Читать книгу ESL or You Weren't Here - Aldrin Valdez - Страница 10

isa

Contrary

to what I’ve been made to believe most of my life,

I am notempty.

The air is full of water and someone’s

hand pricks at it with a needle.

The water rushes out.

I panic.

Water is sadness

pulsing

in thick waves, now unstoppable.

I’m scrambling and shouting at other people to run.

All my borders are soaked!

And worse

blue is seeping into yellow.

dalawa

When yellow meets blue

it is a floral duster dress

my grandmother’s body fills in.

But if you were to burrow

into the belly of her dress,

you would find endless layers

of patterned fabric

and no body.

tatlo

My grandmother is my mother.

She is Nanay.

I am a child and I have lost her

at the gate of St. Mary’s Academy in Manila.

The security guard

is a scowl in uniform

berating me:

Your lola has to leave.

Kaylangan niya magtrabaho.

Get inside!

apat

Behind the gate, black & white shapes move swiftly through the halls. The bleached statue of a haughty Virgin Mary in the courtyard punishes a snake under her marble foot. October is Rosary Month. Every morning we kneel on the red tiles, a student leading us in prayer over the loudspeaker.

I seem to alwaysbe quiet.

I am dumb.

The teachers’ befuddled stares confirm it

but I am fine with that.

I don’t want to be so visible in school.

I can’t speak English and reading frustrates me.

I am learning at a slow pace.

Like Maria Makiling

turning

herself

into a mountain.

I am learning to speak

from, alongside

silence, writing

asdrawing :

a curve

in the air,

my head

& name

aloud,

land,

the trees,

my feelings.

lima

The English

language

is Mrs. Modesta’s pockmarked skin and potato nose.

The English

language

is Mrs. Modesta’s electrocuted elocution:

Pleazzzzesit down.

Zzzeee

is for zzzebra.

Manila iz where?

It eeezzz on the island of Luzzzon.

The English

language

is the gray foot of an elephant protruding

from my mouth in the first sentence

I ever read out loud in Mrs. Modesta’s English class.

anim

Christopher & I sit in the front row

He is my best friend.

We fondle each other and no one sees.

Twolittlebaklas

in white & navy blue.

The girls on the other side

are always laughing.

I tried to speak

to Jasmine once but her friends taunted me because they thought

I had a crush on her and because my name resembles the name

Aladdin.

pito

When asked to do the sign of the cross in Bible class

I let my hand spider from my forehead to my chest

then to my shoulders.

I am wrong.

Out of nervousness

I have used my left hand.

I am asked to repeat.

When we aren’t praying, we are drawing

images of Jesus Christ.

Mine is a man in a mandorla

radiating stars & ribbons of light.

Or we’re making lists of who has talked in class while the teacher is out of the room.

Ma’am! Ma’am!

We would rush to her

tattling the names of classmates.

walo

Christopher and I love to sing

Mariah Carey’s Without You.

Christopher says over the phone that he has never sounded so good

as he does now.

I agree with him.

His voice has the motion of a wilting

gumamela shaking

under the breath of a kambing.

I, on the other hand, when I get home from school, am an exceptional singer.

I singeverywhere.

Into the electric fan.

In the bathroom with the tabo in my hand.

In front of a gathering of neighbors outside during brownouts.

I sing for attention and the more I get the more I sing.

My Tita Alice and I sing with my Ates and Kuya.

She stations us on top of tables and couches.

Bedsheets drape our bodies. When she points to each of us,

we emerge like caryatids from the sheets

as Mariah

& Whitney

& Celine,

the fabric cascading to our furniture-turned-stages.

siyam

Mga kapatid ko say

I amKSP:Kulang Sa Pansin.

When they’re really trying

to make the pikon in me

come out they say

I amKSP:Kulangot Sa Pader.

And I get flustered—

I am not lacking attention!

I am not a booger on the wall!

I am a huffed-up balloon of Tagalog curses—

which I promised

to Lord

Jesus Christ

I would

never,

ever

say

again

if he would just please save my family and me from hell?

A never-ending

litany

of saviors, saints, & the prospective saved

lulls me to sleep each night like a pacifier.

sampu

But it is Nanay who rescues me

from the tukso of my Kuya and Ates.

Nanay is dilaw ng manga in an asul morning.

The rustling of the plastic bag she unfurls

is also the wrinkled, brown skin

of her hand as she offers me a mango.

I have missed dinner and she wakes me up now

and takes me outside where it is so blue

even the air seems colored-in

& the yellow of the mango hums in this blue.