Imprints

I hold Kyla, my four-year-old daughter, in the pool. She traces the black and faded two inch long tattoo of a footprint on my bicep. The delineations are hazy and imprecise, except for the toes that appear like pencil pricks. Her tio Mark says it looks like a prison tattoo made from the ink of a broken ballpoint pen and a sliver of glass, but I really had it done at the parlor on Colfax run by Spider and Wolf, ex prenatal nurses, who smell of lavender incense, alcohol and reassurance.

The caress of Kyla’s finger reminds me of the day Wolf marks me with her needle. The RTD bus sighs as I step on the sweltering sidewalk and read the rainbow colored letters arcing across the black window treatment of Enchanted Ink. The door jingles, and I take note of the oscillating buzz behind a lime-green curtain. Spider holds Pride and Prejudice in her lap while eating carrots and singing along to Steve Miller’s “Jet Airliner.” Wolf, wearing riding boots and a frayed Stetson, rolls from behind the curtain and says, “What can I do for ya?”

“This.” I hold up a tattered birth certificate with the blurred imprint of a tiny foot.

“That’s a hell of a premie. How early was the little gem?”

            “Three months.”

            “How much she weigh?”

            “1lb. 4oz.,” I say, and recall Brazil.

I remember waiting for the bus in a white plastic chair, while smoking cigarettes and drinking beer from a plastic cup. I hear bare-chested boys singing, stomping feet, and clapping hands in the square. I smell cheese cooked over charcoal in tin buckets. I see a Bahian woman with dry, cracked feet. A burlap sack filled with green mangos hangs from her shoulder as she passes military police with machine guns. I remember staring at my reflection in a dark a window on a bumpy bus ride that takes me along cobblestone streets and circling highways to the hospital at the top of the hill with my daughter inside.

I observe parents smiling and pointing through glass at newborns. I remember the ICU window with the beige blinds shut and the side door reserved for special parents like me. I remember the procedure of cleansing and dressing: the ripping of cellophane, the coarse cotton gown, the facemask refusing to cling to my chin, washing my hands up to my elbows, and peeling on latex gloves. I step through the second door leading to the room with my daughter inside.

I remember incubators with latches and circular metal portals and tubes and cords and monitors and sinks and paper towels and pink soap dispensers. Heart monitors beep like errant mosquitoes. Nurses whisper in Portuguese. I remember the red light, taped to Kyla’s big toe, flashing like a beacon. A small ski cap shields her eyes from the florescent lights projecting cold illumination. I remember the web of cords and tape and wires and tubes stuck in her toes, her arms—down her throat.

I recognize an old man in miniature that is my daughter lying on stiff sheets. I stroke her hand with my little finger. She grips it—can almost reach all the way around. While in
Boulder, Colorado, her grandma, Vovo, buys a mango to see how it feels to hold her granddaughter in the palm of her hand, I say, not with words, but through the rhythm of our breathing: “You can die now if you want to. You can go.”

I hear Kyla raise her voice with impatience. “Daddy, Daddy, you’re not listening to me. Can I run in the fountains?”

“Let’s get out of the pool and put your boots back on. I’ll get your walker. Ok baby.” I lift both of us out of the water and set her on the edge of the pool to begin strapping on her orthotics, which I call boots. She caresses the tattoo on my shoulder again and says, “I was a little girl. Now I’m a big girl Daddy.” Her grin spreads and she clicks her tongue. I wiggle the orthotics around each leg and tightly strap the Velcro around her ankles. I put on her pink shoes. I help her to grip the handles of her wheeled walker which stands less than two feet off the ground.  She giggles and trips forward—left leg stepping on her right toe like a mischievous sibling. She traipses through the falling water like a pogo stick on wheels and asks the stranger in the Hawaiian shirt his name. “My name’s Frank,” he says. “What’s your name?”

“Kyla.”

“Kayla? Hi Kayla. Nice to meet you.”

“No, K-y-la.” Satisfied that Frank understands, Kyla turns her walker back towards the fountains, leaving tiny, wet footprints on rough cement that will soon be consumed by the sun.