Too Me Again

by Allison Albino

Red makes you look awake, my mother
would say, as she dabbed rouge on my kindergarten
lips and cheeks with lipstick she stored in the fridge

so it would last. For poinsettia, she’d say it punnsett-i-tyah
which sounded like some Italian dish with red sauce
and a bit of Filipino accent. I’d say it this way too

just like I’d say squeer-ull for squirrel because that’s
how she’d say it and mothers are never wrong.
The kids at school would correct me and laugh

like I wasn’t born here. Or maybe that was because
my mother packed my lunch with three Popeye’s
chicken wings and a bag of Doritos. And I would

nosh on chicken skin while the others ruminated
on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Even though
my mother was a doctor when women weren’t doctors

she’d still ask me to make appointments for her over
the phone because I didn’t have an accent and no one
would look down on me. She’d ask, speak for me.

In French class, all I wanted to do was to sound
like the cassettes, and when I got to Paris, I sat in
the café with my Gauloises and pristine copy of Madame

Bovary on the table, as a blatant display, as if to say: Look,
I can read this. You won’t know I’m not from here. I can
hide my American – I’ve worked so hard for it.  

When the French would ask me what my father did,
I wanted to avoid pronouncing chirurgien and just said
he’s the kind of doctor that cuts. And they’d laugh,

call it charming – my accent, my turn of phrase.
I don’t know how many years it took to stop hiding
behind the right way of saying, and just say, plant

the stick in the ground and claim this language
like land. We can acquire it in trunks, sift through
it like gold glinting in the pebbles. Or maybe that was sun,

or how my mother would sing, Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ra,
Too-ra-loo-ra-la, Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ra, hush now, don't you cry
like it wasn’t some Irish song from Killarney

but one she made up herself, just for me, so I could
fall asleep. She’d ask, “Would you like me to Too you?”
To which I’d say: “Too me again, mama. Too me again.”

Published March 3rd, 2019