Clean Up On Aisle 4

I’ll admit I love a good grocery store
almost as much as an indie book shop.
I get the same fluttery beat in my chest

over names like Star Market and Giant Food,
almost out of some fairy tale, in towns
I’ve called home on this shore far from home.

Jars of peanut butter and stockpiles of jam,
coffee with flavors like “Donut Shop Blend,”
signs of abundance, and comfort, and warmth;

in France, cheese aisles that go on for miles,
fresh white anchovies and truffles from the Périgord,
baguettes and croissants high quality by law;

in Asia, the distinctive aroma of I’m-not-quite-sure-what
and shelves piled high with jiggly sweets,
condiments, rice, and packets of dried fish.

In my very first home town
across the world, the store
was unimaginatively called Unimart.

San Juan used to be a sleepy place
with just Unimart and a small mall,
low buildings on high ground

and a pretty koi pond behind the grocery.
It was a place a fortunate little girl could transcribe
onto fantastical maps, with sandal shops

and waffle dog stands whimsically renamed
“Enchanted Cavern” and “Crystal Tower.”
It was not until I grew up

and I went back to an overbuilt Unimart
with a craving for guinomis and green mangoes with bagoong
that I noticed the dedicated skin-whitening aisle –

lotions, creams, and cosmetics labeled
with promises of supremacy, offered proudly –
how much better they were, the best, they claimed –

and for a second an old aunt’s voice
came back to me, filled with dismay
after we’d come back from a few days at the beach –

“She got so dark!” – as if some great sin
had been committed. “Qué fea!”
“It’ll go away,” was the reply

offered to fend off the frown
and the shaking head. How confused I was,
loving my new, deep brown skin,

a magical me the sunlight had revealed
the way lemon juice revealed the invisible ink
in which I wrote secret messages in ciphers,

only to hear it was not what the world wanted,
not good, unclean, pangit, that somehow
I had done something wrong.

The darkness faded, and with it, the disapproval.
I was acceptable again, all right, maganda.
I had completely forgotten this faraway moment

and by the time I was aisles and aisles away
looking for Skyflakes crackers and polvorón,
it had slipped furtively out of my mind again,

so even in the dried fish section
the many vacant eyes not looking at me
from the little corpses on the shelves

didn’t remind me of how scared I’ve always been
of eyes looking at me, surrounding me,
of frowns and shaking heads, and even

of someone finding out
that under my skin
I am lovely and dark.

Cristina Legarda was born in the Philippines and spent her early childhood there before moving to Bethesda, Maryland. She studied literature in college and then attended medical school and is now a practicing physician in Boston. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in America magazine, the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, the Journal of Medical Humanities, Diaspora Baby Blues, Dappled Things, Plainsongs, and FOLIO.