Skin Tones

Skin Tones

My grandmother’s features look as if they might lift from her any moment, on a gust of wind or up to the sky, evaporating under an orange sun. She has light blue eyes, blonde hair

and an accent that shows itself in not just the way her words form, but in the ones she chooses:

          Carefully constructed phrases drop deliberately from her lips to land on ears

that do not recognize the way her mind turns,

a mind that has never been

at peace since Argentina. She has learned to love for Argentina:

          When her brothers and sisters were stripped one by one away

          she learned to love

          the last one for the way her fingers spread and eyes

          opened when she expressed joy; Argentine expressions keep my grandmother tethered to a dream across the ocean

My mother’s father left

my mother with brown skin and no echoes

of the lives lived long before her, so she

was raised away from

          Mexico, like a secret

eyes averted

Because the 1880 Irish

and Italians crowded

into Argentina, bright white,

and because

smooth coffee skin

skipped one generation, my mother

always did her hair, painted

her nails before she dug her hands

into playground sand and dirt and pushed her toddler

in a stroller

to avoid the question: Are you

          the nanny?