When We Make It - Hardcover

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Elisabet Velasquez is a Boricua writer born in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Her work is featured in Muzzle Magazine, Winter Tangerine, Centro Voces, Latina Magazine, Longreads, We Are Mitú, Tidal, and Martín Espada’s anthology What Saves Us: Poems of Empathy and Outrage in the Age of Trump. When We Make It is her debut novel. Elisabet lives in Jersey City, New Jersey.

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How I Got My Name

Sarai

Let’s start the story where abandon meets faith.

Aight, so, boom. Check it. 

I’m named after a homegirl 

in the Bible who couldn’t have kids. 

Her man Abram was all like: 

Yo, Sarai, God promised me I would be the Father of Nations.

Sarai was all like: 

Nah B, you must be buggin’, you know I can’t have no babies.

Our pastor says faith is believing in something 

you can’t really see. 

According to Mami, 

we should never put our faith in men. 

Mami was pregnant with me when Papi bounced

for some new chick & told Mami to have an abortion. 

Abram got himself a new chick, too. 

Got her pregnant and all that. 

I guess Mami identified with Sarai’s fear and doubt—

& so I was born out of Mami’s faith & hope. 

Mami

Mami is a round woman. 

A square by any other definition. 

No-nonsense, Pentecostal 

with no patience for her own children most days. 

There are three of us in total. 

Danny, Estrella & Me. I am the youngest. 

My sister Estrella said Mami’s depressed.  

File this under “shit we don’t talk about.” 

Pentecostals, we’re just supposed to pray

the sadness away. 

¡Fuera! The pastor demands on prayer night. 

¡Fuera! I imagine sadness is a bad singer 

being kicked off the show 

by el Chacal on Sábado Gigante. 

Apparently, Jesus & Don Francisco

can save anything.

Once during church testimonio,

Mami gave Jesus mad credit 

for saving her from Papi’s fists. ¡Amén! ¡Aleluya!

Now, Papi lives in the Bronx with his new wife. 

Estrella uses the payphone

to collect call him all the time. 

She says Papi is also Christian now

& that God forgave him 

for beating on Mami & so we should too. 

But Mami’s eyes never close right during prayer service 

& I wonder what kind of God you have to be 

to receive praise from the hands responsible for that. 

How We Got Our Names

Estrella 

Estrella was named after another woman 

Papi was cheating on Mami with. 

Nobody says that out loud though. But I can tell 

by the way my sister’s name jumps off of Mami’s tongue 

like one of those side chicks 

on The Ricki Lake Show.

On my father’s tongue, Estrella matters. 

Her name is a sloooow dance in Brooklyn. 

Her name is a bullet that didn’t kill nobody. 

Her name is the beeper alert that gets a call back. 

Estrella is three years older than me. 

She is sixteen but her body is not. 

She got that it’s not my fault,

I thought you were older kind of body.  

She is the kind of beautiful

that dique puts men in danger 

or that makes men want to be dangerous.  

The kind of beautiful Mami always wanted to be. 

When we walk down Knickerbocker Ave., 

the men hiss like they are deflating at the sight of us. 

They call Mami suegra. Mami can’t stand it. 

Qué ridículo, she says.

She ain’t old enough to be nobody’s mother-in-law. 

She shifts her body in front of Estrella’s, to protect her 

or maybe so she can be seen first. 

Papi

Estrella races to the window 

and pulls back the curtain,

which is really just a fuzzy blanket

with a lion print that Mami ordered from Fingerhut,

a magazine that lets Mami own nice things 

and pay for them slowly. 

Papi parks outside and makes his station wagon cry 

until it guilts Mami into letting us go downstairs. 

I examine my father until he is human again. 

When he hugs me, I want no parts of his hands.  

I become Mami the last time he hit her.  

Leave me alone. Don’t touch me.

Estrella laughs at my fear & tells Papi 

Mami is brainwashing me into hating him. 

Papi says he hopes

I’m not becoming an angry bitch like Mami. 

Men don’t like angry bitches.

Men leave angry bitches.

All Mami was ever good for was kicking him out.

He can’t remember the last time

her mouth made a home for him. 

That’s why he left

and didn’t come around for a few years. 

Now Papi comes by every weekend

& gives us five dollars to split.  

Estrella & me argue over how to spend it.

Five dollars 

can buy us mad chips,

quarter juices,

Now and Laters, Devil Dogs. 

Or we can use it to share one ham & cheese hero 

and a two-liter.  

When I look up at the window

you can’t see Mami peeking but  

the lion’s mouth is open 

and roaring for me to come upstairs. 

Lucky

In Bushwick, the reporters double park 

to shoot the latest crime scene & then bounce 

quick before their news vans get tagged up. 

The teachers find their car radios missing 

and blame the worst student they have. 

Pero, the teachers and the reporters, they get to leave. 

Back to their “good” neighborhoods 

with boring-ass walls and vehicles

they don’t have to piece back together like a puzzle. 

They’ll have a nice dinner with their predictable family 

and talk about their wack-ass day in Bushwick

& somebody will say: You’re lucky you don’t live there. 

Someone else will echo: Imagine?!

& they think they can imagine because fear

got them believing they know what it means to be safe.  

I mean, it’s one thing to feel danger.

& maybe it’s another thing

to work in it.

& maybe it’s another thing altogether 

to live with it. 

But it’s something else completely 

to be the thing everyone is afraid of. 

We Ain’t Afraid

Estrella says:

We ain’t afraid of nothing.

We ain’t afraid of nothing.

We ain’t afraid of nothing.

I...