The Poet X

In the first poem of the novel, Xiomara describes her neighborhood in Harlem as she reflects on the end of the summer. From her seat on her stoop, she sees “the old church ladies, chancletas flapping” (3), and listens to “honking cabs with bachata blaring / from their open windows” (3) as a group of drug dealers watch “girls in summer dresses and short shorts” (4). She goes inside when she knows it’s nearly time for her mother to be home from work. Xiomara reflects on her appearance, her mother’s warnings about boys, and her name, which means “[o]ne who is ready for war” (7). According to Xiomara, her mother found her birth difficult, unlike the birth of her twin brother, Xavier, so an unusual name that “labors out of some people’s mouths” (7) feels appropriate to her.

Xiomara’s mother works as a cleaner in Queens, and she passes the time on her commute by “reading verses / getting ready for the evening Mass” (11). Mami, a devout Catholic, wants Xiomara to be confirmed, but Xiomara doesn’t know how to tell her that Jesus now feels like a friend “who invites himself over too often, who texts me too much” (13). Her doubts about the church are founded in a sense that Catholicism “treats a girl like me differently” (14); Xiomara writes, “all I’m worth is under my skirt / and not between my ears” (14). When Xiomara tells Mami she wants to wait to be confirmed, Mami threatens to send her to the Dominican Republic, “where the priests and nuns know / how to elicit true piety” (17).

Xiomara reflects on being born to older parents who had given up on the idea of having children: “You will be hailed a miracle” (18), they tell Xiomara, which will become emotionally burdensome to her. Her father, Papi, stops drinking, but that doesn’t make Mami forgive him for “making her cheat on Jesus” (23) by marrying her.

In confirmation class with her friend, Caridad, who has just returned from the Dominican Republic, Xiomara sits with a look on her face that “announces I’d rather be anywhere but here” (24). Father Sean, who teaches the class, “tells us we’re going to deepen / our relationship with God” (25); instead of listening to Father Sean, she whispers to Caridad, distracting her with questions about boys and kissing. Caridad is Xiomara’s oldest friend, and though she is “all [Xiomara’s] parents want in a daughter” (30), Caridad “isn’t all extra goody-goody in her judgment” (31). Instead, Caridad supports Xiomara with all of her questions, telling her that “she knows / I’ll figure it all out” (31). Xiomara worries about her new interest in boys and their interest in her, and she wonders what will happen if she “like[s] a boy too much and become[s] addicted to sex” (32). She also worries about becoming “angry and bitter like Mami” (32) and wants to know how to “figure out the weight / of what it means to love a boy” (33).

On the first day of school, Xiomara walks to Chisholm High School, where she “greet[s] security guards by name” (35) as she enters the building that offers her “a way to get closer / to escape” (36). She meets her English teacher, Ms. Galiano, who makes a positive impression on Xiomara. As Xiomara prepares to write about “the most impactful day” (38) of her life for an English assignment, she remembers the day she got her first period, when she was 11 years old. That day, Mami “backhanded me so quick she cut open my lip” (40) because Xiomara had tried to use tampons and “‘[g]ood girls don’t wear’” tampons (40). She turns in an essay that describes the leather notebook her brother, Xavier, gave her for their birthday, in which she writes every day, “dress[ing] my thoughts in the clothing of a poem” (41).

After school, Xiomara goes home to do the chores Mami has assigned her. Xiomara’s twin, Xavier, who goes to a special school for gifted students, “helps [Xiomara] when he’s home” (42), though he is not expected to and “he won’t get in trouble if he doesn’t” (42). Xiomara reflects on Xavier’s easy way with Catholicism, which she links to the fact that he was named for a saint. She writes about how her mother compares her to her twin, especially when she gets into a fight; Xiomara doesn’t explain to Mami that she fights on behalf of the gentle and quiet Xavier, against “other kids / [who] tried to make him into a wound” (45).

Less than a week after the start of the school year, Xiomara finds herself frustrated. At this stage, tenth grade is much the same as ninth grade, and she still feels “like a lone shrimp / in a stream where too many are searching / for someone with a soft shell / to peel apart and crush” (46). Boys pay Xiomara attention for her womanly body, her mouth, and her eyelashes “that are too long / so they make me almost pretty” (48). She imagines herself as the daughter of Medusa, whose “looks stop men / in their tracks” (48). Later, Xiomara, Caridad, and Xavier watch a basketball game, and Xiomara notices that Xavier is “staring as hard as I am at one of the ballers” (50). When one of the boys speaks to her, Xiomara feels self-conscious: “although I like to look, I hate to be seen” (50). When the player insults her, however, Xiomara retorts with a sharp comment, and “the dudes around us start hooting and hollering in laughter” (51).

At this moment, Xiomara reflects on the attention she receives from men and boys, who feel “they can grab themselves / or rub against me / or make all kinds of offers” (52). These intrusive encounters happen all the time, enraging Xiomara, and she calms herself by listening to music and writing “all the things I wish I could have said” (53). In this particular case, however, Xiomara feels most disappointed in her twin, who stands by during these confrontations and “never defends” her (54).

The following Sunday, Xiomara unwillingly goes to church with her family. When the time comes to take communion, Xiomara “feels bolted to the pew” (56) and her mother pressures her to go “take God” (56) and “thank him for the fact that you’re breathing” (56). She refuses, thinking of her doubts in God and Jesus and men in general, who are “the first ones to make me feel so small” (59).

At home, Mami is angry and punishes Xiomara by insisting she attend evening Mass with Mami every night that week. When Xiomara overhears Mami and Papi discussing her behavior, she hears Papi explain to Mami that “[t]eenage girls are overexcited. / Puberty changes their minds” (63). Xiomara knows that Papi’s insight into the ways of young women comes from the days before she and Xavier were born, when Papi “tossed his seeds to the wind, / not caring where they landed” (64). Though Papi has stopped chasing women, choosing to work hard and provide for his family instead, Xiomara feels that his presence “doesn’t mean he isn’t absent” (65).