Giannina Braschi - Yo-Yo Boing!

— Sounds German.

— I am a scream that transcends madness.

— You think I’m gonna believe your feelings are more powerful than mine because you talk in catastrophic combustions. It’s plain intimidation by association. You’re as fragile as, how can I say…

— As you. Let me feel the way I feel. What’s wrong with being in touch with oneself?

— You miss the touch of others because you just don’t listen enough.

— When is it enough? When you destroy everything I feel.

— Go ahead. If I feel it’s important I’ll unplug my ears, take what I need, and disregard the rest as I yawn with tolerant affection.

— Here they come.

— Let me see your grass. Where did you get it?

— From Granma’s garden.

— Just watch. They’re going to think you stole it. I bet you won’t get anything.

— Don’t say that. Granma said I could. And you took it too.

— From my own garden.

— Let’s not fight. Count the presents. Goody two-shoes. I bet I got more.

— Shhh, I hear the camels coming.

— Ay, you left the door open. Take a peek.

— No, I don’t want them to see me. Give me your hand. We’ll go together.

— Close it.

— No, they’re going to see us.

— Close it, dummy. Scaredy-cat.

Slam — bam — auuu!

— My finger. Momma.

Oh, my pinkie was a salamander dangling on the doorway.

— Momma. Momma. What do I do? Auuuw.

I didn’t dare to look at it. Down the stairs came my mother from the second floor, took my finger off the door — blood gushing — as you can imagine — and tied it back on with a handkerchief, soaked in blood, and took me to the hospital where they stitched me back up.

— You were waiting up for the Three Kings.

— I sacrificed my pinkie.

— But it got you a buggy.

— With blinking headlights.

— Every cloud has a silver lining.

— And all good things must come to end.

— And the camels?

— They ate the grass and trampled the place.

Ta-da-dúm

Ta-da-dúm

Ta-da-dúm, dúm, dúm

— How’s your pinkie?

— It’s shorter than the other one.

— Looks the same to me. You’re just bending it.

— If it happened to you, you’d appreciate it more. The day after I got stitches, my parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles and cousins were all standing around my bed. Waiting for the resurrection of the flesh and the life of my finger. Bruised. Bandaged. Just waiting around. Not knowing what to expect. I sat up in my sleep, singing the Pied Piper of Hamelin and playing his flute:

Ti-ri-ri.

Ti-ri-ri.

Ti-ri-ri.

I had to exercise my fingers. Especially my pinkie:

Ri. Ri. Ri.

— You didn’t see stars?

— It’s not every day you see them, but the pain had a tune of its own. Did I ever tell you the one about the stabbing?

— Oh, not again.

— Chicken. I was jumping rope in the patio corner. Always trying to keep more of a distance from two little girls, Mumi and Mindy, who were playing darts. I called out:

— I can’t believe it. What are you doing playing that macho game?

They were having fun. And the wind was blowing harder. Auuu. Just like Dulcinea.

— Accidents happen when you least expect it —I thought— even in safe little corners of the world .

I had a funny feeling the dart would head my way, but why stop jumping rope.

— I’m happy. I’m not throwing anything at anybody. I’m a pacifist in the war of darts, just jumping my own rope.

And just then, a dart right through the back of my hand. Stabbed. Stabbed. I see the girls coming at me, thrilled by the sight of my blood.

— Let her take it out.

— Don’t you dare. You already stabbed me.

— Gimme my dart.

— Momma. Momma. What do I do? Auuu!

I dropped my head back, looked up at the twinkling stars circling my head, and howled from the pain — Auuuu. Auuuu. But the saltiest little stars stung my eyes on the eve of my brother’s death. They say, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard about it, but I can speak from my own experience, that sometimes you can feel grief before it actually comes — a black omen like the bat dream. My boots were muddied, and I was exhausted from having climbed a hill, even more exhausted from having uprooted an enormous cross with my bare hands and having to carry the weight of the cross down the hill, lay it down, and feel relieved. It was a great weight off my shoulders to take the cross down with its weight weighing on me and feeling the anguish of having to bring it all the way down and lay it to rest on the ground. Then I saw two snakes twisting and turning inside my brother’s fish tank, and that’s when Pilo told me he was going to uncover the tank.

— Don’t you dare. You’ll regret it .

Ignoring my warning, he lifted the lid, and out of the fish tank sprang the serpents and slithered under my brother’s bed. I cried:

— Who died? Please, Papa, tell me who died.

My father looked me straight in the eye and said:

— If you want to know what love is, have a son. If you want to know what pain is, bury him.

My brother died that morning. Like that. In a fit of convulsions, fending off death with his fists. Control freak, control, his fist first, in control, his heart bumping out, out, out. His eyes rolling around, ball points — did they know where they were going — they were looking — scaredy-cat — all around. Is this happening to me? Now? Ashamed. Am I dying? His eyeball rolling, upside down. His teeth, his cheeks — earthquake — calm, calm down, it’s all going to pass soon. It’s all going down soon and, and you’ll be Alright. And Alright came freezing his feet — frozen dead — my brother — beastly dead, dead like Dulci.

Cata cata cata plum.

Plum.

Plum.

And still, after all this time, I walk the streets with the wind in my face, feeling the chill of the weather and of death, searching for some trace of my brother’s face in every man’s face to see if I’ll ever see it again. It’s a disappearance.

— And Doña Juanita never appeared to you?

— I couldn’t understand why my cousins, Maruja, the Banker, and Kía, the Happy Widow, had called me to a meeting. What do these pencil pushers want from me? They, on one side of the conference table armed with sharpened pencils and legal pads, and I, on the other side, antsy and empty handed. Between us were my grandmother’s jewels, glimmering under florescent bulbs.

— We’ve called you to this meeting to inform you that you had no right.

— Now that she is dead, they belong to us.

— By right of blood.

— She was our grandmother too.

— No point in defending yourself now.

There was no testament stating the jewels were mine. When Granma died, my mother handed me a Kleenex scrunched in a ball. I opened it and found the jewels wrapped in a note:

— To my favorite granddaughter.

Distressed, I watched each of my cousins scribbling notes while they explained their points of view.

— She spent it all on you.

— It was unfair.

— She made both of us suffer.

— The tables have turned.

And just as the two shrews were about to grab my inheritance, they looked at me horrified. I saw that my hands were no longer my hands. Now they were covered with varicose veins, and my fingernails were polished red, and my knuckles and joints were wrinkled, and my fingers were fat, freckled, and gnarled, and my grip was as strong as iron — hands of an old woman — a prophet — and suddenly I realized that my hands had become my grandmother’s hands.