Esperando

Sofi

Ivetta and I are wearing new dresses. Mami-made. We are wearing them for Papi, because Mami wants us to look pretty for him when he comes back to Guayanilla from Nueva York, which will be very soon. Three hours, maybe a little bit longer. Mami told us: let's impress him with your loveliness.

My sister and I are twins. We are twelve years old and we share the same berry-black faces. Most people can tell us apart, though, since I have a birthmark on my cheek in the shape of hibiscus leaf and my family remembers me as the one with the defect. Mami says our two-ness was a surprise to Papi. She says a few days after we were born, he started a little garden behind Mami's bohio thatch-house. He called it Ivie and Sofi's jardín de flores gemelitas. The amazing garden for his twingirl blooms. When Mami bought the fabric for the dresses we wear today, she told us to pick colors that would remind Papi of his favorite flowers. We wear his flor-colored dresses now. Ivie is in orchid-white, I am in rosselle-purple, the color of the magas in Papi's garden. We pinch the new cloth and it feels cold and smooth and smells like sweet kola nuts.

We are stuck hip-to-hip on Mami's couch in the parlor. Our ankles are crossed tight but quivery. Mami is re-tying our hairbows and licking her thumb then rubbing that thumb against our eyebrows. She's patting our faces and telling us to practice our smiles. Stretch them wide, she says, but not too wide. Bite your lips so they flush. We obey. We clean our teeth with our tongues. Ivetta and I grin, together. We stretch our smiles so wide our face-skin stings. I can feel my birthmark stretch and hurt.

Mami says: "He'll have to come, to see such beautiful girls."

We believe we look pretty in these dresses, like Mami tells us. Still, our fingertips and palms are sweat-wet. We haven't seen Papi in a month; we are used to not seeing him. He doesn't come to our house in Guayanilla very much and he has never been to our school plays or piano shows or seen us ride our glittery Huffies. Sometimes, the night before Papi is scheduled to fly in, Ivie and I lay awake, shivering in the bed we share together. We hug each other's waists, try to sleep, and murmur about the same kinds of things: What happens if Papi stops coming to see us? What if he decides we're not worth his time? We wonder if there will be a day when we're not beautiful enough to make Papi come back.

Mami says we are the first reason Papi comes to Puerto Rico. We think Mami is the second, but when we ask her about this, she waves her hands and scowls.

When Papi comes, he always comes with boxes. Hat boxes for Mami, glossy-faced dolls from the States that have negra noses and pushed-out lips, that look like us. When Papi comes, he'll kiss our heads and laugh at our yowls of delight when we tear open our gift boxes. The living room gets fat with light and the walls glow yellow. Mami leans her chest against Papi's long body and he strokes her weaved-in hair. She'll kiss his chin, he'll half-smile and we feel like the children in school who have parents in love, or parents who are not in love, but have electric hips smashed together at dinner parties. When Papi comes and looks at us and calls us his bellas, we feel like treasures. In our schools, we are the Loiza-looking girls with dark skin and funny noses and sometimes we can forget we are pretty. Papi makes us feel so.

Mami doesn't look like normal-Mami today, but she is still beautiful. Mami's black-brown curls are usually cut above her ear, but today...