ABSTRACT
How are yu? I ahm fine. How are yu? of the other women who clutch notebooks and blush at their stiff lips resisting sounds that float gracefully as bubbles from their children's mouths. My teacher bends over me, gently squeezes my shoulders, the squeeze I give my sons, hands louder than words. She slides her arms around me: a warm shawl, lifts my left arm onto the cold, lined paper. "Senora, don't let it slip away," she says and opens the ugly, soap-wrinkled fingers of my right hand with a pen like I pry open the lips of a stubborn grandchild. My hand cramps around the thin hardness. "Let it breathe," says this woman who knows my hand and tongue knot, but she guides and I dig the tip of my pen into that white. I carve my crooked name, and again at night until my hand and arm are sore, I carve my crooked name, my name.
