I Tell Everyone Who Asks That The Reason My Phone Is Entirely In Spanish Is Because It Helps Me Learn Faster; Closer To The Truth Is That It Helps Me Remember

My father learned Spanish twice—

Once, skipping across banter entrenched in a sunbeam no sunscreen hot enough to thaw baby

teeth into

vowel sounds as elongated as a stalk of his grandmother’s sugarcane and R’s set on rolling as undulantly

as the hills in La Vega my father learned Spanish from the bursting paints of the walls of the Colonial

District and the Jesuits in Santo Cerro and the second time my father learned Spanish

 

                              he skipped across written narrative entrenched in homogenous American 

                    English TV and the aftermath of wanting to belong cold enough to freeze teenage 

                    teeth

                    into stillness my father remembered Spanish

     because of the bursting paints he brought to his canvases

memory retreating to a carnival fantasy reminding him of the magic it was

to undulate with the hills of La Vega, R’s that won’t stop rolling

and vowels that won’t stop elongating

and comradery with the banter, the sunbeam,

the sugar cane and the Jesuits in Santo Cerro.                  I imagine him:

                                                  novel in one hand, Spanish-English dictionary in

                         the other, reconstructing the language

                                   that would never again become quite automatic enough to him

                                   to pass it seamlessly

                                   from his lips to my own.

The day he opened his mouth to speak

on the phone across the ocean again, Dolores said it must have been someone else.

“Sé que Manuel Macarrulla ya no habla el español.”

 

My father still speaks Spanish like a native speaker,

                                             but you would never guess from his accent that it was

Dominican banter

Caribbean sun

abuela’s sugarcane and the Jesuits in Santo Cerro

that taught him to speak

the first time.

 

My father learned Spanish twice

and I am trying my best to just remember

the first time.