Coquí
My grandmother told me once the island can sense when one of its children dreams of leaving. On those nights, when someone’s spirit tries to leave in a whisper of rising feet, a loss of heart, little tree frogs float from the sky, wet with requisition, to weigh down on them. My sister loves the stories; I am tired of eating rice and huevos for breakfast.
Nights in Puerto Rico are pin drops that echo over Hector Lavoe and my grandmother’s telenovelas. They are silent, unlike the boisterous days spent strangled by the walls of the empty, unfinished house my sister and I are staying in for the summer. They are silent, and still, everything is loud. The floors creak when no one is walking, the broken fridge rumbles with an empty stomach, the pastel blue cat clock ticks and tocks, and my head, slowly but with intention, imagines banging itself against my half of the old bed we share.
I am awake, eyes adjusted to the darkness so I can see the outline of the naked bulb on our ceiling. The thin chains of the fan swing. I count sheep in dust clumps and my sister murmurs bits of her peaceful dreams. I’m awake and I’m angry with my mother because we can’t afford plane tickets back home and I’m angry because my abuela tells me I’m never going back to New Jersey; I’m stuck here forever. There is nothing magical about this island. It is dirt roads to secluded Patillas with fist-sized bees and falling avocados; knock me out, put me to sleep.
The blankets rub together when my sister turns on her side, and then I hear whistling. A sharp breath, short, and the sound before it repeats again so close to the first squeak that their breaths are touching. There it is again, like a thirsty hiccup. My throat tightens. The double dribble of vocal cords repeats like parrots, and I am moved to rise and shake my sheets when they start to overlap. I am surrounded by the presence of it, coquí coquí. My bare feet hit the cold ipe and I hiss; it stings less with each step to the open window. Soft light from the moon barely covers the overgrowth, glistening just enough over the translucent bodies of the creatures. They hover around each other like steppingstones. I see them as golden and apricot bubbles shrinking and swelling.
Mystified by the sudden pull of my body, the lyric lures me in. Coquí. Coquí. I hear nothing else. Baby fat thighs press against the bottom rim of the window to the backyard. My tumbling round body meets with the sleek, wet grass that hasn’t been cut since the first time my mother called in late June. My toes curl and grip onto the fragile, spiky strips of green that get caught beneath them. I move forward and they’re looking at me, hundreds of beady eyes blinking like fireflies. All I see are flashes of color. Everything is heavy. The entirety of sunburnt July sits on my shoulders. My eyes are weighed down by the hypnotizing song of the island; knock me out, put me to sleep.
Their sticky summer songs eventually become one exhaustive, deafening hum and I can’t reach fast enough to cover my ears. I am falling; I am falling. I can feel moist ground against my cheek, the muddy soil in splotches on my pajamas, but I can’t hear anything.
My grandmother told me once if a coquí is taken outside of the island they can no longer sing, and therefore they will die.
I think I was carried away that night, though a piece of me boarded the plane two weeks later in San Juan, clutching the waist of my doll. We wore matching pink shorts and twin buns. It thunder-stormed the night before and my sister and I watched from the window over the old bed we shared, counting between crests of white sky waves. She fell asleep easily, but I spent the night awake trying to listen.
I was eight years old the last time I visited Puerto Rico, so long ago I’ve almost forgotten it. I left it an island intact, stitched together by those dirt roads and the smell of Cafe Bustelo. The house my tías grew up in was taken away a few years ago. My grandparents’ debt disowned the unfinished second floor where my grandpa would lay in his hammock alone smoking Camel Blues.
On that day, a storm of brown, gold, and green spots poured onto the island, spread hundreds of little arms, and sang to its people, begging for the redemption of its voice. I cup my hand over my ear in the middle of my bedroom, a city away from my family.
I’m told it will drizzle tonight in Jersey, but I can’t hear anything.
Chelsea Lebron (@clebronwrites) is a Jersey-born writer, teacher, and ghost enthusiast with an MFA in fiction from George Mason University. She is a 2022 Cheuse Center MFA Travel Fellow and a 2024 Fulbright recipient. Her work takes an interest in Latino communities, queerness, and all things spooky.