Rosa Alcalá

For Real

“Imaginary gardens with real toads in them”—Marianne Moore

This is the third day of trying to speak to R in Spanish, I write to myself when

she is three. I’ve given up many times since she was born. She is angry, insists on

the English names of things, so instead I repeat what she says in Spanish. In the

bath she asks: Who has a penis? Who has a vagina? The proper Spanish words

for these feel strange, I never translate them, not even into the pet names used

between my mother and me when I was her age.

Maybe it’s too late to undo the spell of English and princesses. And then she says

rosado—pink—and pours water between her legs.

There is also the problem of cupcakes.

I ask a friend and we decide cupcakes just don’t exist in Spanish, that a word

would have to be invented but it would point to another reality, in English. How

long before the Spanish word beckons its own cupcake, not a version, a new

sensation? Its own baked thing.

I have a surprise for you, my daughter says, and covers a cup from the bath

with a face cloth. I miss the weight of her body on mine when words were milky

between us. She has lifted herself off into the imagination and it is a language of

her own.

Mama, let’s pretend you’re mama kitty and I’m baby kitty, okay?

Okay, but don’t lick me.

But, Mama, it’s for pretend.

Yes, but you’re licking me for real.