With the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo
Gilded
When I was little the other kids from the block and I would get together and play a game called mancala. It’s a fast-paced board game where the pieces are these glass stones that are round on one side and flat on the other. Each stone is a beautiful color: red, blue, teal, clear shot through with squiggles of gold. I used to cradle those stones in my hand, more interested in holding them up to the light than playing the game. Even then I knew they weren’t real gems, but when I held them in my hand I felt like a rich queen, like I was holding something precious.
That’s how I feel about the Catedral de Sevilla. Like I want to cradle the whole thing in the palm of my hand and hold it up to the light and watch it glint and glimmer. There are all these portraits of famous popes and leaders, and everything from the floor to the ceiling is made of gold and silver. I stop turning in a wide circle and my eyes land on sculptures in a corner of the cathedral. In the center is a coffin being held up by four figures—each one dressed in dark metal and gold armor and crowns; the two in the front have a staff in their outside hands and the two in the back have the hand not holding the casket on their hip.
I go stand next to a tour group so I can listen in on what their guide is saying. “And this is the tomb of Christopher Columbus.” I move even closer as the guide describes the remains in the tomb and how different parts of the world claim different pieces of Columbus’s body for the honor of being able to say they have his final resting place.
Malachi circles over. “You good, Santi?”
I nod. But I don’t know if I am. I walk away from the group to the other side of the massive casket and Malachi follows. “Do you know what the word ‘Boricua’ means?”
Malachi shakes his head. “I know it’s what all my Puerto Rican homies call themselves.”
“I’ve already told you my father is a big history buff when it comes to PR, and he doesn’t need much prompting to remind me that before Columbus, Puerto Rico was called ‘Borinken’ by the Taíno people who lived there. He told me once it means ‘Land of the brave and noble lords.’ If he were here now he would be so pissed. All over the world there are monuments to Columbus, museums trying to claim a piece of his body as if he were a saint. And look at this here, all this gold they use to honor him, gold they got from our island in the first place, and hardly anyone remembers the enslaved people who dug through the rivers for that gold, who were there before he arrived. Whose descendants are still there now.”
And suddenly, the cathedral isn’t so pretty to me anymore despite all its gold and glitter.