You live in Elmont, New York,
in a small house with a big yard
and gate that doesn’t lock.
Have a best friend
with shiny black hair
called Clarissa, who shares everything
and might be the only person
to smile when she sees you.
You play at her house after school.
She is not as brown or round,
but that doesn’t make her more or less
beautiful than you, just likable.
You take the bus to school Mondays–Fridays,
where you almost always share a seat twice
the width of your womanly hips, unless
someone is sick and no one wants the seat
next to you, where you practice how to leave
your body. You daydream
that your mum doesn’t have to work
and sometimes you’re sure you see her
powder blue car trailing the bus, just out the window.
You don’t wear glasses, but think they look smart.
Can still look people in the eye
when you speak and are spoken to.
Unsupervised adults, busy boys and girls
have things to say about your figure, which
is the word men are most likely to use
when addressing a growing girl. Trauma
isn’t a word you’ve heard anywhere, including
the playground or the tele. Instead, you pick
up pretty junk, like muddy flower barrettes and strange coins.
Your pockets jangle on the bus home with your private
collection. You strew your loves with abandon
across the kitchen counter. Clarissa shines them,
placing them next to the repurposed tin can
on her dresser. Neither one of you knows the word altar
or wears the fancy barrettes to school.
Your mother works overnight. Your father too.
But his Aramis follows her Opium parfum
like the sun does the moon. In the morning,
the near miss of his body seems easier.
You roam like a buffalo through his possessions.
Spritz his cologne. Finger his ties. You could be anyone.
Mom shouts the warning for the bus. Reality
returns to the tongue like dry cud. You trot
through the kitchen to graze in peace, where
you find a different, familiar island gyal.
Every six months, maybe, dad brings one in need
of work before she travels back home. They
watch you and your brother. Closely. Discern that
Trinidad is not your home. You awake to girls
in the shape of women towering over you.
They are as mean as square-cut glass. Get up
for school. They remind you how you are American,
which you learn is a slur for fat. They leave.
They return six months later with mangos,
black rum cake and small parcels. They teach you
fatty-fatty boom-boom is the sound you make
when you walk, when you smile or enter
a room: fatty-fatty boom-boom.
You don’t know how to fight,
but have instincts to protect your brother
against people he won’t remember.
You love him now. Your secret is
that you have usurped his real mother. You play
Candy Land and Monopoly. Your brother
loves money so much that you trade him
pink and blue bills for Halloween candy.
You are aware you like food more
than you’re supposed to. You unwrap the candy
beneath your pillow so the sound doesn’t carry.
It’s summer, finally! You’re officially a second grader.
The first day at camp, your training bra is discovered
by Jessica Rose in the locker room.
Who accuses you of weighing 100 pounds.
Who washes her hair every day,
and smells like flowers before they die.
