Does My Body Offend You? - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Born and raised in Puerto Rico, MAYRA CUEVAS is a professional journalist and author of Salty, Bitter, Sweet. Her debut fiction short story was selected by Becky Albertalli as a New Voice in the Foreshadow YA serial anthology in 2019. She is a TV and digital producer for CNN. She lives in the colorful town of Norcross, Georgia with her husband and their cat, Felicia. She is the wicked step-mom to two amazing young men who provide plenty of inspiration for her stories. Follow her on Twitter @Mayra ECuevas and Instagram @Mayra Cuevas

MARIE MARQUARDT is a Scholar-in-Residence at Emory University's Candler School of Theology and author of Dream Things True and The Radius of Us. She has published articles and co-authored two non-fiction books about Latin American immigration to the U.S. South. Marie is chair of El Refugio, a non-profit that serves detained immigrants and their families. She lives in a busy household in Decatur, Georgia with her spouse, four children, a dog, and a bearded dragon. Follow her on Twitter @MarieFMarquardt and Instagram @Marie_Marquardt.

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Chapter One

Malena

I’m not a superstitious person, but my abuela Milagros says catastrophes come in threes. I’m starting to believe she’s onto something.

First came this beast of a hurricane called María, which caused our Island more devastation than we can mentally process. Mami and I are now stranded in the swampland that is Florida--our second stroke of bad luck. (The only upside is I get to hang out with my cousins every day, instead of just once or twice a year.)

And now, because irony is Lady Fortuna’s weapon of choice, thanks to those very cousins, my mala suerte trifecta may be complete.

How do I avert this third disaster looming over me before it wrecks what’s left of my life?

I reach for the medal of La Virgencita hanging around my neck, which Abuela says protects me from the mal de ojo. A cold chill runs down my spine as I step back from the full-length mirror attached to my bedroom door. I don’t know which sight is more pitiful, my reflection or the mishmash of secondhand furnishings around me--mostly donations from a local church drive for María evacuees.

This is bad. The skin on my back has gone from brown to angry red. The color of a Caribbean lobster that’s just been pulled from a pot of scalding water. It turns out bathing suits make for terrible landscaping apparel.

Yesterday, after my cousin Soraida back-talked Tía Lorna one too many times, we--because Tía Lorna sees me as an accessory to my cousin’s shenanigans--were forced to clean and mow their backyard. All afternoon, I pruned bushes while the sun literally licked my back.

My cousin Carlos went shirtless too, but somehow he managed to get a great tan. It’s so annoying that guys don’t have to worry about their boobs hanging out. Or about how to fall asleep if you can’t lie on your back.

I bet Carlos slept like a baby last night.

Not me. I barely slept at all. Lying on my stomach was pure torture, thanks to the two mountains that have recently risen from my chest. No one told me that double D really stands for doble dolor--double the pain.

Where did these things come from, anyway? Besides Soraida, I don’t know many other fifteen-year-olds that have to shop for “big bust bras.” My abuela says the Rosario women were all blessed with the precious “gift” of “tetas grandes”--a clear sign of our female strength, she reassures me.

“Wear them proudly,” she loves to say.

But this morning, they feel more like an enormous inconvenience than a gift.

Mami knocks on my bedroom door and peers in.

“You ready, nena? I can’t be late. They’re short-staffed at the ER,” she says in Spanish.

It’s a small comfort that, at home, we only speak in our mother tongue--Puerto Rican Spanish.

Mami opens the door a little wider. Her scrubs are covered in palm trees and flamingos standing on one leg. They’re what my cousin Soraida mocks as “Florida chic.” Mami says the kids at the pediatric ER where she works love them. The cute pink birds apparently help ease her patients. I wish they would do the same for me.

“There’s no way I can wear this.” I drop the bra dangling from my fingers onto the bed. “It stings.” I turn so she can get a better view of my back.

Mami walks in and sits on my bed. She pulls a penlight from a pocket in her top and aims it at my skin, inspecting at close range.

“You have first-degree burns,” she says in her no-nonsense medical voice. “Did the pomade we spread on last night not help?” She picks up the white tube on my nightstand and reads the label. “I’ll bring you something stronger from the hospital.”

Then, switching to her other no-nonsense voice, that of the Puerto Rican mother, she adds, “I told you to wear sunscreen.”

“I couldn’t find it.” I jerk away, trying to hold back the wave of irritation that washes over me.

For four years, Tía Lorna has harped on and on about the virtues of life in Florida. “People really know how to live here,” she likes to say. “The government gets things done. The people are not a bunch of vagos and sinvergüenzas. There’s plenty of money for anyone willing to work hard.” Tía could sell the American Dream to the gringoest of gringos.

I never thought my parents would fall for Tía’s Disneyfied depictions, but that was Before María--before a category 5 hurricane uprooted our lives and replanted us 1,200 miles away from home. After María, they bought the dream, hook, line, and sinker.

The weekend of Abuela Milagros’s seventieth birthday, Mami and I flew to Jacksonville to celebrate, vaguely aware that another hurricane was barreling toward the Island. Papi was supposed to come with us, but he works as a local supervisor for the Federal Emergency Management Agency. It had only been ten days since Hurricane Irma skirted Puerto Rico, blasting the northeast coast with hundred-mile-per-hour winds. He had to stay behind to deal with Irma’s wreckage.

“There’s a prayer chain going around the world, mija,” Abuela said as we ate too-sweet birthday cake, watching María’s deadly approach from Tía Lorna’s living room. “See how Irma went away? Same thing is going to happen with María. Nothing to worry about. The prayers will keep the islita safe.”

They didn’t.

The prayers decidedly Did. Not. Work.

God just flat-out ignored us.

María wrecked the Island beyond recognition. And with it, she destroyed my life. A life filled with friends I’ve known since birth, a school where fitting in was easy and my teachers told me I was a “natural leader,” and a home with two loving parents. A life that I didn’t fully appreciate until it was gone.

We arrived in Jacksonville with one carry-on suitcase each. Mine was packed with a couple of cute dresses, my favorite strappy sandals, and a bathing suit, basically everything I needed for a birthday weekend.

Tía Lorna arranged a collection for us at her church, and now, as a result, we have two single beds, a couch, a coffee table, pots and pans, tableware, and a brand-new fondue set. We’re still considering what to melt first: cheese or chocolate. Tough decision.

Through the church’s connections, Mami landed a job as a physician assistant at a local hospital’s pediatric emergency room. Tía was quick to point out that she’s making more money here in Florida for the same work that she was doing back home. “Money isn’t everything,” I tried to argue. But given our current state, everyone ignored me.

I enrolled in the same high school as my cousins. And Papi is still in Puerto Rico. God only knows when we’ll all be together again. No use praying for any miracles, I guess.

“I can’t go to school like this,” I protest, waving my hands in front of my bare chest in an exaggerated gesture.

“They’re just breasts, Malena. Everyone has them.” Mami rummages through the few items hanging in my closet. There’s not much to pick from. In hindsight, I did an awful packing job, even for a five-day trip.

“All of my stuff is dirty,” I remind her. Which is how I ended up wearing my one-piece bathing suit with the scooped back to rake grass clippings. Our new apartment doesn’t have a washer-and-dryer hookup--because, as we learned, this costs extra--so I’ll have to wait until next Saturday, our allotted laundry day at Tía...