Destination: the Unwanted Child
I know how it feels to be an unwanted child.
The pretty snapshots, the loving smiles around me of
the most powerful people in my life staring down at me
as I slept: a big, brown-eyed paper-mâché replica
of something wanted, planned. The photos of me sleeping
fill every album page, as if in slumber was the only time
I was palatable. An inconvenient-convenience.
And when they were both dying, I was also dying, trying to
redeem my very being by taking care of them both.
Hoping for a parental blessing that would never come,
while their planned children watched from the shores of
reassurance — the sandy, warm, beaches of the heart
of my parent’s approval.
But I grew, and my thunderings caused my parents’ backs to
turn. Their hisses of how much I “cost” them, and I knew
it was so much more than money. How they resented
every dime, all the thought-wasted times, every time-wasting
thought, wasted. Wasted on me. I was simply a reminder
to my mother she could not lock her own bedroom door, she
could not say no even though she had, but no meant
nothing to my dad.
When I was grown, all grown, I visited a place that is also
unwanted. An unwanted child of convenient-inconvenience, but
a lovely destination for planned, wanted children from its rich,
northwestern parent, who smiles for the camera, but does unspeakable
acts, says unspeakable words, behind heavy, Wall Street doors.
Their oak-paneled walls littered, like a refrigerator art gallery,
with photos of sleepy cobblestone streets, brightly-painted facades,
and angelic beaches, breathing warm winds into sun-filled skies.
I walked the streets of old San Juan, and thought of how I
was a reminder: to my father that he had the power to take
what he wanted, and when. To my mother, I was the living, breathing
souvenir she was forced to take, then birth, feed, nourish,
and acknowledge, despite an endless loathing projected like a
class-5 hurricane. A reminder that I was hers, despite how I came
to be, and she, mine.
Puerto Rico, the rich port. The door to riches. Snapshots
of a sleeping ocean-sky. Pale-skinned tourists capturing scenic
views, palms waving breezy goodbyes. I strolled along
the pavement as big-brown-eyed-smiles offered to take my picture,
and we love America, they’d say as they offered me trinkets,
their island’s name scrawled onto it like a child’s drawing:
each piece of macaroni carefully glued, glitter raining down on
bland linoleum. The offering, a penance, proffered to the
sighs of an unsmiling, distant mother. Then her ravaged
fingers grasp the colored paper and places it on
the table without inspection of the detail and care, the urgency
and longing with which it was made.
Roaming iguanas reminded me that this land is our land,
yet foreign and unbidden. Grinning street vendors, beckoning
me to try their guanimos con bacalao so I’d not
look down and see the paper-mâché foundations crumbling
under my well-heeled shoes, the decaying streets paved with neglect.
I think of when I was so young, then teen, then a new mother, my eyes
filled with pregnant clouds, bringing the perfect storm to
my parents’ shores. Their mouths said the right words,
but I felt their desire to push me away like an unwanted piece of
driftwood, marring a leisurely swim in surf.
Barefooted children ran toward me in San Juan,
the white woman from America, who would buy their
trinkets and Chiclets for just five American
dollars…okay? Okay three? Por favor, okay?
Three? they’d say, and I’d give them five and
feel so very magnanimous. Gracias, they’d say,
gracias, gracias, so earnestly, and I’d say, de nada,
because it was. It was nothing. Like…
it wasn’t anything at all.
I watched as the too-young girls spoke with dropped chins,
threadbare smiles, and lowered lids, as old, solitary,
American men, with fat wallets, bellies, and lewd grins
spread wide, negotiated what they wanted, and when. I saw a
child or two watch from the alley, eyes wide-awake, knowing
to stay back while Mamá earned their daily meal.
The push-and-pull of haggling as she tried
to extract the most table scraps from
America itself: fat with riches, self-loathing,
resenting her very presence until it suited, late
at night, or when a barbarism is needed to hurl at her
husband by the embittered wife. The young woman,
an embodiment of a burden for which
neither wanted to pay.
We drove another route back to the resort and saw the underbelly,
the afterbirth. We heard its screams, legs forced open, then simply
opened in resignation, bearing down, crowning heads of the poorest
of the poor, unimaginably poor in the shining northwest,
while angry clouds gathered in southeast skies.
Behind the safety of a glass windshield,
we saw the shit, the filth, shriveled placental blood,
and the horror in every brown eye as the door,
the port of riches, remains open, unlocked, but only at the pleasure
of men in expensive suits. The colors in those places were not bright,
nor were smiles spread as we crawled along tattered channels,
like the birth canal with claw marks of a child unwilling
to be purged from the safety of her mother’s body.
I used to come to dinner, when my parents knew I had no food,
so they offered a meal to me and my children.
Before they got old and ill, I was alone, with two little girls, my babies
I’d wanted desperately, but I was unwilling to pay the price
my mother had: a marriage with no safe rooms, no
doors that locked. So my mother would feed us, then, with
the scent of disapproval wafting from her stormy-blue eyes,
she’d sometimes go to the basement, where they kept their giant
case-lot hauls, and give me paper towels, two rolls, maybe three.
As if that would make up for everything. As if those
would help me feed my children. But
I took them. I took them because it must have meant
she cared about me after all, mustn’t it? And
I said, thank you. I was so glad for any help, so I said,
thank you, thank you, and, I love you. And my mother, she’d say,
I love you, too, but the way she said it…it felt
like nothing. De nada. Like…
it wasn’t anything at all.
Corners of my Mind: Sorting Out-of-Sorts Memories — COMING SOON
