When You're the One in the House That Speaks English by Peggy Robles-Alvarado

“¿Qué dice?” Mami demanded,
pulling at the coloring book and 
scented markers pressed to my chest 
replacing them with today’s mail.

My third-grade English trembling 
at the sight of legal paper and torn 
envelope, eyes watering, our reflections 
caught in the silver seal pressed into 
the paper, the branding of an official 
document, a new border, Mami’s
tongue:

an unclassified animal caught in this 
barbed wire of menacing font and 
formality, mocking the block letters, 
and static penmanship of her copied 
signature at the bottom of the page.

Twirling the crucifix dangling from 
her neck between index and thumb, 
she tries to summon a God of letters 
to calm the slow rise of a rage fueled 
by uncertainty, as I stumble line by 
line, heaving, trying to craft my own 
spell, to mend sounds to symbols:

-English- then Spanish- then Mami-

-English- then Spanish - then the 
Spanish Mami and I speak at home-

-English- then Spanish- then heart- 
then Mami- 

-English- then Spanish- then heart- then

-Blank-

-a void-
                        -a gap in understanding-

I decode, 

decode, squint, 
decode, 
repeat the sounds to fill spaces with 
what I hope 

Mami wants me to say. 

This is more than a school memo, 
a notice from the power company, 
another denial for public assistance 
on a technicality. 

My tongue: always 

the 
unsteady bridge for an 
immigrant mother who waits 
for me to explain 
if my country will allow her 
to call 
it home            too. 

---

Contributor Notes

Peggy Robles-Alvarado is a Dominican and Puerto Rican tenured New York City educator with advanced degrees in elementary, bilingual education, and an MFA in Performance Studies. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee, 2020 Atticus Review Poetry Contest winner, and a BRIO award winner. She has received fellowships from CantoMundo, Homeschool, Desert Nights Rising Stars, The Frost Place, and VONA. She is also a three time International Latino Book Award winner who authored Conversations With My Skin (2011), and Homage To The Warrior Women (2012). Through Robleswrites Productions she created The Abuela Stories Project (2016) and Mujeres, The Magic, The Movement and The Muse (2017). Her poetry appears in the anthologies Escape Wheel (2020), The Breakbeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNext (2020), What Saves Us: Poems of Empathy and Outrage in the Age of Trump (2019). For more please visit Robleswrites.com.