Chapter 1: I'm From a Crumb, and Florida

Some thoughts and a brief interlude

My mother and I left the family when I was three years old.  I only remember that I was three because everyone always said that I lived with my mother when I was three and four years old, and so I just repeated after them.  (Formalities, I suppose, start with how our families used to introduce us before we had a clue that we were from anywhere else before that present moment.)

“Hey, where are you from?” so many people would ask based on the weird mix of how I would speak and the color of my skin.  It seems the two just weren’t prototypically savvy of each other- my voice and my skin, that is.  I didn’t have a natural accent from St. Thomas, which told to me to drop my R’s and to condense all my words together so fast they’d crack my teeth.  (Although, I would learn to do so later, however the former- dropping my R’s- would not help me at all in trying to learn Spanish when that rolling R always tended to allude me, probably because it was difficult for me to enunciate even a singular R.  In fact, it kind of hurts my mouth to try.)

“Well, I live in Puerto Rico, but I’m actually from St. Thomas- you know?  In the Virgin Islands?  Not the British Virgin Islands, the United States Virgin Islands.”

Then they’d give me this look that suggested if I were to show them St. Thomas on a map that they’d sound something like: Hey man why are you showing me a crumb on a map? And would promptly begin trying to extirpate my homeland- the crumb- with their dirty thumbnail.  (What would it be dirty with?  I don’t know exactly, maybe they would be the type to purposefully seek out persons who didn’t have an easily-recognizable home, and, feeling as if he/she was obliged to, would scratch away what they didn’t know before they knew they didn’t know it.  A collection of homes under their fingernail, never to be seen again because they were never seen before.  Oh, ignorance.)

“Oh yeah, and I lived in Florida for two years- when I was three and four,” I’d add as if that just changed everything. 

It’s funny, though, because even now when I’m older and people ask where I’m from, I still feel obligated to mention those two years in Florida with my mother.   Maybe somewhere I feel as though I can’t talk about myself without mentioning the why’s, what’s, and the how’s of what I feel to be integral to my being.  This explains why if someone were to ask me something about myself, I either tell them nothing or everything.  I feel it can’t be any other way. 

“Hey, Desi, do you prefer-?”

“Well, see, it all started when I was born on this crumb thing, except not an actual crumb thing.   Just one of those metaphorical crumb things, you know, one of those.”

“Um.”

“Oh yeah, and I lived in Florida for two years- when I was three and four.”  

Those years share the ending of something so fleeting- a beautiful non-cognizance- to the formation of the reasons of why I lose sleep, and why most times I opt so say the nothing rather than the everything.  Those two years begin with a pair of keys scattering at my feet, a middle finger- an oft-rampant one if I do say so myself- and starts corroding with  a wave of roaches; hundreds, crawling all over me.