, and forceful,

  like a dangerous beast

  in a scary story.

  From my lap,

  the caged parrot

  stares at the sky, then at me,

  as if he’s wondering

  how he ever ended up

  in the same sad world

  as selfish

  humans.

  Climbing

  LUZA

  We roll and sway all the way