Forest World Read online

  up the mountain,

  winding through dust,

   our forest so dry

     on this fever-hot day

  during a season when rain

      normally pours.

  Drought.

  Climate change.

  Sorrow.

  No, I can’t stand those sorts of thoughts,

  not constantly—so for now, I concentrate

  on the beauty all around me, tree-sized ferns

  with their feathery greenness, coffee farms,

  shady jungle, and somehow, the survival

  of waterfalls.

  Even in the village where I go to school,

  everything looks so dazzling

  today.

  Rare

  EDVER

  I’ve never had a pet.

  Mom travels too much.

  So when I decide to open the door

  of the cage, I feel a twinge of envy.

  My sister has probably owned

  every kind of animal that most kids

  get to keep—dogs, cats, birds, fish. . . .

  This parrot is brilliant, colorful—

  white forehead, ruby cheeks, emerald body,

  royal-blue wings, intelligent eyes.

  Abuelo says it’s a Cuban amazon,

  an endemic species, meaning that it isn’t found

  anywhere else on Earth, just here, right here,

  this island, this jungle, the one place Luza

  calls “our forest,” like some sort

  of family inheritance,

  a treasure.

  Home!

  LUZA

  After the captive parrot rises up to join

  its wild relatives, all the other hitchhikers

  get off at various coffee farms, but we

  keep going, the truck driver happy

  to accept my brother’s

  foreign money

  as payment

  for reaching

  the highest home

  on our mountain.

  We don’t have to hike at all.

  He drops us off right in front of the peeling

  blue door.

  Papi’s horse and my pony are both here,

  so that means no one is patrolling today.

  I hope a poacher doesn’t take advantage

  and trap the freed parrot

  all over again.

  Home?

  EDVER

  The house is cabin-sized,

  with lemony yellow walls,

  a red tile roof, and a faded blue door

  that’s ready for a paint job.

  There are flowering trees everywhere,

  red, pink, gold, white, and purple.

  Was I really born here?

  A horse, a pony, chickens, a wiener dog,

  and strange, ratlike animals that I recognize

  from Mom’s photos—jutías, a relative of pikas

  and marmots, but endemic to Cuba, just like

  the parrot.

  Unique.

  Found nowhere else

  on Earth.

  As if this forest is its own

  hidden world.

  Cryptic.

  Greeting

  LUZA

  Jutía, our skinny dog, rushes to greet Abuelo.

  Dad’s old white horse, Rocinante, whinnies.

  My silvery pony, Platero, just keeps grazing.

  He’s lazy, just like the wild jutías

  that stretch out on branches, half asleep,

  enjoying the sunlight that reaches them

  between pools of shade cast by red flame trees

  and cacao shrubs, with those big pods

  that contain the bitter beans

  I’ll soon be able to sweeten

  for making chocolate.

  Our vegetable garden is filled

  with tonight’s dinner, colorful bursts

  of tomatoes, cucumbers, and melons,

  all waiting for me to pick them

  and make a cool

  juicy salad.

  When Papi steps out of the house,

  I rush to hug him, but he soon lets go

  and wraps his arms

  around Edver.

  Indoors, I greet the little tree frog

  that always chirps from our bathtub,

  and the lime-green-and-turquoise lizard

  who perches on a wall above my bed,

  pulsing his magenta throat patch.

  If the frog and lizard remember me,

  they don’t show any more joy than Jutía,

  a one-man dog

  who only loves

  Abuelo.

  Meeting Dad

  EDVER

  He’s tall, with curly black hair like mine.

  I expected someone older, but he seems

  energetic enough to be my big brother.

  How should I talk to him?

  English, Spanish, Spanglish,

  or just truly cool scientific words,

  all those Latin genus and species names

  that Mom sprinkles into practically every

  sentence?

  He tries to hug me,

  but I yank the microscope

  out of my backpack

  and fill his hands with its

  hardness, so that he can’t

  pretend to love me

  after all these years

  apart.

  Fumes

  LUZA

  My rude brother calls Mamá

  from the old wall phone,

  our home’s only gadget

  for communication.

  It’s the only phone I’ve ever known,

  the one that I’ve never used for trying

  to contact my mother,

  even though she once wrote

  me a letter, offering her number.

  Why should she be included

  in this awkward

  little family reunion,

  when she’s the one

  who chose

  not to be here?

  She must be asking to talk to me now,

  because Edver tries to hand me the phone,

  but no, no, no, I won’t, even though she’s all

  I ever think of on my gloomiest days,

  those mornings at school when I’m bored

  and can’t stop daydreaming

  about how cruel she was

  when she took

  baby Edver

  and rushed

  away.

  What good will it do to talk to her today,

  bringing her voice close, while her heart

  remains distant?

  I feel like one of those dragons

  in that strange video game

  my brother always raves about,

  with beasts that spew toxic smoke

  long after the flames

  of rage

  vanish.

  Abuelo has always described Mamá as a wildly

  unpredictable person, the brilliant mind who moves

  likes a storm in wind, with ideas of her own, ideas

  that she treats like children, while treating

  her real children

  like passing thoughts

  that can care for themselves

  or merely fade away,

  fruitless.

  Now, Edver has added a new way to solve

  the mystery of our unusual mother.

  He says she’s creatively crazed,

  explaining that geniuses

  often forget to notice

  the people around them.

  If only I could be

  the daughter of a brainy

  innovator

  who also has

  a heart.

  The Next Morning

  EDVER

  Mosaics.

  Masks.

  Statues.

  Painted boulders.

  Pebble people with plastic

  trash eyes.

  My sad sister
’s sculpture trail—

  the first place I explore on my own.

  I’ve imagined this forest all my life.

  Branches rising,

  tangled up with sky.

  My shoes leave zigzag prints

  in fresh mud,

  the softness of mist

  from last night’s damp clouds

  almost as wet as real rain.

  Mossy earth, snail shells,

  the shimmering, dark eye-shine

  of a bright orange oriole, and parrots,

  so many green parrots wildly clacking

  from the feathery fronds

  of a towering

  palm tree!

  Maybe the bird

  I set free

  is up there right now,

  calling down to thank me.

  The Family Mosaic

  LUZA

  Going off on his own is an insult.

  If he steps on my statues, I’ll kick him.

  These feelings are so disturbing.

  Never before have I ever imagined such fury!

  Temper and envy.

  Envy and temper.

  Like a chicken and her egg,

  which comes first?

  I can be just as rude as my foreign brother,

  but what good would it do?

  I’m just one broken shard of glass

  in this sharp, glittering world

  of separated

  siblings.

  Warnings

  EDVER

  Mom assured me that there are hardly any

  big, scary animals in this jungle, just birds, bats,

  iguanas, frogs, boa constrictors,

  and those cute little jutías.

  Pronounced hoot-EE-ahs

  not joot-EYE-as

  like Luza said

  when she teased me

  about knowing

  more English

  than Cubanness.

  Mom warned me about the small size

  of this forest’s creatures because she thought

  I’d be disappointed if I didn’t get to see

  monkeys, tapirs, and sloths,

  all the tropical species you see

  in rain forest books.

  She’s wrong!

  I’m glad there aren’t any poisonous vipers

  or hungry jaguars, because I’m only brave

  on a phone screen, not outdoors, where trying

  to learn how to surf in Florida

  made me so nervous about sharks

  that I couldn’t really enjoy

  the roll of waves

  or sparkle

  of sunlight.

  It’s all I can do now to stay calm

  while surrounded

  by disease-carrying mosquitoes,

  and ants—tons of ants, big ones in endless rows

  marching as busily as an army, each one carrying

  a sliver of leaf that looks like a green knife.

  Instead of telling me there wouldn’t be any

  scary predators in this forest, Mom should’ve

  warned me that I’d be stalked by my angry sister,

  a glaring, staring, troll-eyed cave bear.

  Usually I like being the dragon in a game,

  but if I had my phone right now, I’d choose

  a sword, and become an armored knight,

  completely human, the most dangerous

  animal

  on Earth.

  There’s no weapon more frightening

  than another person’s

  distrust.

  No Warnings

  LUZA

  I didn’t know what to expect,

  because Papi and Abuelo haven’t seen Edver

  since he was a baby.

  In the kitchen after breakfast, my brother

  comes home as if he never left, then he shows off

  his knowledge of microscope knobs and lenses,

  while I wash dishes, and send my mind flying

  back to a time when Abuelo

  took me to visit a teenage cousin

  who works on a crocodile farm

  in coastal swamps.

  Her job is painting splashes of yellow clay

  onto the cheeks of tourists who come in boats

  to see statues of the Taínos, los indios who thrived

  in Cuba long ago, and who still are completely alive

  in our own family’s DNA.

  I picture those spiral twists, the double helix

  that geneticists found when they came to our forest

  to study us—explaining that we’re descendants

  of survivors, our blood, saliva, and bones

  all filled up with clues that show

  how long we’ve been here.

  Five, ten, maybe even thirty thousand years.

  We’re a Lazarus family, our ancestors classified

  as extinct

  by every history book

  on Earth,

  until DNA studies

  proved that los Taínos

  still exist.

  So now my cousin’s job is standing in a caney—

  a palm-thatched longhouse—on a dry patch

  of land surrounded by water, painting

  the faces of foreigners who go there to see

  marvelous statues left behind

  by an artist.

  Sculptures of people with names.

  Individuals, not just a tribe.

  Yaima, a little girl, Abey the crocodile hunter,

  Cojimo, with his hairless dog, chasing furry jutías,

  Tairona, hunter of ducks, and Guamo, the musician

  who plays a conch shell,

  Yarúa and Marien,

  two children kicking a ball,

  and Alaina the weaver girl,

  her mother, Yuluri, spinner of wild cotton,

  Colay, a man planting yuca,

  Bajuala, the boy who talks to macaws,

  Yabu, a farmer of corn, Guacoa, a man who lights fires,

  Arima, a girl shaping clay, and Guajuma,

  the woman who decorates ceramics.

  Of all the statues, my favorite is Dayamí,

  la muchacha soñadora, the girl who dreams.

  Did Dayamí ever wonder about the future—

  imagining her descendants, picturing me?

  I always thought meeting my brother

  would lead me toward Mamá, but now I see

  that even if I had a way to reach Miami

  I’d still be alone in certain ways, because now

  when I daydream,

  I no longer know

  which way to face—

  future or past,

  Mamá’s adopted

  foreign shore

  or my home,

  this forest.

  Truce

  EDVER

  Abuelo and Dad make us sit down

  and talk.

  The discussion starts with confessions

  of temper

  and envy,

  then moves on

  to a confusing duel of visions

  for our future—one home or two for me,

  but no choices for my sister, because all she gets

  is whatever she was born with, and no one

  but our mother can ever afford to send Luza

  on an overseas trip.

  By the end of an hour, Abuelo is reciting poetry,

  Luza answers with her own verses, Dad sings,

  and I return to the reassuring microscope,

  determined to figure out how many

  diamondlike facets I can find

  on a housefly’s amazing

  kaleidoscopelike

  compound eye.

  Maybe my sister’s odd, complicated art works

  aren’t so bad after all.

  I think I’m starting to understand her fascination

  with magic realism.

  Here in Cuba, everything seems all mixed up,

  tim
e going in circles, the past still alive

  inside everyone’s

  mind. . . .

  No wonder Mom cries while she writes

  on her laptop, hiding her face by letting

  her long hair swish like a curtain

  at the end of a play

  filled with smiling

  happy actors.

  Maybe she hates

  being a lonely

  genius.

  Chores

  LUZA

  Gardening, cooking, grinding coffee,

  grooming horses, gathering eggs,

  waiting in food ration lines

  down in the village. . . .

  Edver admits that he has never done more

  than clean his own room, make his bed,

  and pretend to listen when teachers

  tell him how to do his homework.

  Somehow, he ends up with perfect grades,

  while I study and study, never mastering

  all the concepts of revolutionary history,

  so that I only excel in art

  and the underappreciated skill

  of imagining.

  Contests

  EDVER

  No cell phone.

  No ready-made games.

  The evenings are just an endless stretch

  of telenovela soap operas from Venezuela.

  When we get tired of watching grown-ups

  fall in and out of love, my sister and I begin

  inventing new ways to defeat each other.

  Luza is the best actor when it comes to imitating

  an ogre, but I’ve been a dragon for so long

  that I’ve perfected the illusion

  of dangerous flames.

  So we end up calling it a tie.

  Equality.

  A compromise.

  Peace.

  Play

  LUZA

  I love telenovelas, but I also crave victory.

  Sometimes our games are old-fashioned.

  Edver wins at chess, but my hands swoop

  like birds when we play dominoes with Abuelo.

  My brother wins at cards, but I can kick a fútbol,

  and when Edver invents a makeshift skateboard

  from a slab of wood and some rickety

  desk chair wheels, I balance so easily

  that afterward, he admits he feels clumsy

  trying to learn how to ride Papi’s horse

  and my pony.

  But we’re not ready to give up competing

  and comparing, daring each other to leap

  higher, jump farther, race faster,

  and shout louder.

  Are we friends yet?

  Maybe.

  Almost.