Читать книгу Unaccompanied - Javier Zamora - Страница 10

from The Book I Made with a Counselor My First Week of School

His grandma made the best pupusas, the counselor wrote next to

Stick-Figure Abuelita

(I’d colored her puffy hair black with a pen).

Earlier, Dad in his truck: “always look gringos in the eyes.”

Mom: “never tell them everything, but smile, always smile.”

A handful of times I’ve opened the book to see running past cacti

from helicopters, running inside detention cells.

Next to what might be yucca plants or a dried creek:

Javier saw a dead coyote animal, which stank and had flies over it.

I keep this book in an old shoebox underneath the bed. She asked in Spanish,

I just smiled, didn’t tell her, no animal, I knew that man.