Call Me María: List 2

“Class, these are imperative sentences,” says Mr. Golden.

Mr. Golden is out in the hall, reprimanding Rickie “the Papi-lindo” Moreno for manicuring his nails in class, and Whoopee decides it is time to entertain us.

Uma is wearing what looks like blue pajamas. She laughs when Whoopee tells her she likes her pj’s. It is called a salwar- kameez—Uma explains—what Indian women wear when they want to be comfortable.

I look at her as she watches the papi-lindo of our building struggling to fit a turtleneck sweater over the head of a tall male dummy. The dummy stares without eyeballs at us while Ricky practically decapitates him.

Whoopee’s parents run the botánica in our barrio. It is a sort of magic store and drugstore combined. They sell everything from scented alcohol that is good for headaches and for driving away evil spirits to Vicks VapoRub and throat lozenges.

At first, I think Whoopee is asking who is the girl Ricky has snared with his Spanish love song he throws out like Spider-Man, wrapping her in a cocoon of amor, Mamacita, ven, ven, ven.

“I need to talk to you. ALONE.” I am using my best assertive voice. I have been taking lessons from Whoopee on how to make myself be heard.

From the time I can remember there was some religion class I had to take at our parish church.

And so on, until the droning of the old nun’s monotone voice and the chorus of bored children would be stuck like a record in my head.

And so on, until the droning of the old nun’s monotone voice and the chorus of bored children would be stuck like a record in my head.

The rotund manager, propelling down the center aisle toward me like a nuclear submarine in his too-tight steel-gray suit, his pudgy finger aimed at me, orders me in a loud voice to come back and empty my purse on the counter.

But his face—folds of hardened rubbery flesh, mouth curling into a tight smile of scorn, eyes almost slits—tells me to expect no pity.

I turn over my bag on the glass case that displays cheap watches, their plastic faces impassively watching me through safety glass—a jury box of Timex ladies’ and men’s, alarms ready to go off when I am found guilty, none of them showing the right time.

Without touching any of my things, as if I carried the bubonic plague in my handbag, he inspects its contents, poking around inside with a pen he has pulled out of his pocket, letters scrolled in gold on its side: We value our customers.

This is what I leave on the glass countertop, above the Timex watches, all telling the wrong time: half a roll of mints (the green one on top broken in three places and a little bit dusty), several strands of coarse black hair I have carefully shaped into a question mark, and a ticket stub from the movie American Beauty, which I really didn’t like all that much.

Not too long ago
you sounded like this: I speek
leetle Eenguish. The next,
you are singing I can articulate, I can articulate,
like the eloquent pig Wilbur
in Charlotte’s Web.

Not too long ago
you sounded like this: I speek
leetle Eenguish. The next,
you are singing I can articulate, I can articulate,
like the eloquent pig Wilbur
in Charlotte’s Web.

She is so subtle, this thief,
that practically
your entire childhood is gone
before you really notice.

The mother calls
from the darkened room, the back bedroom
thick with incense, where the faces of dead relatives
speak to Uma’s mother from their gilded frames,
telling her how to live in this land of too much freedom,
and what to do about her daughter
who has fallen in love with a boy
who loves only himself.

The mother calls
from the darkened room, the back bedroom
thick with incense, where the faces of dead relatives
speak to Uma’s mother from their gilded frames,
telling her how to live in this land of too much freedom,
and what to do about her daughter
who has fallen in love with a boy
who loves only himself.

Uma!
and Uma is reeled in toward her mother
like a small golden fish, thrust into a sealed world
of sandalwood smoke, of prayer rugs, veils,
and memories.

Uma, now kept in
by your mother’s fears, you wait each afternoon for the sight
of him, leaping off the bus like an action hero, scaring the pigeons
roosting on the window ledge.

At the threshold of my door
stand Uma and her mother holding hands, black streaks of kohl
running down their cheeks from tears, but trying hard to smile.

He says to her
over my bent head that I resemble the tadpole floating
in the labeled specimen jar sitting on the shelf
at our station, a bloated, brown little thing.

The follicle is like a seed under the ground, it rises
through the dermis and subcutaneous tissue
which is rich in fat and blood vessels, fertile!

The hair shaft is like a little blade of grass
burrowing through the epidermis into the sunlight!

I looked up the parts of a human skin cell—
the words sound like a song in another language:
Dermal papilla, dermal basale, stratum spinosum, stratum
corneum, epidermis, dermis...and...
as I look at the illustration
of a cross section of skin—I have a Ms. Coronado moment:
People, listen to this: We are all made up of the same thing
under our epidermis.

Out of the top half of my basement window, I watch her running down our block, a manic look of happiness on her face.

And although we will not find a spell to turn enemies into frogs, we learn that frogs were considered symbols of good luck in ancient Egypt. They were embalmed and kept around the house. There is a picture of a tiny frog mummy that makes Whoopee decide we should make frog mummies out of papier-mâché to give as party favors at Ms. Coronado’s annual fiesta.

Circles are everywhere. Can anyone name
the circle that you live on, the circle that warms
and lights our days, the circle that illuminates
our nights?