Guerita

I am the guerita, driving down the street
past the Casa Linda apratments -
     whose name, I used to think,
        meant "Linda's apartments,"
        but now the words are automatic in my brain.

I don't belong to this place -
    not if you were to see me,
    with my skin as pink
    as the palest rose,
    though not as smooth -
    not anymore

But I am the only pink one here
    And on my street -
   Just me, and four little pink kids
   We five, who only get more pink
   as we play in this Hot Houston sun
But for that, I think, we have also bloomed

For it used to be, that all aound,
   everything was just one more thing
   that was different
The words, the food, the faces, the smells,
   the music, the dancing
   the kisses on the cheek.

It was all waiting, if I only allowed myself
  to be taken in by it.
And so I did
And Casa Linda is The Beautiful House
And my pink family, with all our colored eyes,
is familiar to the brown-eyed onlookers
    at the taquerias and the quincineras
And I didn't even notice
that it had all become so familiar

Until I left it for awhile, went on vacation
   And the place that is my childhood home
   is what felt foreign:
I wanted to speak in Spanish
And eat pastor in maize tortillas
And have beans with my eggs and coffee -
So I wondered -
     Is this how missionaries feel?
     Once they have left home and family
     And fallen so in love with a land
     And a people
     That after awhile,
     They become the land and people too
     so much so
     That there can be no separation from it?

And so my children tell me
   That I have just spoken to them in Spanish,
    Without my realizing I had done it:
    Mamma, what did you just say?
   They have stopped asking me
   If I could please turn off the Latin music -
  Aaron even dances to it in the car

And my dreams at night are in that language,
And though my Spanish is bad, people say that
   For a gringa who is still learning,
   it is alright
My tenses are wrong
My phrasing, incorrect,
But even though my students laugh,
Adults will smile for me, clasp my hand -
"Tu espanol es muy bueno!  Yo entende!"
The adults know how hard it is to learn
    when you are not young.
My students benefit from having spoken both languages
   since they were very young.
       Their parents appreciate my effort,
        and say that I have leaned quickly

So although I don't yet own the language,
    maybe I am getting close
The same way that, after eight years,
I finally own this place,
    All of it -
From the moment that I drive away
   from my bright yellow house in the dark maornings
Till I drive home with the blazing afternoon sun
    high in the sky -
The palm trees, the brighly-colored trailers selling food,
    even the three pairs of shoes
    strung over the telephone wires
    in front of the trailer park -
It's all mine, just as it is all theirs -

The neighbors and I - both intimitdated to speak,
since we know just a little
of the other's language;
we smile and wave.

The brown waters of The Gulf
The azaleas, which begin to bud in February
and are lush and bright by March.

The trafic, the city, the bayous, the hurricanes
    St. Arnold's Brewery and Minute Maid Park,
       the memory of the battle of San Jacinto

Q and 1/2 Street on the Island,
The Island -
   Where my Grandmosther was raised
     and where my grandfather met her
       and where my mother took her first breath

So maybe it is
That I have come back
To where I was always supposed to be
to this place, with all its life and color,
its flavor and its magic,
That accepted me so readily
when finally I was able
to let it all in