My mother speaks of a mother, She cannot remember, Who died before her infant Memory took shape, The only relics left: An unstrung wooden rosary, and A patched mantilla of black lace. Her mother’s legacy of Jewel-encrusted rings and brooches, Taffeta dresses of the finest silks, Along with the contents of her hope chest, Might as well have been scattered to the winds. Divided among four wailing sisters Who would not relinquish Their loving memory, So greedy in their grief, They did not stop to think To console her stricken widower Left lone to mind their infant niece. My father spoke of a father, All he could do Was to remember, Surrounded by mementos, Photos, books and art. Seeing his father’s face In his own reflection When he shaved Must have daily ripped his heart. It is this same face that I carry That stirred my mother’s Rage and sorrow Too soon after my father’s heart Finally gave way. This man I once cherished Whose apparition I now strive to stave away. It wakes me from my dreams, Each fitful night, To remind me of another -- One who has forgotten The future and her presence Buried under memories Of past delight. You see, to my mother I have become Her daughter’s daughter. She asks me why her daughter never comes to see her, Why her own husband doesn’t care, Forgetting that I never had a daughter, That my father’s long departed, Never knowing it is I who strokes her hair.

You may think you know all there is to tell, from the freckled fairness my skin, by the dark depths of my black tresses, when you hunt for the pupil in the iris of my eye, observe the manner of my dress, by the New York dialect spoken, the way I say my “dog” and “ferry”, the quick pace of my street strut, the way I order black coffee and a bagel with just a smear of cream cheese, and when these observations are combined with the family name given, you may draw your own conclusion of my origin, forgetting white is not a color but full spectrum, and I like most American’s, descend from immigrants, who fled from famine, war and pogrom, in search of safe harbor to take root and raise their children, or came here locked in chains and stolen. You may think you know all there is to tell, when you see the cinnamon color of my mother’s complexion, the jet-black shimmer of her hair and eyes, the bright red pout of lipstick, and hear in the Castilliano now rarely spoken, the sound of castanets, the fast-footed tap of the flamenco dancer, when she tells you of her pet pig Leonora trotting across the slate floor of the bedroom shared with her big sister, this room wallpapered with Sunday comics, lit by lace-draped sunny windows, cooled by the noisy rickety ceiling fan incessantly spinning. You may hear the screams of spectators at the bullfight, as she mimics the pair of jade-green parrots hiding in the rafters, chortling curses at los footballistas, the victorious beer laden soccer players, passing in the street below her window, or hear the high-pitched cry of the condor, the winding whistle of the flute and panpipe of the Quichua, when she recollects the rock candy her father brought home, bulging in his pockets, in their brightly colored wrappers, from his weekly trip to market, where the indigenous people come down from Andes mountains to sell their wares, or in the names of little towns dotting shorelines and the valley like Jippi Jappa, Esmeraldas, Puerto Cayo, Puerto López. You may hear mallets, pounding the marimbas of the Afro-Ecuadorianos, or the grunts of bent-back slaves, working in the fields, as she recalls a white-haired grandfather’s plantation, gridded with rows of tobacco, corn, coffee and cane, its silos and barns overflowing with beans and sugar, his wrinkled skin, the color of roasted coffee, leathered by the sun, the creak of his rocker upon the wooden slats of the porch, and the dozens of cousins of every shade and color, running and playing, all summer long in his orchards. Then she draws in your head a portrait of her father, soling shoes in his cobbler shop for the village like his father’s father did before him in some village across the continent, across another ocean, in a land shaped like a boot. Then you see the square-cut broad brown faces of her two elder brothers, already living in America, and remember more than half the population of Ecuador is Mestizo, and you may know that more than a little bit of the Mediterranean, the Amazon and the Congo is flowing in my roots