ACKNOWLEDGMENT
“Evening Train” (three-line excerpt on this page) by Denise Levertov, from Evening Train, copyright © 1992 by Denise Levertov.
Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.
Copyright © 2019 by Nikki Grimes
All rights reserved. Copying or digitizing this book for storage, display, or distribution in any other medium is strictly prohibited.
For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, please contact permissions@bmkbooks.com.
Wordsong
An Imprint of Boyds Mills & Kane
wordsongpoetry.com
ISBN 9781629798813
Ebook ISBN 9781635923476
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019902537
First edition
Book design by Barbara Grzeslo, adapted for ebook
a_prh_5.5.0_c0_r0
For my sister, Carol,
who shared part of the journey
and knows the God of Grace,
who brought us safely through
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Acknowledgment
Copyright
Dedication
Memoir
Prologue
Book One
The Naming
Cards on the Table
Born
Home
Wildlife
Witnesses
Size Doesn’t Matter
Mommy
Imaginary Friends
War
Drowning
Nightmare
On Our Own
Missing Daddy
Family
A Proper Introduction
Binge
Aftermath
Jersey
Long Distance
March Kidnap
Train Ride
The Mystery of Memory #1
Book Two
The Family Buchanan
The Room
Lassie’s Twin
The House on Hill Street
Sign Language
Petition
Another Country
Manners
Statistics
Dear Carol
Waiting
The Scent of Purple
Fragile
Isolation Station
Secret
Journey
Baptist Beginnings
Change of Season
First Love
First Light
Grape Escapade
No Picnic
October Surprise
Playground
One Year Gone
Word Play
Train Trip
Home
Pizza
Nine-to-Five
Funny
Word Garden
Camouflage
Housebound
Rough Ride
Album
The Call
City-Bound
Goodbye
Book Three
Last Stop
Ding, Ding, Ding
Sister
Inhale
Tag
Midterm Hustle
Bff
Absentee
Otherwise Occupied
A Day Like This
Happy New Year
Souvenir
Initiation
Library Card
Contagion
Deliverance
Nuts
Details
Committed
The Visit
Reunion
Gone
Grandma Sally
Six O’Clock News
Clandestine Christmas
Intruder
Gin Rummy
Escape
Report Card
Broken
Afterward
Prospect Park Showdown
What Time Forgot
Thank God for Chubby Checker
Record Keeping
Friend Ship Sails Away
Birthday Assessment
Criminal Intent
Revelation
Disoriented
Comfort
Shots Fired
Turkey Trot
Rest
A Good Goodbye
Book Four
The Heights
Materialized
Sharing the Load
New Digs
DC-Bound
You Don’t Say
Pineapple Surprise
New School
The Landscape
Road Trip
Applesauce
In the Background
English Class
Sideswiped
Carol’s Mantra
Kindred Spirit
Bully on Patrol
Solved
June 1964
Countee Cullen
Graduation
Convent Avenue Baptist Church
A Breeze
Redirected
The Solid Rock
Let Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot?
Math Madness
Terra Firma
Smalls Paradise
The Copa
Garment District
Trio
Course Correction
Coif
Black Magic
Grease Paint
Les Ballets Africains
Hold Everything
Black Orpheus
Michaux’s
My Black Me
Roommates
Easter Eve, 1966
Marking Time
Finding Fault
News Round-Up
Candle in the Dark
Words to Live By
Mixed Grief
Ice Queen in Summer
Sunday Mourning
Felony on Fallow Ground
Epilogue
Author’s Note
Photographs
Acknowledgments
About the Author
MEMOIR:
a work of imperfect memory
in which you meticulously
capture all that you can recall,
and use informed imagination
to fill in what remains.
PROLOGUE
I can’t deal with crazy.
Yeah, I know that’s not politically correct,
but when you’re inches away from someone’s
mental and emotional avalanche, trust me,
the word crazy is what comes to mind.
I used to have a friend who stepped
off and on the bipolar train
once too often for me to handle.
Had to cut her loose. Had to.
I’d already taken that rough ride
with my schizophrenic mother,
and that’s one ticket
I will not buy again.
It’s a long story, but I’m a poet.
I can cut it short.
BOOK ONE
1950–1955
“a Self to be identified
clarified
outlined, free form
so there is room to breathe”
—Mari Evans
THE NAMING
I read somewhere that names
penetrate the core of our being,
and I suppose, this is
as good a time as any to confess
my name is not the only lie
I’ve ever lived with, but Nikki is
the first invention for which
I accept full responsibility.
Nickname is the word
I plucked it from when I was six.
I immediately liked
the hard k of it, which sounded
firm and looked like a sturdily braced wall,
whether I wrote block letters
or loopy cursive script.
I fiddled with the spelling for years,
eventually dropping c
and adding another k
as if it were a second layer
of brick.
Toughness is what I was after,
although I couldn’t have
My real name huddled
behind that wall,
along with its memories.
The girl with that name wasn’t
worth a lot, at least not so you’d notice,
which I suppose was why I chose
to keep my distance. I mean, if she
was worth the space she occupied,
why’d someone lock her away?
Why’d she take unearned beatings
from strangers?
Why’d her own mother—never mind.
For now, let’s just say the girl with that
old name suffered things I wanted to forget.
Besides, few people managed to
pronounce my birth name as intended,
and life is too short to spend
correcting everyone I meet.
I won’t be revealing that name now,
but thanks kindly for your interest.
Just call me Nikki.
CARDS ON THE TABLE
1.
Cards on the table:
I have a PhD in avoidance,
which kept me running from
the past for years.
I was particularly fond of
parroting Scarlett O’Hara:
“I’ll think about it tomorrow.”
But now my need
for light and truth is greater than
my fear of murky memories.
Time to grab my flashlight
and step into the tunnel.
2.
I peer into the past,
pretending bravado,
but still I shiver,
as the ghosts of yesterday
come screaming into the present
without apology,
dragging more baggage
than I recall.
We’re masters
of selective memory,
aren’t we? Let’s face it,
we’re all allergic to pain.
3.
Pain can sully your soul,
if you let it,
and rage held in reserve
will turn to sludge,
will obstruct the passageway
to your heart.
You won’t even
be aware of it,
but over time,
the river of your joy
slows to a trickle.
Your laughter loses
its hardy echo.
Before you know it,
rage has you so clogged up inside,
that precious little love or joy
or laughter can squeeze through.
If you’re not careful,
your heart…just…stops.
Emergency surgery is required.
If you’re going to survive,
those passageways
have got to be cleared.
“Doctor? Get in here, stat.”
BORN
I could tell you a thing or two
about Harlem Hospital,
not because I was born there,
but because severe bouts
of asthma made me
an emergency-room regular.
The muscles in my mother’s arms
must have burned from the ache
of carrying me there
night after night,
which I’m fairly certain
she resented.
What’s important
about this detail of my birth?
Place, I suppose.
Harlem is in me,
which is odd in a way.
One of the few pictures I have
of my ebony self back then
shows skinny me
peering out at the world
through heavy bifocals,
standing on the streets of Harlem,
looking lost.
HOME
The first home that
comes to mind
had a hall running
the length of it,
rooms flagging off
from either side like
train compartments.
Eat-in kitchen,
living room, bathroom,
bedrooms in the back.
They called it a railroad flat,
perfect preparation
for the hours I would
soon spend riding
the rails.
WILDLIFE
Home was never a safe place,
as my sister, Carol, tells it.
Forget the Wild West
of inner-city streets,
bullets buzzing by
on the occasional Friday night,
propelled by a deadly combo
of alcohol and apathy.
I’m talking about inside,
any day of the week.
Sis paints the picture:
I’d be tucked into
a dresser drawer,
higher off the floor
than my crib, supposedly
out of reach of the rats
that roamed the rooms
after dark.
I can’t quite remember
the hardness of the dresser drawer,
only the softness of my blanket.
I don’t recall coming
nose-to-nose with any rat,
but there were mornings
I did see
an empty plastic bag
on the kitchen table
where a loaf of bread
used to be,
and the trail of breadcrumbs
across the linoleum,
a broken line
of evidence.
WITNESSES
I’ve cracked the past
like a door.
Things long forgotten
keep slipping through,
like the angels who
appeared at night to visit me
when I was two or three,
bright lights sent
as silent proof
that God
was always
near.
SIZE DOESN’T MATTER
Four-foot-nine.
Such a tiny person
to have her initials
carved so deeply into
the meat of my soul.
No matter how you spell it,
&
nbsp; the word Mother
is too small
to suffice.
MOMMY
She was quite the beauty,
all brown doe-eyes
the size of quarters,
dimples deep enough
to dive in,
and a thick mass of
shining black curls
on which her veil rested
like a crown.
Her wedding photo with my father
smiled sweetly from
the photographer’s studio window
for years,
silently selling the world
one tantalizing tale:
You, too, can enjoy
a moment of bliss
like this.
IMAGINARY FRIENDS
Mommy had a secret life,
a kind of play that was
more serious than I knew.
Sometimes I’d catch her
talking to people
who weren’t there.
Finger to her lips,
she’d shush me
whenever I asked,
“Mommy, who are you
talking to?”
It would be years before
paranoid schizophrenia
grew roots
in the soil of my own
vocabulary.
WAR
Daddy was a ghost
in those early years,
moving in and out of our lives,
barely visible, like smoke.
Yelling punctuated the air
when he was there.
Mom’s sharp tongue
made his ears bleed
every time he’d
gamble away
the rent money.
He nursed complaints
of his own,
like Mom draping
wet diapers
on his music stand,
a sniper attack on a man
who composed
chamber music
and played
the violin.
Cease-fires
never lasted long.
DROWNING
I wasn’t the only one
in need of angels.
Dad’s absences
multiplied a sadness
Mom was incapable of hiding,
though she tried by
diving into countless
glasses of something
clear as water,
with a smell that
wrinkled the nose.
I sipped it once
when she wasn’t looking,