Isabel By Cesar L. De Leon

I wish I had never called you mojada
the first day when you walked into our classroom.

It was an act of self-preservation. I was eight.
You must understand.

You were new and brown like me,    
and I was tired of being called mojado
by other brown kids too.

I wish I had never said your hair stank
of moldy tortillas and sour lard,
single-filed against the white-washed bricks
of the Crockett Elementary lunch room.

I knew you heard me
and everyone cackled when you left the line.

All I wanted was to own a blue “Good Citizen” ribbon,
to please the Misses and the Misters
who wanted us to stop smelling like onion fields
and speaking “Mexican.”

I wish I had never told the class you had peed yourself,
that’s what I thought mojada meant.
I was only eight. You must understand.

And Mrs. Torres never taught us
how it was a bad word.