The one and only Elizabeth Acevedo is back with Clap When You Land, another stunning novel in verse, and we’re here to give you a sneak peek!
Camino lives for when her father visits her in the Dominican Republic. But this time, she arrives at the airport to see crowds of crying people. In New York City, Yahaira is called to the principal’s office, where she finds out her father has died in a plane crash. Separated by distance—and Papi’s secrets—it seems the two girls have lost everything of their father until they learn of each other.
Clap When You Land is about the devastation of loss, the difficulty of forgiveness, and the bittersweet bonds that shape our lives. We’d like to invite you to meet Camino and Yahaira. Read their first chapters below and don’t forget to preorder to receive and exclusive set of pens!
Camino
I know too much of mud.
I know that when a street doesn’t have sidewalks
water rises to flood the tile floors of your home,
learning mud is learning the language of survival.
I know too much of mud.
How Tía will snap at you with a dishrag if you track it inside.
How you need to raise the bed during hurricane season.
How mud will dry & cling stubbornly to a shoe.
Or a wall. To Vira Lata the Dog & your exposed foot.
I know there’s mud that splatters as a motoconcho drives past.
Mud that suctions & slurps at the high heels
of the working girls I once went to school with.
Mud that softens, unravels into a road leading nowhere.
& mud got a mind of its own. Wants to enwrap
your penny loafers, hug up on your uniform skirt.
Press kisses to your knees & make you slip down to meet it.
“Don’t let it stain you,” Tía’s always said.
But can’t she see? This place we’re from
already has its prints on me.
I spend nights in the washroom wiping clean the bottoms of my feet,
soiled rag over a bucket; undoing this mark of place.
To be from this barrio is to be made of this earth & clay:
dirt-packed, water-backed, third-world smacked:
they say, the soil beneath a country’s nail, they say.
I love my home. But it might be a sinkhole
trying to feast quicksand
mouth pried open; I hunger for stable ground,
somewhere else.
*
This morning, I wake up
At 5 am. Wash my hands & face.
there is a woman with cancer;
a small boulder
swelling her stomach
& Tía Solana needs my help to tend her.
Since I could toddle,
I would tag after Tía,
even when Mami was still alive.
Tía & I are easy with each other.
I do not chafe at her rules.
She does not impose unnecessary ones.
We are quiet in the mornings,
she passes me a palm-sized piece of bread,
I prepare the coffee kettle for her.
By the time Don Mateo’s rooster is crowing,
we are locking up the house
& the sun streaks pink highlights across the sky.
Vira Lata waits outside our gate.
He is technically the entire neighborhood’s pet,
a dog with no name but the title of stray;
ever since he was a pup he’s slept outside our door
& even if I don’t think of him as solely mine,
I know he thinks of me as his.
I throw him the heel of bread from the loaf
& he runs alongside us to the woman with cancer
whose house door does not have a lock.
Tía knocks anyway before walking in.
I do not furrow my brow, or pinch my lips at the stench
of an unwashed body. Tía crooks her head at the woman,
she says I have a softer touch than she does.
I murmur hello, the woman fusses in response,
she is too far gone into her pain to speak,
& since she lives alone we have no one to ask
how she’s been doing. I rub a hand across her
forehead. It is cool, which is a blessing.
She settles down with a deep sigh the minute I touch her.
I bring the bottle of water Tía passes me
up to her lips, she sips with barely there motions.
It is said, she was once a most beautiful woman.
I lift the blanket that Tía wrapped
around her the last time we were here,
& press gentle fingers to her nightgown-covered abdomen.
Her stomach is hard to my touch.
Tía burns incense in all the corners
of the small house. The woman does not stir.
It is easy in a moment like this
to want to speak over this woman,
to tell Tía there is nothing more we can do,
to say out loud the woman is lucky
that her lungs still draw breath.
But I learned young, you do not speak
of the dying as if they are already dead.
You do not call bad spirits into the room,
& you do not smudge a person’s dignity
by pretending they are not
still alive, & right in front of you,
& perhaps about to receive a miracle.
You do not let your words stunt unknown possibilities.
So I do not say that her dying seems inevitable.
Instead I brush her hair behind her ear,
& lay my hands on her belly—chanting
prayers alongside Tía
& hoping that when we leave here
Vira Lata, & not death, is the only thing that follows.
*
Tía is the single love of my life,
the woman I want to one day be,
all raised eyebrows, & callused hands,
a hairy upper lip stretched over a mouth
that has seen death & illness & hurt
but never forgets how to smile or tell a dirty joke.
Because of her, I too have known death,
& illness & life & healing.
& I’ve watched Tía’s every move
until I could read the Morse code
of sweat beads on her forehead.
So, when I say I want to be a doctor
I know exactly what that means.
This curing is in my blood.
& everyone here knows
the most respected medical schools
are in the United States.
I want to take what I’ve learned
from Tía’s life dedicated to aid & build a life
where I can help others.
There have been many days,
when Papi’s check comes late,
& we have to count
how many eggs we have left,
or how long the meat will stretch.
I don’t want Tia & me to always live this way.
I will make it.
I will make it.
I will make it easier for us both.
*
The Day
I am beginning to learn,
that life-altering news
is often like a premature birth:
ill-timed, catching someone unaware,
emotionally unprepared
& often where they shouldn’t be:
*
I am missing a math test.
Even though Papi will get in a taxi upon arriving,
I skipped my last two periods so I could wait for him at the airport.
I’ll make up the exam tomorrow, I convince myself.
Papi’s homecoming, for me, is a national holiday
& I don’t rightly care that he’s going to be livid.
(he reminds me once a week he pays too much money
for my fancy schooling for me to miss or fail classes.
But he shouldn’t fuss since I’m always on honor roll).
I also know Papi will be secretly elated.
He loves to be loved. & his favorite girl waiting at the airport
with a sign & a smile, what better homecoming?
It’s been nine months since last he was here,
but as is tradition he is on a flight the first weekend in June,
& it feels like Tía & I have been cooking for days!
Seasoning & stewing goat, stirring a big pot of sancocho.
All of Papi’s favorites on the dinner table tonight.
This is what I’m thinking as I beg Don Mateo for a bola to the airport.
He works in the town right near the airfields,
so I know he’s grumbling only because like his rooster
he’s ornery & routinized down to every loud crow.
He even grumbles when I kiss his cheek thanks,
although I see him drive off with a smile.
I wait in the terminal, tugging the hem of my uniform skirt,
knowing Papi will be red-faced & sputtering at how short it is.
I search the monitor but his flight number is blank.
A big crowd of people circle around a giant TV screen.
*
(Tía has a theory,
that when bad news is coming
the Saints will try to warn you:
will raise the hair
on the back of your neck,
will slip icicles
down your spine,
will tell you brace brace
brace yourself, muchacha.
She says, perhaps,
if you hold still enough,
pray hard enough,
the Saints will change fate
in your favor.
Don Mateo’s AC was broken
& the hot air left me sweaty,
pulling on my shirt to ventilate my chest.
Without warning a stillness.
A cold chill saunters through a doorway in my body,
a tremble begins in my hands.
My feet do not move.)
*
An airline employee
& two security guards
approach the crowd
like gutter cats
used to being kicked.
& as soon as the employee
utters the word accident
the linoleum opens
a gnashing jaw,
a bottomless belly,
I am swallowed
by this shark-toothed truth.
*
Papi was not here in Sosúa, the day that I was born.
Instead, Mamá held her sister Tía Solana’s hand
when she was dando a luz.
I’ve always loved that phrase for birthing:
dando a luz giving to light.
I was my mother’s gift to the sun of her life.
She revolved around my father,
the classic distant satellite
that came close enough to eclipse her once a year.
But that year, the one I was born, he was busy
in New York City. Wired us money & a name in his stead.
Told Mamá to call me Camino.
The day I was born was the only birthday Papi ever missed.
Light-filled. A bright August day, Tía tells me.
But it seems this year he’ll miss it too.
Because the people at the airport are wailing, crying,
hands cast up: it fell, they say. It fell.
They say the plane fell right out the sky.
*
It’s always been safer to listen to Papi’s affection
than it is to bear his excuses. Easier to shine
in his being here, than bring up the shadow of his absence.
Every year for my birthday he asks me what I want.
Since the year my mother died, I’ve always answered:
“to live with you. In The States.”
I’ve heard him tell of New York so often you’d think
I was born to that skyline. Sometimes it feels like I have memories of his billiards, Tío’s colmado, Yankee Stadium,
as if they are places I grew up at,
& not just the tall tales he’s been sharing
since I was a chamaquita on his knee.
In the fall, I start senior year at the American school.
My plan has always been to apply to
& attend Columbia University.
I told Papi last year this dream of pre-med,
at that prestigious university, in the heart of the city
that he calls home. & he laughed.
He said I could be a doctor here. He said,
it’d be better for me to visit Colombia the country,
than for him to spend money at another fancy school.
I did not laugh with him. He must have realized
His laugh was like one of those paper shredders
turning my hopes into a sad confetti. He did not apologize.
*
It is a mistake, I know.
A plane did not crash.
My father’s plane did not fall.
& if, if, a plane did fall
of course my father
could not have been on it.
He would have known
that metal husk was ill-fated.
Tia’s Saints would have warned him.
It would be like in the movies,
where the taxi makes a wrong turn,
or mysteriously the alarm does not go off
& Papi would be scrambling
to get to the airport only to learn
he had been saved. Saved.
This is what I think the whole long walk home.
For four miles I scan the road & ignore
catcalls. I know Don Mateo would come back to get me
if I called, but I feel frozen from
the inside out. The only thing working
are my feet moving forward, & my mind
outracing my feet.
I create scenario after scenario,
I damn everyone else on that flight,
but save my father in my imagination.
I ignore the news alerts
coming through on my phone.
I do not check social media.
Once I get to my callejón,
I smile at the neighbors,
& blow kisses at Vira-Lata.
It isn’t true, you see?
My father was not on that plane.
I refuse.
*
Papi boards the same flight every year.
Tía & I are like the hands of a clock,
we circle our purpose around his arrival.
We prepare for his exaggerated stories
of business people who harrumph over tomato juice
& flight attendants who sneak winks at him.
He never sleeps on flights, instead plays chess on his tablet.
He got me one for my birthday last year
& before he boarded his flight this morning
we video chatted.
They’re saying it’s too early to know about survivors.
I am so accustomed to his absence
that this feels more like delay than death.
By the time I get home, Tía has heard the news.
She holds me tight, & rocks me back & forth,
I do not join her in moaning ay ay ay.
I am stiff as a soiled rag that’s been left in the sun.
Tía says I’m in shock. & I think she is right.
I feel just like I’ve been struck by lightning.
When a neighbor arrives, Tía lets me go.
I sit on el balcón, & rock myself in Papi’s favorite chair.
When Tía goes to bed, I sneak one of the cigars
from her altar to St. Anthony. I carefully cut the tip,
strike a match & for a moment consider kissing
that small blue flame. I lift my mouth to the cigar. Inhale.
Hold the smoke hard in my lungs
until the pain squeezes sharp in my chest
& I cough & cough & cough,
gasping for breath,
tears springing to my eyes.
I rock rock rock until the sun creaks over the treeline.
I listen for the whine of a taxi motor,
for Papi’s loud bark of a laugh, his air-disrupting voice
saying how damn happy
he is to finally be home—
Knowing I’ll never hear any of his sounds again.
*
Yahaira
When you learn life-altering news
you’re often in the most basic of places.
I am at lunch, sitting in the corner with Andrea—
or Dre, although I’m the only person who calls her that.
She is telling me about the climate change protest
while I flip through a magazine.
Dre is outlining where she’ll be meeting the organizers,
& the demands they’ll be making at City Hall
when Ms. Santos’ crackling voice
pushes through the PA system:
Yahaira Rios. Yahaira Rios.
Please report to the main office.
I feel every eye in the cafeteria turn to me.
I hand the magazine to Dre, reminding her
not to dog ear any of the pages
since it belongs to the library.
I grab a pass from the teacher on lunch duty
but Mr. Henry, the security guard,
smiles when I flash it his way,
“I heard them call you, girl.
Not like you would be cutting no how.”
I hold back a sigh. On the chessboard
I used to be known for my risk-taking.
But in real life? I’m predictable:
I follow directions when they are given
& rarely break the rules.
I hang out every Saturday with Dre,
watching Netflix, or reading fashion blogs,
or if she’s in charge of our entertainment,
watching gardening tutorials on YouTube
(which I pretend to understand
simply because anything she loves
I love to watch her watch.)
Teachers’ progress reports
always have the same comments:
Quiet in class, shows potential,
needs to apply more effort in school.
I am a rule follower. A person whose
report card always says Meets Expectations.
I do not exceed them. I do not do poorly.
I arrive & mind my business.
So I have no idea what anyone in the main office
could possibly want with me.
How could I have guessed the truth of it?
Even as teachers in the halls gasped as the news spread,
even as the main office was surrounded by parents
& guidance counselors. How could I have known then
there are no rules, no expectations, no rising to the occasion.
When you learn news like this there is only
falling.
*
I replay that moment again & again;
circle it like a plane in a holding pattern.
How that morning, on the fifth day of June,
the worst thing I could imagine
was being lectured for my progress report
or getting another nudge to return to an after-school club.
I didn’t know then, that three hours before,
as I’d arrived at school,
before lunch or Dre or the long walk down the school hallway
the door to my old life was slammed shut.
*
When I walk into the office, Mami is here.
Wearing chancletas, her hair in rollers.
& that’s the move that telegraphs the play:
Mami manages a nice spa uptown,
& says her polished appearance is advertisement.
She never leaves the house anything less
than Ms. Universe-perfect.
The Principal’s assistant, Ms. Santos,
comes from around her desk,
puts an arm around my shoulders.
She looks like she’s been weeping.
I want to shake her arm off.
want to shove her back to her desk.
That arm is trying to tell me
something I don’t have the stomach to hear.
I don’t want her comfort. Don’t want
Mami here, or anything about what’s to come.
I take a breath, the way I used to,
before I walked into a room
where every single person
wanted to see me lose. “Ma?”
When she looks at me, I notice her eyes
are red & puffy, her bottom lip quivers
& she presses the tips of her fingers there
as if to create a wall against the sob that threatens.
She answers, “Tu Papi.”
*
The Flight
Papi was on departs
without incident on most days, I’m told.
Leaves from JFK International Airport & lands
in Puerto Plata in exactly three hours & thirty six minutes.
Routine, I’m told, a routine flight, with the same kind of plane that flies in
daily, & gets a mechanical check, & had a veteran pilot & should have landed fine.
Mami says the panic hit most of the waiting families at the same time.
Here, in New York, with the Atlantic refereeing between us,
we knew much earlier. Thirty minutes after the plane
departed it was reported that the tail had snapped,
that like some fishing, hunting creature
the jet plunged into the water
completely vertical, hungry
for only God knows
what— prey.
Sunk.
*
I sign myself out of school.
Ignore Ms. Santos’ condolences.
Mami is still crying.
We walk to my locker.
I leave my books in the cafeteria.
Mami is still crying.
I leave school without saying goodbye to Dre.
Mami can’t stop crying.
Mr. Henry waves. I wave back.
Outside the day is beautiful.
Mami cries.
The sun is shining.
The breeze a soft touch along my face.
Mami is still crying.
It’s almost as if the day has forgotten
it’s stolen my father or maybe it’s rejoicing at its gain.
Mami is still crying
but my eyes? They remain dry.
*
I learn via text I am one of four students at school
who had been called to the office because of the flight.
In the neighborhood, las vecinas are on their stoops
in their batas & chancletas,
everyone trying to learn
what the TV may not know:
Who was on the flight? Is it true everyone is dead?
Was it terrorists? A conspiracy de por allá? The government?
When the women call out to Mami
she does not turn her head their way
we walk from the school to our apartment
as if we are the ones who have been made ghosts.
The bodegueros & Danilo the Tailor,
& the other store owners
stand outside their shops
making phone calls as viejitos
wring their hands in front of their bellies
& shake their heads.
Here in Morningside Heights,
we are a mix of people: Dominicans,
& Puerto Ricans, & Haitians,
Black Americans, & Riverside Drive white folk,
& of course, the Columbia students
who disrupt everything: clueless to our joys & pains.
But those of us from the island
will all know someone who died on that flight.
When we get to our building,
Doña Gonzalez from the fifth floor
calls out from her window,
pero Mami does not look up,
does not look sideways, does not stop
until we walk through our apartment door
& then, as if pierced, she deflates,
slides down to the floor
with her head in her hands, & I watch
as the rollers slip free one by one, as her body shakes
& she unravels. I do not slide down to join her.
Instead, I put my arms underneath hers
help her up to her feet & into her bedroom,
when the phone begins ringing
I answer & murmur to family.
I take charge where no one else can.
*
Last summer, when I learned my father’s secret,
it was like bank-style gates descended on my tongue:
no words could escape. Those words I learned
must be protected at all cost. Even from my family.
Papi thought my silence was because of chess.
Because I was angry at his disapproval.
He never once imagined, my silence
was my disappointment in him. At what I’d found.
But although I felt he’d become a stranger
I never stopped being my parents’ steady daughter.
Who did her chores & bothered no one.
Even now, that is not a habit I know how to break.
I take down the trash. I microwave the leftovers.
I wrap myself tight around the feelings I cannot share,
an unopened present, a gift no one wants.
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