Less than romantic,
the job did benefit me.
When I’d visit him
in the city, he’d turn
any morning of the week into
Take-Your-Daughter-to-Work Day
and help me choose
playclothes and dresses
off the rack
to take back to Ossining.
And did I mention,
his taste was impeccable?
Which explains where
my good taste originates,
whether we’re talking
fashionable attire
or symphonic music.
Take your pick.
FUNNY
Funny how
on the train
back to Ossining,
I find myself thinking
I’ll be glad
to get home.
Notebook
I lay in the backyard today, munching grapes from our tiny vine.
Hope Carol ended up somewhere fine as this.
Daddy was supposed to call this week, but he didn’t.
I don’t think he knows what promise means.
WORD GARDEN
Sunday afternoons,
Ken and Brad played
tug-of-war
with the funnies,
Mr. B. disappeared
behind the sports page,
and Mrs. B. absconded
with the entertainment section.
Grace had no use for the news,
which meant I had no competition
for the Sunday word scrambles
and puzzles.
A garden of words,
just for me.
Score!
If you asked me then,
that’s what Sunday papers
were for.
Notebook
Lori’s mom said we can’t be friends anymore.
Through the screen door, I hear her dad call me Nigger.
He spits the word out, so I know it’s ugly. Why doesn’t Lori
say anything?
Notebook
Farewell-to-Fall dance recital. I have a special part.
At first I don’t know it’s because the teacher doesn’t want
a black body messing up her white line of ballerinas.
Once I do, I try to hide the hurt
behind a smile, and dance.
CAMOUFLAGE
Winter was welcome.
When I shivered from heartbreak,
I could blame the cold.
HOUSEBOUND
Sleep can be
a kind of magic.
Sometimes we wake
and the world’s gone white,
streets and driveways
made to disappear
by an alchemy of snow
children know
exactly what to do with.
Screen doors jammed shut
by three feet of sparkly white,
Mrs. B. summoned the troops.
Winter workers
assigned to snow removal,
Ken, Brad, and I
climbed out a window
prissy Grace had no intentions
of squeezing through.
While Mrs. B. waited
for a shoveled porch
and cleared pathway,
we three attended to
of building the season’s
first fort.
What better way
to celebrate
my first snow day?
One snowball fight later,
opposite a neighbor’s boys,
and Mrs. B’s lid
threatened to blow.
“Get that snow shoveled
in the next five minutes,
or none of you
will be able to sit
till summer!”
“Yes, ma’am,” we chimed,
stifling giggles.
Meanwhile,
I’m dancing inside,
grinning at Ken, at Brad—
my first two
true partners in crime
since Carol.
Notebook
Finally! Mom takes me to see my sister.
She lives in a place called Dobbs Ferry,
with a bunch of other kids. I can’t count how many houses
they have there. We’ve both grown so much since
we saw each other, we spend most of the time just…staring.
Carol looked happy to see me, but not happy herself.
She doesn’t much like where she’s living,
but said it’s not so bad.
I wish she could live with me.
I bet she’d love Mr. and Mrs. B.
ROUGH RIDE
Grace’s old bicycle
wanted to return
to its original owner.
I showed off my
no-hands skill
one time too many,
but who could resist
the temptation?
People would pay
good money
for the steep hill
we owned.
Pedaling Hill Street
was all flight,
zero control—
a total blast
until I pumped the brakes
a little too late,
skidded sideways,
and slammed into
the wrought iron fence
protecting the park
from dangers like me.
One good crash,
and I suffered a gash
guaranteed to leave
a glorious scar.
Kendall said
careening into
that fence
was the perk
that came along
with the adventure.
(He’d done as much
a time or two.)
I hobbled up the hill bloody,
asthma inhaler
hanging from my hand.
Mrs. B. took one look
and sent me
to the medicine cabinet
without a lecture.
I knew enough
not to tell her
I was more than ready
to do it all again.
ALBUM
The family photo album
used to scream at me,
“Outsider!”
But one day, as I flipped
through the pages,
I saw Michael and other foster kids
gone before I got there.
Then I spotted
a new photo of
Mr. and Mrs. B.,
and me:
in my pretty new hat,
alongside Ken and Brad,
smiling.
THE CALL
I finally settle in.
Guard down, I get cozy
in my new reality.
Before I know it,
I’m nine and a half,
letting the years roll by
without counting down
the days, the weeks,
the months.
And that’s precisely
when it comes,
the phone call
I’d quit waiting for.
Mom had remarried,
made a new home with a place
especially for me.
Leaving the Buchanans felt
impossible
but I had to go.
How could I say no?
One mother is all you get,
and I wasn’t ready
to give up on her yet.
CITY-BOUND
Genies must think
wishes are wasted
on kids like me.
Otherwise Mom would’ve waited
till school let out
before whisking me away
from Ossining.
When she ended that call, she said,
“If I had my way,
you’d return tonight,”
That’s a good thing, right?
GOODBYE
Mom B. gave me a copy of
Little Women to take on
my new adventure.
I folded my clothing,
stacked notebooks packed
with memories,
and jammed everything
into a suitcase
I suddenly hated.
Goodbye is a word
I wouldn’t even whisper.
Instead, I gave lots of hugs
and kept repeating,
“I love you, I love you,
I love you,” because
somehow I knew
they deserved a gift
for tending me
in the garden of their family,
and my breaking heart
was all I had to offer.
BOOK THREE
1960–1963
“A girl with braids
sits in this corner seat, invisible,
pleased with her solitude….”
—Denise Levertov
“Evening Train”
God’s light everywhere,
tucked between the shadows.
The Mystery of Memory #2
Trauma is a memory hog.
It gobbles up all available space
in the brain,
leaves little room to mark
daily happenstances,
or even routine injuries
which are less than
life-threatening.
Innocuous classroom feuds?
Gone.
Who pulled whose hair
during fire drills?
Couldn’t tell you.
The name of the new teacher
in the new school,
the mascot and location of which
were singularly unremarkable?
Don’t even ask.
The bloody parade of painful days
have ground such sweet details
into a fine layer of dark dust,
blown away by time,
leaving me
with a multiplicity
of blank spots.
But don’t worry.
I’ve bridged the gaps
with suspension cables
forged of steely gratitude
for having survived my past
at all.
LAST STOP
I was already posted near the exit
when the Hudson Line
rolled into Grand Central.
I looked back at the
too-familiar train car,
precise in its similarity
to every locomotive
that sped me from Ossining
to the city, and back again.
Will I ever return to Ossining?
The question sucked the air
from my lungs like a straw,
made my heart beat double-time.
Mom waved from the platform
waiting beside the man
I supposed to be
her new husband.
“Hello there,” he called
in that fake kid-friendly voice
some adults use.
He reached for my suitcase,
as if I’d let
a stranger take it.
I swung the bag behind me.
He shrugged.
“You must be Bernice’s daughter.”
“One of them,” I corrected,
walking straight to Mom.
“Hi, Baby,” she said.
“I’m so excited you’re here.
Ready?”
For what?
I focused on
cutting through the throng
to the local train station
and studying the subway maps
during the long ride
to a place in Brooklyn
I’d try to learn to call
“home.”
DING, DING, DING
Slant is the only way I can tell this:
“Here we are” is the way my mother’s new husband introduced the Brooklyn brownstone I’d be calling home with him, a total stranger. His name was familiar, though—Clark, like the nice man who’d bought me ice cream once, except he’d been Clarke with an e. I smiled, thinking of him. This new Clark opened the door and out poured a chorus of unfamiliar voices. “Oh! She’s here!” I nearly slipped out of my nine-year-old skin, the noise startled me so. I’d have turned around to see who “she” was, but Mom nudged me forward, and ushered me directly into a wood-paneled room festooned with WELCOME HOME banners, pink streamers, and balloons bigger than my head.
The furniture was pushed against the wall, dance music blared, and busy feet already pounded the parquet floor. The ladies and half the men were decked out for the party in progress, and apparently, they couldn’t wait to start. It was fine by me since the whole thing was a surprise. Mom paraded me past this host of strangers, including my grandmother, nicknamed Mac. Who could say I knew her?
Grandma Mac had never behaved as expected. I nodded her way but refused to speak. If you had helped us like we asked you to, I thought, my sister and I might still be together. Forgiveness was not up for discussion. Next came cousins I couldn’t recall, new neighbors I wasn’t supposed to, and a twelve-year-old boy named Peter, plus his parents, the Ashfords—our Barbadian landlords who practically sang their hellos.
I met Clark’s sister, her husband, plus Ronald, Clark’s sixteen-year-old son, who Mom never mentioned. “Is he going to live with us?” I whispered. Mom shook her head no. “He lives with his mother.” Good, I thought. I wasn’t ready for another brother. I didn’t want anyone trying to take the place of Ken or Brad.
We moved on to Clark’s father, a man with startling blue eyes Clark didn’t share. I sensed similarities, but I couldn’t name them. None of that mattered in the moment, anyway. The person I most wanted to see wasn’t there. “Where’s Carol?” I asked my mother. “Carol?” Her eyes flickered a little. “She’ll be here soon,” she said. “But today’s about you!” Clark nodded, prodding me across the room.
“You still haven’t met the other children.” There was a boy who tugged at a tie he was probably forced to wear, and a tallish girl. They both looked about the same age as me. I couldn’t be sure. Anyway, these people were random to me, with one exception: the man my mother had married.
I was bored of the party and the clutch of grown-ups in the corner going on and on about a war in some place called Vietnam, saying how we hadn’t heard the last of it. “Can I go see my room now?” I asked my mother. “Of course!” she said. “Turn left at the top of the stairs. It’s the second door down, after the bathroom.” I recited her directions until I found it, then stepped inside. Thank God, the walls weren’t pink. I hated pink with a passion. The walls were white—boring! But that I could fix with Carol’s help. The thought alone was enough to make me smile.
I stretched my arms out in this room large enough to have an echo! My room in Ossining could fit inside it twice. I lay on the bed and breathed in the comfort. A few mi
nutes later, Mom called up to me, said “my” guests were missing me. How did they get to be mine? I don’t even know these people. But a voice inside said, Don’t be like that. Your mom’s trying to do something nice for you. Try spending a little time at the party she worked hard on. So I pushed myself off the bed and headed back.
On the way, I got an eyeful of Clark’s father in the hall, grinding up against my grandmother like they were lovers, until she shoved him into tomorrow and backhanded him across the cheek so hard the sound cracked the air. I’m surprised no one else heard. It must’ve stung, but all he did was laugh, like it was some kind of love tap, which made me wonder just how much the son was like his blue-eyed father, which rang a bell of worry about what kind of trouble we might be in for.
SISTER
Carol’s life and mine
so achingly separate,
I rarely knew
the where of her days,
or what shaped them.
INHALE
The next morning, I could breathe, no inhaler needed. The partiers gone, Mom and Clark at work, I was finally free to listen to the whispers of the apartment. Mom let me skip school for a week to settle in, so I had plenty of time to explore this cavern of a room. The closet swallowed up the few jackets, pants, skirts, and dresses I owned. My T-shirts, underwear, and pajamas swam in a single dresser drawer and there were two more to fill. Could I ever?
The room suddenly felt lonely. I missed Brad and Kendall. And Grace. And Mom and Dad B. I missed—Stop it! I thought. What’s the point? I’m here, now. Everything will be just fine, especially once Carol gets here from Dobbs Ferry. And when will that be, exactly? With Mom, soon could mean days or weeks, or months even. There was just no figuring her out. I headed for the bathroom, showered, dressed, and wolfed down a bowl of cornflakes.
I grabbed the extra house keys Mom had left and stepped outside, ready for some air. It wasn’t all that fresh, but it was cool at least, and perfect for walking. I sauntered to the avenue to check out the neighborhood and found a beauty salon, pharmacy, small grocer, a newsstand, a laundromat, and—bingo—one of those little everything stores with candy in the window. Finally, a business that required closer inspection.
I pushed open the door, spotted three kids hopscotching through the aisles, rearranging things on the shelves, and shaking cartons. They juggled soda cans, then popped the tops to watch the fizz spray everywhere. One boy pocketed a Snickers bar, and I was not the only one who noticed.