Erasur

At a buffet, a woman once whispered to my father

this was America he should speak English

as he slipped on a word, traced it with his tongue and teeth.

He has a stutter. He has a stutter.

He used to tell me bedtime stories about his life in Mexico before me,

before I could speak, before I could tell you

what the difference was when he described himself as living in a rainforest

and when I said rainforest and before the person next to you

could tell you what they mean when they say rainforest.

Podría describir para ti la jungla, but I don’t think it would really matter

—wouldn’t you just skip over the parts you didn’t really understand?

How will I be understood if I don’t say it in your language.

This language. Como puedo ser entendido?

Especially if I myself don’t quite understand.

Mi mama knew what to call herself when I didn’t.

A full word, full label—didn’t give herself a hyphen.

She’s an American but they still speak to her slowly.

Her parents were not born here

and she was not conceived in the United States

and you can see it on her face like you can see it on mine.

You can see it on the back of her hands from years in the fields

and the way she says shares instead of chairs

because she never really formed that hard “ch” sound, that chiding,

that “I learned this as a child

and now I’m embarrassed when my mom says ‘shild’ instead of child sound,”

that my mom tries hard to be someone she isn’t when she’s in front of strangers sound 

—speaks slowly to avoid the tripping on her tongue.

I wonder where she got the idea that there were folds in it like an old rug?

I wonder which asshole child of hers became associated with the idea that she

should already speak this new language to us correctly,

should already have thrown away her first language like I was,

should have placed her palabras in italics with context

and only as tags at the end of a sentence to let us know it would be over soon—

should have sounded more like an American.

Not a Mexican. Not a Mexican American.

She told me not to become a hyphen,

for a hyphenated American doesn’t exist, we don’t exist,

we’re given a hyphen to make space between us and America

without it we are neither American or maybe we are, but maybe I’ll lose it—

but what am I when I am neither someone from this tierra or that?

I am slowly learning que yo puedo hablar como me quieres—

que mi mama tried to squeeze herself so tightly to fit into a crack in the wall,

that when she bought us fast food it was only ever one color—

and you are what you eat.

And for a long time, I thought that only reading writing that didn’t belong to me,

that didn’t mention young women like myself,

that acknowledged mis palabras como una cosa raro,

or didn’t mention me at all  was the only way that I should write.

Place myself in a cotton field not so that I could pick it like my family did,

but so that I could wear it.

Let’s talk on the pouring of refined sugar and milk so heavily into my coffee that  

I’ve lost the taste under it,

my peculiar blend of two different homes, a peculiar blend of two languages.

My upbringing on one language that sounds invasive,

like the Mexican petunias that grew in my backyard

passed from family member to family member that weren’t actually invasive

but rather perennial and anyone who’s taken care of flowers

will tell you that perennials can be tamed, like me,

can be cut down and gotten rid of

but the wild Mexican petunia is known as aggressive and no wonder—

the people who call it aggressive are afraid of it growing amongst their own plants. 

Afraid that one day it will overgrow and kill the roots they planted.

    They                       want                 to                 erase                 it.