Fortune-telling
poem - 2016
Fortune-telling has been made out as a scam,
a cheap understanding of cues and body clues –
mention the right name, and the clients' eyes will flutter;
hint at a distant hurt, and they'll nod in recognition.
The crystal ball is the centerpiece of the myth.
The psychic toils to get her clients
to see themselves in the crystal
and believe in a future they could hold in their hands.
The trick is to first acknowledge their past.
Andrea doesn't believe in fortune-telling.
As we read The Crucible in class
and come across Tituba's conjuring in the woods,
she shakes her head and says,
“Isn't that some brujeria shit, Mr. Rodriguez?”
This breach of the King's English
is a result of shared experience.
Andrea and I have both had abuelas
who divulge superstitions passed down from la patria,
who pace the floor, rosaries clenched in fists,
offering prayers for the well-being of la juventud,
the children of pilgrims and paupers.
They fill the seats of my classroom,
their names color my roster –
Cruz, Rivas, Martinez, Santos, Fernandez –
and for once, the teacher's name matches.
It is no longer the foreign din of clanky English.
Instead, it sounds like an old family lullaby,
a music that they could finally claim.
To them, their previous teachers' good intentions
must have seemed more con-artist than clairvoyant,
their skin a foggy peer into someone else's future.
Teachers who spoke of unrecognizable yesterdays,
families that were never split by seas or borders,
whose household tongue never kept them
from job markets or back-to-school meetings.
For most of my students, I am the first Latino teacher they've had.
Until now, no one has ever acknowledged their past,
that they come from families who are making new homes
out of double shifts and stacks of broken sentences;
that they translate the eviction notices for their mothers
and hold the phones to their ears as doctors explain
the conditions of their grandfathers.
It is no wonder, then, that Andrea
does not believe in fortune-telling.
These teachers are masters of a different art,
the skill to bend bad behavior like a silver spoon,
the tact required to pull a student's best work out of thin air.
But divination is a mark that you are born with.
When my family came to this country, they had a premonition.
They felt the weight of the sun on their backs
and knew that their offspring would bring good fortune:
my abuela raising three children after her husband's disappearing act,
my mother and her siblings leaving the ghetto like a bad dream,
the college diploma that felt like a burning talisman in my hands.
This is not cheap magic. This is all predetermined.
I am a walking testament to what tomorrow has to bring.
May my skin be cast in crystal.
May every word uttered in Spanish polish the glass.
May my students look at me and see themselves.
Only here, I am not the one who dictates what will happen.
My students' futures will be within their own hands.
