Yasmine Romero

If you can hear her

In the deepest part of the world

Is an inky labyrinth

Her chaotic dim light

Her hands in the current

Her voice if you

press your ear to the freezing

Sand

Maria’s legs were twisted around the width of an abandoned cannon. It was one of many puncturing the sides of their cliffs, their mountains, their land; it was bearing age like a sunken ship, barnacled by moss, chiseled away by limestone teeth, sandpapered to the point where she could not tell where the metal and the earth began. Maria scooted herself towards the middle of the cannon. She imagined having to use these weapons, aiming for the white men who filtered onto the shores with promises of freedom from the Japanese.

A single gull caught her attention. It dipped, using the wind to catapult itself into the air, to soar. She could not see its eyes, but she knew that it must think, breathe. There was water. There was air. Maria inhaled deeply, and she could taste the salt in the back of her dry throat. Coughing, her body tilted forward, and between her knees was just the rust, the seaside cobwebs, and she thought—if I can slip—only to be interrupted by her uncle screaming.

“Nen! Get away from there!”

Maria grabbed onto the cannon with all of her limbs and alternated with her left and right hips to get back to the mountainside where her feet would be supported by the dead Chamorros buried in the caves. Their bones lent her the courage to say, to speak, to scream when her uncle grabbed her.

“It’s going to be okay,” he said.

Uncle Toru’s voice was softer than her mother’s would ever be. She struggled against him at first, and then slid into his supporting arm. He smelled of sticky rice. They made their way to the car in silence, and once the door closed on the passenger side, Maria realized she had been holding her breath the entire time. 

“We’re going home.” He turned the key in the ignition.

Maria should have been their first boy. She “could have been such a light in this world but then something happened,” her mother said over her crib. Maria wasn’t born like her cousins, but she raced with them; she climbed with them; she teased them; she wrestled them. She would wear their clothes. They would talk to her like she was one of them.

“Go,” they said, “see if you can beat us.” 

She could feel their grins at the small arcade stuffed with what Americans had left behind in the form of pinball machines and racing and fighting games.

Joseph, who had been born a year later than her, had their grandfather’s name like a second skin. Sometimes, Maria saw the edges of her grandfather’s fingertips shaking underneath Joseph’s closed hands on the pews; at other times, like at family parties at Uncle Toru’s house, she saw the corners of her grandfather’s mouth shadow Joseph’s failed smiles for his mother, Chai, who always intended to separate them. Auntie Chai’s eyes would flash, and she would pull Joseph away from Maria to whisper into his ear. To say things that Maria pretended not to hear. She watched their shapes merge together underneath the papaya trees that swayed.

But whispers like these ballooned after she went into the counselor’s office, Ms. Smith. Maria sat in front of the white woman with a shawl across her thick neck and chapped lips. Ms. Smith spoke with a lisp. The other kids in Maria’s class imitated Ms. Smith during recess, grinning as they said, “Tell me if something’s wrong. Tell me if you need help. That’s why I am here.” 

Maria thought of those monthly afternoon affirmations of trust as she ate dinner with her parents talking about recent building projects or the weather. She brought the cons and pros with her into her room, and back out into the living room when her parents were asleep. She walked across the tile floors. She practiced in low whispers. She spoke as though the darkness up the stairs or past the windows would hear her.

“They are making me and my friends in class uncomfortable. They are …”

She could not say what had happened. Was it when Sister Joaquina was teaching Math or English? Maria could not pinpoint, exactly, when it had started. But she knew how their hands had made her feel. How they–Vincent and his two friends–made her stomach churn. How she could not say a word when Sister Joaquina called on her because her throat was dry. She rasped, and the classroom around her filled with laughter. Maria’s cheeks burned, as did the inside of her thighs, the way her jeans buckled at the stomach, the way sweat felt cold rather than hot across her back. Their hands turning into fists on top of their desks. Their faces blurred.

Maria was shaking then just as she was shaking now. Ms. Smith shifted in her seat. Leather creaked. Figurines of Minnie Mouse sat on the edge of her desk. They were in various positions.

“Are you sure?” Ms. Smith said.

Maria blinked.

“That this happened in Sister Joaquina’s class?” 

The counselor tilted her head to the side. Ms. Smith had one of the only air-conditioned rooms in the school. Her space was covered in red blankets, red frills, posters with red fruits, and even red carpeting that was circular. She was burning sage to the right of Maria.

“I can help,” Ms. Smith said.

“Can I return to class?” Maria asked.

Before Ms. Smith could respond, Maria left Ms. Smith’s basement office. She ran to the school’s baseball field and found shade in one of the dugouts. Maria waited until she saw her uncle’s truck.

“What are you doing out here?”

Maria did not look up.

“Let’s take you home,” Uncle Toru said.

Uncle Toru and Maria’s mother conferred when they pulled into the driveway. After his truck disappeared, Maria heard her mother walk along the gravel, and then shut the door to their home. She waited to hear her name, but that summon did not come until the smell of dinner was thick in the air.

“Why,” her mother asked, “are you making him worry about you?”. 

“No reason,” Maria said.

Her mother held a fork between her thumb and forefinger. She was deciding between eating or speaking. Her eyes were on her daughter.

“Stop lying,” her mother said.

Maria stared at the chicken kelaguen on her plate–a gathering of wet shredded chicken and green onions over rice. It smelled stronger than usual of lime. She felt the heat across her face and throat. She did not reach for her fork. She kept her hands on her knees, gripping through her jeans.

“And don’t you dare tell your grandmother,” her mother added.

Maria’s father ate the chicken while they were talking. His mouth was half-open, and so she heard how he chewed. Strings tugged through mud in a particular rhythm, one that she recognized as walking across sand banks back on the mainland.

“Aren’t you going to say something?”

Maria’s mother looked at her father. 

“Listen to your mother,” he said.

Maria stood, making sure that her chair made that high-pitched sound when it scrawled against the floor. She walked away from the food, and up the small flight of stairs to her bedroom. She threw open the jungle print curtains, and then unlocked the window. Maria saw their neighbors practicing the stick dance, which was for men. Their bodies were decorated in pandanus leaves, and their movements mirrored one another. She opened the window, trembling at the sound of their shouts.

She wondered if anyone whispered to them like her aunt to Joseph, “Remember, she’s nothing like you. She’s her mother’s child.”

***

Make us remember what

we forget

I ache to name

To be given a name

To be articulated by boys and girls

but they laugh in (the) t(h)rees

Looking left and right, the asphalt road was clear of cars. Maria brought her left foot forward, while her right was ready on its pedal. She had three dollars in her back pocket, which were rolled into tight cylinders. Her seat cover was blue, and she had managed to color in hearts with a permanent marker. Her helmet was on, the tie beneath her chin nearly choking her. A dolphin had been painted into the skull of the helmet.

She inhaled, and then on exhale pushed herself into the road. She pumped the pedals slowly at first, increasing her pace as she neared the unfinished house with gray walls. Two clicks and the boonie dog was on her. He was the abandoned house’s resident, and had the look of a Rottweiler. But something was off about his face. His eyes were dull like Valerie’s, unreadable even when Maria tried to ask, “Why aren’t you talking to me?”

They were beneath the flame trees; gargantuan steps made up for the steep hill between the lower grade and higher grade classrooms. Maria couldn’t tell the difference between the classrooms other than that they lacked light, rows of desks were close, and students were crammed into the spaces. Her mother had been talking about attending the private school on the island, but there was always hesitation in her posture. She had told Maria it was because of money, but Maria knew it was because she had been asked to leave Sunday school. 

“She says things,” Maria’s mother laughed, “and this is what we’re left with.”

That same posture and tone clung to Valerie, as Maria tried to ask again, “what’s wrong?”

“Why are you acting like you did nothing?”

Valerie’s features became thin. Her brows were upward and the width of mechanical pencil lead. Her mouth was a red paper cut. Maria could smell the rice and pork drifting from the cafeteria. Vincent and his friends frequented the place, unlike her. She couldn’t taste the red rice, and the meat dripped from the large spoons they used to shovel the food out and onto each student’s plate.

“I didn’t do anything to you.”

“But you did, Maria,” Valerie sigh-growled, “you told.”

Maria stepped back. Something squished out from beneath her sneaker—a bright yellow banana slug. Maria looked the other way, down where they usually played kickball.

“I had to,” Maria said.

“No.”

Valerie’s hate grew on Maria like sweat. It stuck at the backs of her knees, under her arms, and at the base of her throat. Maria tried to breathe. She was going to reach out, grab the girl’s bony shoulders and shake, but Valerie stepped away.

“Just stay away from us.”

She had appeared as a shadow, and now she was whole, leaving Maria to the dead slug on the concrete steps. Her figure traveled back up the steps; it mingled with others that turned to flesh, and she could count each of them; their features were different, but collectively, they hung on to one another. Valerie with her long, coarse Japanese hair. Sarah with her lazy eye. Abi who had a white father like Maria. Puengi with her permed red hair.

She watched them fade into the canary walls of the classroom that they were outside of, that they were watching her from. Just like the boonie dog who, day in and day out, watched from his kingdom of broken concrete. The owners had just left the wiring and metal joists out in the open. Maria wondered if that was why he barked and snarled like so: lonely and angry at the world. He was closing the distance between her and him. Maria leaned forward, breathing fast; she steered herself into the parking lot of the corner store. Throwing her bike down in one of the empty parking spaces, Maria ran inside. Two Korean women greeted her in red aprons. Their hair was pulled back. Their teeth white.

“Yakult?”

Maria brought out her rolled cash. She laid out the three dollars. Each bill curled into one another. Maria thought of flowers. She thought of her grandmother, and moved to see the sky through the glass doors. She did not hear the howl of the boonie dog, nor did she see the seagull from the other day. He must have flown away.

“Six, okay?” said one of the women. 

Maria held the tiny plastic grocery bag in her right hand. She picked up her bike and examined it for any nicks or scratches. Her bike basket, like most of her bikes, was made up of rainbow colors. Her cousins had teased her about certain colors–pink, purple, and light yellow–and so she had tried to cover those colors with the same black permanent marker. 

She placed the drinks in the basket to keep them safe. Maria wanted to bring them with her to the sleepover tonight. Maria made it unscathed from the boonie dog’s jaws that snapped close to her ankle on the way home. She threw her bike into the yard and rushed upstairs. She grabbed a bag of clothes, comics, and CDs. Maria’s mother stopped her daughter by the doorway. She held her by both shoulders.

“Be sure you say thank you to Uncle Ton and Auntie Isa,” her mother said.

Maria nodded, sliding past her mother’s wide hips; she followed her father’s shadow instead into their pickup that looked just like Uncle Toru’s. Maria’s father drove with his reggae music loud; he was singing along to it, too; and so, it took longer than when her mother would take her. Ten minutes instead of six to arrive in the farthest part of the jungle that Maria knew the family lived; the house had a back porch that emptied out onto so many trees. It was colder than Uncle Toru’s house, which Agana attributed to the ancestral Chamorro spirits perched in those trees beyond her window, waiting for the uninvited to pass by.

While the outside of Agana’s house was spiritually and physically overgrown, the inside of Agana’s house was minimalist. There was a table and one television in the living room. The entire concrete home’s layout was connected to this central space, with four different separate wings: the kitchen, Agana and her brother’s rooms, and their parents’ room. They kept their doors open, with the exception of tonight when Maria convinced Agana to keep hers closed.

Agana shook her head. Maria noticed that her hair was longer than usual. Her eyes were watery and wide.
“I’m not going out there,” Agana said.

“You don’t have to.” 

Agana breathed out a sigh.

“I thought you weren’t serious.” 

 Maria checked the digital clock by Agana’s bed which had no frame. Just a mattress with sheets and blankets and pillows piled on top. She had concrete blocks for a side table. Her walls were empty, and none of her dolls were ever out. 

“I am serious,” Maria said. 

She made her way to the window that Agana kept shut and curtained. Electric yellow lights above them rendered Maria’s body as half-shadow, half-light. She tied off the curtains, hearing Agana in the background.

“Why,” she said, “why are you doing this?”

Maria eased the window open, wincing at the slightest screech. She felt Agana over her right shoulder. 

“I need to know,” she said.

“Know what?”

But Maria was already climbing out of the window. Her slippered feet scattered the rough dry soil. It hadn’t rained in days. She moved in the direction of denser trees. Thicker. Agana stayed at the window. Maria could hear her cousin grinding her teeth, but she pushed onward. She passed thick and skinny trees. Spiderwebs caught around her ankles and throat. Fluttering of bat wings filled her ears, until something, someone said, “You shouldn’t be out here.”

Maria stopped and looked up. Through the shadows of leaves, she could make out a shape. It was squat and bushy haired. Maria thought of the squirrels back in Idaho, but this would be an oversized one without a tail. She heard its claws clench into the trunk of the tree it had been perching on. Rotten papaya filled her nostrils. A fingertip pressed against her shoulder, igniting a burning sensation. Sister Joaquina had told her she was bringing this on herself.

“Women can’t help it,” she had said as the ruler fell across Maria’s knuckles. The snap of wood was the same burning, the stabbing sensation that Vincent and his friends left in between the legs of her and those she used to call friends. Similar to the pain the creature was leaving in her shoulder on this calm night before the Nobena. The priest had called it the devil in confession. Maria had called it man.

“Mariana,” it said.

***

There is Mariana.

The sound of Her breathing.

The dark brightness of Her reflection:

the light-dark of

Me.

Their high-pitched voices pushed against the jalousie windows. Past the film to keep out the sun, they were seen encircling candles, a Mother Mary statue, and the photograph of a woman with a heavily lined face. Their heads were bowed as they sang, save Maria. She stared into the candle flames; her expression pinched. She could only remember her great aunt’s sour breath.

And the wails of the women in her family rose tide-high.  

Maria did not imitate their cries; instead, she shrunk into her wooden seat, which was smooth underneath her palms. She was aware of the sweat running down the backs of her legs. Sticky. Maria tuned into her mother and grandma’s voices. Their uneven tones suggested there was more to her great aunt, but death was in the sea to Maria ever since those kids brought out the bloody corpse of a small shark.

“Look,” they said, “look what we found.” 

But whatever animal soul had been in that pair of black eyes was gone. It no longer interested her. Sea stars, the flame trees, the boonie dogs howling at midnight in Garapan failed to interest her. Except the creature, the ancient Chamorro spirit, the Taotaomoʻna that had called her, “Mariana.”

As they started the second round of prayers, Maria slipped out of her mother’s grasp; she was now in trouble for scaring Agana. Her grandmother had said nothing about the incident, even when her mother spoke to her like one speaks to the tidepools. Impatient and expecting nothing in return. Her mother’s glare followed her into the house, and out past the living room with the old television set that her grandparents used to watch American Westerns and soap operas. 

She was out the front door, and deep in her grandmother’s garden. Still thick with the smell of the day’s heat, the tinges of hibiscus and plumeria were too sweet in Maria’s lungs. She coughed, gravitating towards the center of the garden, touching along the mottled and vibrantly colored ferns that were her grandmother’s true loves. The faded elephant statue with a protruding belly played watchman amongst them. He was a poor imitation of Ganesha; he lacked the snakes coiled at the ankles or threaded about his neck. Pots of aloe framed his white, ceramic form. Maria’s fingers moved to one, letting the tiny, harmless spines that lined its fleshy leaves tickle her thumb and forefinger. She sighed when they did not bleed. Maria pivoted towards the goldfish pond, her favorite part of the garden.

The pond was built of stone. Its waters reflected everything and nothing, and Maria knew why she tiptoed towards its edge. When she peeked over the water’s surface, her reflection was unfamiliar. The bright street lamp that shone against the line of hibiscus bushes harshened her childish appearance. The light that managed to make its way into the murky water blossomed into electric pale blues, which cast an ethereal veil across her mouth.

“Mariana,” she said.

***

The storm was set to come three days later, but it came earlier; her father was hammering at the windows. He was placing wooden boards across the glass. Maria watched at first, but then the constant slamming of the hammer began to sing in ways that made her withdraw to her room. Because he had already covered those windows, she sat on the edge of her bed. Her mother was in the kitchen, making sure that everything was stored properly. 

Her parents’ preparations seemed to bounce from one another, and in the middle of all that noise, Maria decided to clean her room. She put away all of her dolls, stuffing their bodies into what closet space wasn’t taken by clothes. She made her bed. Maria then put on a pair of jeans, a long-sleeved gray shirt, and the hat she wore on the beach to search out what dead the sea had brought back after storms like these. She slid on a pair of white socks, as well as her favorite tennis shoes, even though they were discolored by mud and sea water.

While she did not have a mirror in her room, Maria knew what she looked like. She knew that the wind sounded different; it was spiteful, yet soft. Passing through the few trees they had on their lawn, it whistled.  

But Maria longed to know what it sounded like on the shore. She could imagine it angry. She could imagine it lashing against the crags, and then howling up towards the moon. When the moon did not hear its cries, the wind would funnel towards the heavens; it would try and throw whatever it could into the sky and ocean. If the moon still ignored it, then the wind would become one with the water; it would raise itself up, high and mighty, so that a clap of its entire body would shake, rendering the world in two.

She was at the front door. Her father was moving into her parents’ bedroom. Her mother was still cleaning out the fridge. She leaned to the side. Her mother’s frown did not make her flinch this time.

“Where are you going?”

“Outside,” Maria said.

Her mother shook her head. She turned her attention to the fridge, feeling for a container in the far back. Its contents were an indistinguishable red and brown. A bitter smell wafted from its lid. Maria’s mother tossed it into the trash bag near her, noticing that the bag itself rustled from the wind. Maria had left the door open. 

Yasmine Romero is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Hawai‘i-West O‘ahu. Her forthcoming book, Intersectionality in Writing and Language Studies: Dialoguing, Decentering, and Co-storying, combines her research interests in intersectionality, critical narrative studies, and critical race theory. She has published short stories in Bamboo Ridge Press and Mānoa: A Pacific Journal of International Writing. She is currently working on her first novel. 

Photo by staff