the name "wetback" first slipped out of america's mouth in the 1920s
in reference to the mexicans who swam snake-spined through the rio grande
forcing themselves to shed dead skin in the current
they fell
panting and limp
on the bank of the river
pushed into a New World through the body of tlaloquetotontli
the river goddess of their ancient empire
the water still glistened on their bare skin, and no white mouth could think of a name more suitable than
wet-back
in that moment
that name rolled off of salt-coated tongues into brown ears for decades
those tongues forgot what it was like not to taste the salt in their mouths when they spoke it
even if they could not remember why it was there in the first place
the mexicanos forgot what it was like to not feel those cataclysmic tides crashing in their eardrums when they heard the word
as lady liberty's ocean seeped into that once-pure river
mexico must have known what was coming when they named it rio bravo
furious river
my father's family has no rio
but more than enough bravo to cast entire cities underwater
there is no peaceful ebb and flow beneath the leather skin of his mother
or the calloused hands of his father
the two of them gave birth to the maelstrom inside of my father and left him drowning in the center of a culture he would never be a part of
choking every thought he had that was not in english
he found solace in the feeling of the river unwrapping itself from around his tongue
he instead let the weight of the ocean anchor itself in his mouth
he did not look back
and then he had me.
let me be more rio than bravo
but there are still days where I cannot tell the hurricane from myself
see, i look like a river but i speak like an ocean
i look like mexico
floating downstream next to time
but I speak like america
taking everything I see in my path like it belongs to me
effortlessly
this storm is not made of the rage my grandparents are so fond of
i wear this freshwater cloak around my shoulders without knowing what it means, and I don't know who to blame for that
so I have grown up as the brown girl who could be asian
or indian,
or native american,
or any kind of Other but myself
i answer "mexican" when the test asks if I am hispanic or latino
and "white" when the next question asks how i identify
i have grown up as the brown girl who can only comfortably claim her ancestry when it fits inside a box
I have come to think that maybe my father grew up with the wrong kind of river in his veins
the kind polluted by the transplanted saltwater in his parents' words
poisoning all the things that kept him whole
with endless thirst
the kind of river that made the vastness of the ocean seem so much more appealing, simply because the dehydration is all he has ever known
maybe that is why he is so alone now
a stagnant pond in the heat of relentless summer
my father has no ebb or flow
he, too, looks like a river but speaks like an ocean
and i do not want to speak like my father.
but i don't know what a river sounds like
i don't know how to speak without claiming everything in front of me as my own
maybe he left me without any kind of freshwater at all
because to him
the quiet sound of still
open water
is the only way i'll be able to hear him
maybe he remembers what those tides crashing in his brown ears sound like
and maybe he is too afraid to open the floodgates and let me hear them, too.
