TO MY FRIEND DARYL who has lighted my life since seventh grade 1969-2015
ONE I LIVE IN A TILTED HOUSE A bowling ball on our living room floor would roll past the couch past the dining table all the way to the kitchen sink And if the sink wasn't there and the wall wasn't there and the bathroom behind that wasn't there the ball would roll all the way to my room at the end of the house That's what it's like being twelve Everything rolling rolling toward you Quijana Mom's voice thuds against my door M'ija Dad calls It's not really our house We rent But even if the doors hang crooked and won't close and even if Mom never comes home till bedtime anymore and Dad looks tired when he cleans up after supper I like this tilted house I get my own room and there's a backyard swing There's even a stove with two ovens the upper one like a dresser drawer We can bake peach cobbler and cheesy nachos at the same time Like we might today if we weren't destroying the living room pulling everything off the walls
Quijana we need another pair of hands here Is she outside I wish I were I'd jump on the swing pump my legs climb high and whoosh through the air Then I'd sing It's my secret favorite thing even better than peach cobbler When I sing out there something rises up my spine and tingles the top of my head The notes lift me up until I weigh nothing I could almost let go and sail over the treetops Which is another good thing about this tilted house We can sing in it Back at the apartment way back when my little brother was born Dad would strum his guitar and we'd sing ballads in English boleros in Spanish Then a neighbor would pound on the wall Or the ceiling Apartment walls are nothing nothing but panels of saltine crackers I'll check the backyard No one can tell me why this house tilts The landlady tried That ol Texas sun turns dirt to dust Can't build nothing nothing on dust Mom says it's the clay soil that's under the house that slickens in the rain Dad tells me the builders tried to stairstep a hill putting each house on a bulldozed shelf But no one cheats Mother Earth She's remaking her hill filling in the shelves to make a slope again Mostly I don't notice the tilt But sometimes like now the walk from my room to the kitchen seems steep Quijana Dad's face appears at my bedroom door Of course I should be helping I hang my head The thing is those boleros we sing in Spanish I've memorized the
sounds But I don't know what they mean And now Mom and Dad are Spanish izing the whole house Dad looks toward the ceiling as if he'll find a power up of patience there Ever since Tío Pancho called and said Adiós Chicago I got a job in Dallas Dad's been different He's playing playing more marimba music on his phone He talked me into taking taking Spanish instead of Mandarin in school Last night Dad went over to help unload the moving van We're all going to visit when they get settled Then I'll meet the whole family Tío Pancho Tía Lencha and three cousins They've lived in the States for a while now but We've never been able to visit them in Chicago The door flies all the way open and Memito tumbles in He thrusts a book in my face and climbs on my lap He thinks my body is a big chair just for him He wants to read I say to Dad I'd much rather read A knot kinks in my chest when I think of taking down pictures of me and putting up paintings of Guatemala the place where Dad was born but I've never been Can't we read first Read afterward Dad says I start seventh grade in forty eight hours so I also want to load my backpack My folders and notebook paper are still slouching in Kroger bags They'll have to wait I stand up slowly tipping Memito onto his feet I guess we better Dad leaves but Memito's bottom lip pooches out I know He waves the book again and stomps his foot
