Clap When You Land

by Elizabeth Acevedo

  I never imagined there could be a child

  from my father’s secret marriage.

  Or perhaps, my father’s not-so-secret marriage

  since it seems everyone else still knew

  more than me even Mami

  who I was trying to protect.

  It’s taken me almost twelve months

  to deal with the truth of who my father was

  but even that was a lie. My stomach churns,

  & I feel myself about to be sick.

  I bend my face forward, & Mami puts

  a hand on my back. But I pull away from her.

  All these lies that we’ve all swallowed,

  they’re probably rotting in our stomachs.

  “I knew about his wife,” I tell Mami.

  “I can’t believe no one told me.”

  She shakes her head. “But how?

  We didn’t want to burden you.”

  I wave my hand at the computer.

  “This I didn’t know about.

  This—person—I couldn’t imagine.”

  I am taking big, gasping breaths.

  Mami does not try to rub my back again,

  but she gently whispers to me:

  “Respira, Yahaira, respira.

  Así, nice, big breaths.”

  I feel like a spool of thread

  that’s been dropped to the ground.

  I’m rolling undone

  from the truth of this thing.

  A sister. A sister. A sister.

  Ma tries to explain things to me,

  but I feel like I’ve been dropped

  into a part of the story

  where all of the characters are unfamiliar.

  “She was my friend. His other wife.

  I actually met him through her.”

  He married the other woman

  after her, so it wasn’t technically legal.

  But the other woman didn’t know that

  until much, much later.

  Mami married my father

  against her own father’s wishes.

  My maternal grandfather was high up in the military

  & wanted Mami to marry someone of rank.

  My mother says she almost died

  when she learned of Papi’s betrayal.

  All the people she dismissed when marrying Papi,

  only to have him betray her a few months after they wed.

  She cannot get through the story

  without her voice breaking

  my entire heart. & then she tells me

  what I did not expect.

  “She’s dead, his wife. Did you know?

  Almost ten years ago. Your father never got over it.

  Neither did I. I used to wish she’d go away,

  but it was unthinkable, the way it happened.”

  I want to hate this dead woman. For the way

  even talking about her twists up my mother’s face.

  This dead woman, who made my father visit,

  & have a child, & board a plane that fell into the ocean.

  I am slow to put the pieces together.

  I want to hate a dead woman, & her daughter

  who most likely hates me for making my father

  leave her in the first place.

  Without thinking, I ask Mami why.

  Mami sifts through her thoughts

  as if trying to figure out what I’m really asking.

  & I mean all of it. Why would Papi

  do this to her? To us?

  “He told me once, with me,

  he felt like he had to perform,

  become a character in a play,

  he had to prove he was good enough.

  That he had earned the right

  to marry the heralded general’s only child.

  But with her, with the woman who was my friend,

  who was his childhood friend, he could take off

  the mask.

  I was an aspiration, a flame he wanted to kiss.

  But for her, he would have lit the entire island.

  I was a smart decision. She made a dreamer of him.

  & well, for the child that came, he sacrificed it all.

  He loved you both. Understand that.

  A part of me even thinks he might have loved me

  & his other wife too.

  Yano was a complicated man.

  After she died, I refused to have the child here.

  It was all too much. I don’t know! I can’t explain.

  Your father refused not to be in her life;

  he would not abandon her completely.

  I know now,

  I should not ever have asked it of him.

  So he created a theater of his life

  & got lost in all the different roles he had to play.”

  Mami seems so tired

  after telling me what she knows

  & I feel so tired just

  hearing it. I do not

  want to speak to Mami

  anymore. She must

  realize I need a break

  from her, from this, because

  she kisses me good night

  & only sighs when I

  do not say the words back.

  I know, in the place

  inside me that is still clear

  & fair, this is not my mother’s

  fault. But I’m just so damn

  tired of being lied to, & she

  is the only one who is here

  for me to be angry at.

  I sit & stare at the message

  Camino Rios sent me.

  I sit & stare at the picture

  of my father proudly hugging

  a child that is not me.

  I could delete the message.

  I should delete the message.

  Why say a single thing

  to this girl I do not know?

  I will decline her friend request.

  Camino Yahaira

  When I get home from picking up my report card

  there is a notification shining blue

  on my tablet.

  It’s been days since I sent the message.

  I stopped believing she’d ever see it.

  I stopped checking it incessantly.

  But now, here is a response.

  Tía asks me if I want something to eat

  but I feel so queasy, I don’t think I could.

  I unlock the tablet & take a deep breath.

  There is shock in the list of questions

  the girl, Yahaira, has sent my way.

  & it is clear she did not know

  I existed.

  Message from Yahaira Rios:

  How old are you?

  Did Papi live with you when he visited?

  Where in the Dominican Republic do you live?

  Have you ever been to the States?

  Who do you live with there?

  Do you have other siblings?

  How did you learn Papi had died?

  I think we need to video-chat.

  As far back as I’ve had memory to keep me company,

  It’s been Tía & me making an existence.

  Papi, someone who was only present by voice & pixelated face,

  & by his summer visits that were always too short.

  I was not the kind of child who wanted siblings,

  or someone to play with my hair.

  Sometimes, I would miss the mother I barely knew,

  but mostly, Tía was all the parent I needed;

  all the family I thought I wanted.

  It is strange to go from being an only child

  to seeing someone wearing your own face.

  Now there is this other person & supposedly she is my sister

  where yesterday she was just a name

  holding the future I thought I wanted;

  now there is a girl of blood & flesh who is

  second only to Tía as the closest thing I have to family.

  I do not repl
y to her.

  Even though I know

  the message will show as read.

  I take a moment to figure out

  what it is I want to say.

  I am nervous to admit to Tía what I’ve done.

  That I’ve reached out

  & told her my father’s secret:

  I Exist.

  I must make a sound.

  Because Tía looks up from her reading

  or maybe in her magic way, she just knows.

  Our backyard rooster crows an evening song.

  “I reached out to Yahaira. Papi’s girl. She responded.”

  Tía puts down her book but is otherwise silent.

  “She wants to talk. She wants to video-chat.”

  & it comes as a surprise to me,

  but all of a sudden I’m crying, the sob

  pulled up from the well in my chest,

  full & wet, & Tía must have been expecting it.

  She scoops me to her.

  “Ya, mi’ja, ya. Ya, mi’ja, ya.”

  What I respond

  to this Yahaira:

  Hello. Yes.

  We should talk.

  Camino Yahaira

  “You’re in this square

  & squares don’t overlap.”

  Papi taught me every piece

  has its own space.

  Papi taught me every piece

  moves in its own way.

  Papi taught me every piece

  has its own purpose.

  The squares do not overlap.

  & neither do the pieces.

  The only time two pieces

  stand in the same square

  is the second before one

  is being taken & replaced.

  & I know now, Papi could not

  move between two families.

  When he was here—he was mine,

  when he was there he was theirs.

  He would glide from family to family,

  square to square & never look back.

  It’s why I heard so little from him

  when he was gone.

  It’s why the girl in DR

  needed to message me

  to confirm I am my father’s daughter.

  Everything has a purpose, Papi taught me.

  But what was his in keeping

  such big secrets?

  Thirty-Six Days After

  We eat in silence. We haven’t sat

  at the dinner table since Papi.

  Instead, we bring plates to the couch

  & pretend to eat with them in our laps.

  I haven’t seen Mami wear makeup

  in weeks, & her chancletas

  are the only footwear she rocks these days.

  Between commercials I play on my phone.

  Now that school’s out, I don’t even have

  homework to distract me from the silence

  which is why I’m surprised today

  when Mami mutes her novela to say

  “We need to make plans for your future;

  we are the only family we have left.”

  Because Mami did not want to legally fight Papi’s will,

  after Papi’s remains are released to us

  he’ll be flown back to DR to be buried.

  Mami refuses to talk about the body.

  After she goes to bed, I begin doing research

  on what I would need to travel.

  It is funny how money has no regard for time.

  How it eases past minutes to get you what you want.

  Thankfully, I have a passport. Papi had me get one years ago

  when it became clear I might qualify for tournaments abroad.

  For a ticket, I used Mami’s credit card.

  Mami does not remove any passwords from our computer,

  & I log on to her bank account & ensure we have enough.

  I still don’t know if I have the courage

  to do what I want to do, & I know I can’t plan this trip alone

  but somehow, some way, I know I need to be there

  the day that Papi gets buried. I need to meet this sister.

  I don’t know

  how much of

  my desire

  to meet Camino

  is because

  all of a sudden

  I have a sister,

  & that’s very

  What the fuck?

  But also, maybe,

  a part of me feels

  that she is a piece

  of Papi.

  That in her body

  there will be answers

  for all the questions

  he left behind.

  How could she

  have existed

  this whole time

  without me?

  Me without her?

  Nothing has been logical

  since the morning

  Mami came to school,

  but in my heart

  of hearts I know

  whatever I need to find

  I’ll need to go.

  Thirty-Seven Days After

  Mami has not asked me again

  about the online message.

  & I have not given

  her any updates.

  I told Dre because holding it in

  was killing me.

  She shook her head & pushed

  a loud whistle through her teeth.

  “Damn, who would have thought

  Poppa Rios had it in him?”

  After a moment she said,

  “Maybe it’s better you didn’t know?”

  How can you lose

  an entire person,

  only to gain a part of them back

  in someone entirely new?

  “I think I need to go meet her,

  with Papi’s body, I mean.”

  Dre nods without hesitation.

  “Yes. It’s the right thing to do.”

  & although her words

  should be a comfort,

  a twinge of annoyance twists

  my mouth. How could she

  possibly know the right thing

  to do? In a situation like this,

  how would anyone know

  so easily right from wrong

  when it all seems like we are

  pivoting left, spinning in circles.

  Camino Yahaira

  I think I hate this sister.

  She messages me

  that she has acquired a plane ticket.

  & how easy she says it.

  Because it wasn’t endless paperwork,

  because no one wondered if she would

  want to overstay her visa.

  The years my father tried

  to get me to the States,

  & that girl over there fills out a short form,

  is granted permission, given a blue book—

  shit, an entire welcome mat to the world.

  I squeeze my tablet so hard

  I’m surprised I don’t crack the screen.

  Her mother will not let her come, & she is planning

  to do so behind her back.

  That takes strength. I know if it were me,

  Tía would kill me dead,

  then have the spirits bring me back to life

  so she could murder me all over again.

  As much as I want to hate this girl,

  I also have to admire what she will do to get here.

  & I hope that she will admire

  all I will do to get there, too.

  Forty Days After

  It’s been three weeks since Carline gave birth.

  I visit her every few days. Today carrying

  vitamins & cloth diapers on top of my head,

  I let my arms swing freely.

  When I was little, my mother told me

  she used to carry bundles of mangoes

  to the market this way.

  On mornings like this I pretend I’m her:

  a girl who can carry water on
her crown,

  who can walk barefoot without being scorched.

  Although, I’m wearing a pair of Jordans that I now think

  were probably my sister’s first;

  they were not new when Papi

  brought them to me, & I think back to all the hand-me-downs

  I didn’t know were that other girl’s castoffs.

  When I get to the house, Carline is there alone.

  She chews on a thumbnail while little Luciano

  sleeps quietly in a crib. In another country,

  this baby would still be in the intensive care unit,

  but these are Kreyòl-speaking folk who cannot afford

  either the bill or the legalities that would come with hospitals.

  Although Carline will not utter the words,

  I know she still expects the baby to die.

  He is just so, so small.

  Carline takes the bundle from me slowly

  & unwraps it like it might contain precious gems.

  I ask her if I can wake the baby to check if he’s doing all right.

  Tía has taught me how to listen to the babies’ hearts & swab

  their throats for mucus. She has taught me how to feel

  the neck for fever, to look for infection where the cord was cut.

  Carline nods but gives me a long look. & I know her eyes

  are telling me to be careful. We are friends, but she

  is a mother now, & she is wary of anyone hurting her child.

  She tells me Nelson is working himself to the bone

  trying to save enough to move them out

  & is also considering dropping out of school.

  I want to offer her platitudes & murmurs

  that it will all be all right. But thing is,

  this isn’t an uncommon story.

  A lot of people don’t finish school

  or follow their dreams. That fairy-tale plotline is for

  telenovelas.

  Instead of saying soft, nice words, I fold clean towels

  & stack dirty dishes. I sweep & make myself useful.

  It is the best kind of gift I can offer Carline.

  My father having two families

  is also not an uncommon story.

  When Yahaira messaged me

  she seemed unutterably betrayed.

  As if she couldn’t believe this of Papi.

  But me, I know a man can have many faces & speak out of

  both sides of his mouth; I know a man can make decisions

  based on the flip of a coin;

  a man can be real good at long division,