BEEN

If only I could learn how to keep smiling while I fall, I might very well, some day, become a trapeze artist.

That’s why I practice every day on how to keep smiling while I trip over, while mama makes me do the dishes, while Miss Always-Mad pulls my sideburns to make me listen, while sister Elizabeth and I fight.

But--my!--It sure is hard, this business of smiling during danger.

In the meantime, I also keep practicing my handstands, even though mama already spanked me once for messing the wall with my shoes and for breaking the mirror with the acrobatic swing of my flying feet.

If only I could learn how to move objects solely with the will of my mind, I might very well, some day, become Uri Geller.

That’s how I bent the spoons in mama’s kitchen, using the same method that Mr. Uri Geller taught in his TV show.

I closed my eyes while, with my fingers, I rubbed the spoon at each end. I concentrated my powerful thoughts into bending the spoon and, only just out of concentration, I also did some pushing and squeezing with my hands. When I opened my eyes–Aja! –There was a perfectly crooked spoon.

Sister Elizabeth laughed, but mama wasn’t that thrilled.

I had to straighten the spoons back again, except this time I used only my hands because my mind I had busy figuring how I was going to put together the spoons that had broken apart while I was fixing them.

Hopefully next week Mr. Uri Geller might have some solutions for me. If he doesn’t come with those pictures of UFOs that don’t let me sleep at night.

If only I could learn how to draw kissing lovers, I might very well, some day, become a paperback novel maker.

I would write a story with drawings, leaving space for balloons pointing to a man that say, “How much I love you Martina, how very much,” like the ones aunt Yola reads at night.

That’s why I drew that woman with red hair and big breasts being kissed by a tall, strong guy, that, it just so happened, had left his shirt at home. And also his pants.

It could have been a magnificent story; that red-haired woman would have said, “Dear Armando, you are going to catch a cold, but my love will save you: I will sew a new shirt and pants for you.”

Except that la chismosa that was sitting next to me in class called Mss. Always-Mad and said: “Yuyi is making this horrible drawing, Miss.”

Horrible? It was a beautiful story of pure love. But nobody seemed to understand my art. Now, at school I only draw Mickey Mouses, and stuff like that.

If only I could learn what I am…what I really am, I would not be this busy being me.

***