The Skies Cry Here Too
Words By Kamilah Valentín Díaz
“Abuelita, why are you in bed all day?” Lorena hid her face behind a curtain of her hair and stayed under the protection of the doorframe.
Her Abuelita let out a big sigh and cleared her throat like a croaking frog, “Lorena mi nena, ven acá”, she said, gesturing with her hand, and patted a spot beside her on the bed. Lifting the worn blanket to make space for Lorena’s small frame. She had made it before Lorena was born but still, it remained a staple piece in Abuelita’s room. Worn, but never useless.
Lorena crossed the doorway obediently and quickly scrambled up to sit beside her Abuelita who placed the blanket around both of their shoulders and over their heads. Shrouded not unlike the Virgin Mary, they sat. Lorena looked up at her with nervous eyes and waited.
Abuelita’s wrinkled hand reached towards Lorena’s face and gently pulled on one of the stray curls framing her face. Her eyes fixed, she watched it dance and let a whisper of a smile escape through the gap between her red-painted lips. Softly, she placed that same curl to rest behind her ear.
Lorena scooched closer and nestled up against the space between her abuelita’s arm and chest. She smelled like brown sugar.
“Cierra tus ojos, ” abuela commanded.
Lorena closed her eyes. Everyone knew abuela’s word was law.
“Ahora enfoca tus oídos. ¿Qué oyes?”
Trying to follow her instructions, Lorena tried to see with her ears what her eyes could not. With her ears, she traveled across the room, out the window, past the pitter-patter of rain, and into the night among the trees. She was greeted by the whistling of tree frogs and her eyes sprung open.
“Abuelita, I hear ko-ki, ko-ki ,” with a wrinkled brow she said, “but I don’t know where the sound is coming from.” She looked up to meet her abuelita’s steady gaze with a quizzical one.
“No te preocupes Lorenita, ese es el canto de un coquí, un sapito de Puerto Rico.”
“Coqui?” Lorena tilted her head to the side; how funny that it said its own name with only the rainforest for its audience. A frog with good manners, she decided she liked that.
Abuelita snuggled closer to Lorena placing her chin to rest lightly on the top of her head and said, “Cuando ya no me puedas ver, cierra los ojos, que siempre me podrás encontrar por la noche cantando en coro con los coquis.”
Lorena pulled out of her abuelita’s embrace in a flash at her gentle words and swung her legs over the side of the bed abruptly.
“I don’t want to.” The words wrestled their way out of her mouth before she could swallow them. With the most serious of faces, she stared at her toes as tears streamed down her face in rhythm with the rain outside. She refused to let her glistening eyes meet with the reflective pool in abuelita’s own. If she did she would drown in them.
“I don’t want to only see you with my ears. I don’t want to only see you at night. You can’t make me, ” she rushed to say. Shaking her head from side to side like the bobblehead of Roberto Clemente that Tio kept on his dashboard for good luck.
“Lorena,” abuelita tried to place a comforting arm on her shoulder, but Lorena shrugged it off.
“No quiero,” Lorena said, her eyes counting the cracks lining the cement wall.
Her abuelita’s arm stayed suspended, in shock. Slowly, she lowered it.
Lorena didn’t usually speak Spanish. Not because she couldn’t, abuelita had made sure that any nieta of hers would be bilingual, but her words were a line drawn. A forcefield no one could cross. No-Man’s Land.
This time, Lorena cleared her throat. She wiped her face clean, got off the bed, faced her abuelita, and looked up with a strained smile that dipped at the corners.
“I can go ask mami to make you your nighttime café…” Lorena glanced away and pulled at some stray threads hanging from the hem of her dress. A dress that abuelita had made just for her with white lace details and red amapola flowers stamped across the cloth.
Her abuelita could see that if she continued pushing her little light would begin to dim. She wouldn’t be responsible for that blackout. At least not now, this could wait. So instead, she took a breath and simply said, “Gracias mi vida,” with a dip of her head.
● ● ●
Outside, the sky was crying. It was no longer a pitter-patter, and the once lazy river had become flush with rip currents. Inside, the room was damp and Mami was sniffling. And Lorena remembered how easily she got allergies. Yes, it must have been her allergies.
Perched on a window ledge looking out towards the mountains, Lorena sat and watched the rain. It was better to face the sadness of the sky than the one filling the room. The smell of it made it difficult for her to breathe. If she inhaled too deeply it felt like a cloud was living in her lungs. She was afraid she would float up into the sky like a kid who had lost their balloon to the big stretch of blue, and never come back again. Lorena used to be that kid, but now she was the balloon. She wondered about that kid. Wondered when they would also stop being a kid and why.
Everyone had come dressed in black. Abuelita would have hated that. Lorena wondered if they had also dressed her in black. If they remembered to apply her red lipstick, and if her nails were painted the way she liked them?
A hand on her shoulder unwillingly brought her attention back to the room full of mourners. She hadn’t seen any of them in the past year when she and mami moved in to take care of abuelita.
“Cariño, don’t you want to say goodbye to abuelita before we take her to the cemetery?” Her mami’s voice sounded scratchy. It reminded her of abuelita’s spun records. Her mami held a bawled handkerchief close to her chest. Right over her heart.
Lorena stared at her mami and wondered when she would die. How it would happen, and if she would be prepared? She never thought abuelita could die and yet…
Knowing that mami would be disappointed, but that abuelita would be proud Lorena decisively shook her head ‘no’. Mami closed her eyes tightly for five seconds. Lorena counted them. When she opened them she released a sigh and gave a convincing smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes.
“Okay mamita,” she cupped Lorena’s cheek and dragged her thumb up the curve of her cheekbone “ just stay here and I’ll come to get you at the end, okay?”
Lorena blinked five times before she responded with a nod. Her mami stayed there for a moment and looked into her eyes like she was trying to find something. Whatever it was, she seemed to accept it wasn’t there after a few moments. With a parting te amo, mami walked away, the click of her heals the only noise in the room.
Lorena turned her head back to the window, back to the rain. She pressed her forehead up to the cool glass and closed her eyes.
A noise she couldn’t quite detect before when the room was full of warm bodies, began to travel towards her ears.
Ko-ki, ko-ki!
Lorena’s heart stopped beating. Or at least it felt that way. Opening her eyes in a flash, she pulled away from the window and stared beyond, trying to see with her eyes what her ears could hear so clearly. She couldn’t. All she saw was her warped reflection staring back at her with wide eyes. Hopeful eyes.
Tentatively, she leaned in towards the glass once more and checked for cracks. She closed her eyes and cast a wide net with her ears- as her abuelita had taught her.
Ko-ki, Ko-ki!
She smiled.
The sound soothed something inside her. She kept her eyes closed, and let that cautious yet tender smile completely take over her face. Listening to the song of the coquis, tears slipped down her cheeks and fell to the beat of their high-pitched whistles.
Ko-ki, ko-ki!