of my daddy
in a uniform,
wearing those same shoes
he wore the night he left.
He doesn’t look weak to me.
He looks strong enough
to save the whole world.
Me and Charlie never knew
the man in that picture.
Sometimes I wonder,
was it the war that
turned him weak
or was it us?
I close my sketchbook and
push it under my pillow
and turn toward the wall,
squeezing my eyes shut tight.
I’ll let Charlie be the one
to turn out the light tonight.
SPOT
Today me and Charlie
do our lessons like we’re told
and then Aunt Bee says,
How about we go to town
for supper?
Aunt Bee doesn’t drive as fast as Gran,
but she yells at other people
through the windows.
Every now and then,
when she’s not yelling at a driver,
she looks at me in the
rearview mirror, but I
don’t look back.
I stare out the window,
watching the fields pass.
There’s only one way to the
road into town, so we
already passed the spot
where my daddy
slipped and rolled,
which means I don’t
have to close my eyes anymore.
DRAW
Haven’t seen you
sketching lately, Paulie,
Aunt Bee says.
I draw in secret now,
after Mama and Charlie are asleep.
I don’t want anyone to see
what has happened,
how I can’t draw life
like I used to.
That shoe.
The broken stop sign.
Twisted metal that
used to be a car.
My daddy.
I draw what I see
when I close my eyes.
MAGNIFICENT
My daddy used to look at
every drawing I did
those afternoons we walked
in the woods.
Magnificent tree, Paulie, he’d say.
Magnificent leaf pile, Paulie.
Magnificent water, Paulie.
He called everything
magnificent,
and that made me feel
magnificent.
My sketchbook stays hidden
under my mattress now.
Every now and then Mama will
hand me that bag she made
for my drawing pencils,
and she’ll say, Why don’t you
draw something for us, Paulie?
But I never can. I just stare
at a page until she turns away.
LIGHTS
Aunt Bee pulls to a stop.
We’ll eat first, she says.
Then we’ll walk the springtime lights.
They won’t be out much longer.
Charlie follows her
through the door of a restaurant
where me and Josh used to
get sodas when his mama
had errands to run.
We don’t say anything
around the table.
Aunt Bee hardly touches
her food,
but Charlie eats all hers
and some of Aunt Bee’s.
When we’re finished,
Aunt Bee leads the way
out the doors.
Look at that, she says.
The springtime lights
are something special
this town does every year.
When we asked
Daddy if he would
take us one year,
he said they were
nothing special at all.
But they’re the most beautiful
lights I’ve ever seen.
They hang from trees,
close enough to touch,
white-yellow and red
and orange moons lining
the path through town.
They’re beautiful,
Charlie says.
Aunt Bee takes my hand
and Charlie’s, too.
I stare at hers,
small and soft and cold.
Let’s walk to the end, she says.
She buys our favorite sodas
from a little shop, and we
sit down on a bench.
I sip my root beer
and close my eyes.
WORDS
Paulie? someone whispers.
I look up.
Josh stands to the side,
his eyes on my face.
Josh, I say.
Maybe I just imagined
him and Brian passing by.
What are you doing here? he says
and looks around, like he’s
waiting for someone.
His face is a ghostly white.
My aunt brought us
to see the lights, I say.
Are you coming back
to school this year? Josh says.
In the fall, I say.
His mama is coming toward us,
and I don’t know how she does it,
but her eyes burn me
all the way through.
It’s time to go, Josh, she says.
Her hand grabs his shoulder,
and she steers him away
like he’s done
something wrong.
He doesn’t look back
and neither does his mama.
But her words are clear.
That boy’s daddy
betrayed his own people.
I told you I don’t want you
around him now.
The world around me blurs,
liquid and hot.
I don’t understand
what she means.
A hand touches my arm.
Charlie stands beside me,
that storm shifting
in her eyes again.
You don’t need him, she says.
You don’t need any of them.
Let’s go home, Aunt Bee says,
and she takes our hands again.
Josh and his mama
are too far away
to see anymore.
But those words are
stuck in my chest,
like a bullet.
OUTRUN
The town smudges
outside my window.
I close my eyes,
my stomach clenching.
Aunt Bee drives like Gran,
fast and wild,
like she’s trying
to outrun what
we all heard.
I sure wish she could.
We don’t talk
the whole way home.
Aunt Bee doesn’t even yell
at other drivers,
and for some reason,
this makes my stomach
hurt more.
QUESTION
Mama is sitting at the table
when we walk inside the house,
a plate of yesterday’s chicken
on the table in front of her.
Did you have fun? Mama says.
I pretend she’s talking to Charlie
and walk straight through
the kitchen to my room.
I hear her ask, Paulie all right?
but I don’t hear
Charlie’s answer.
PEOPLE
Milo raises his head
when I turn on the lamp.
Hi, boy, I say, and he
makes that little squeak
in the back of his throat
I’ve learned means
h
e’s glad I’m home.
Milo doesn’t bark.
My daddy said
some people just
choose not to talk.
I always loved
that he said people
and not animals.
We don’t need words,
me and Milo.
ROOM
The last thing I drew in my sketchbook
was my daddy’s messed-up car.
My fingers take over,
and before I know it,
I’ve drawn a room
I’ve never seen before.
What is it? Charlie says.
I jump. She sits down
on the side of my bed.
Nothing, I say.
I try to shove the sketchbook
under my pillow.
The page tears
from its spiral.
Did she see the whole room,
that white man on the floor,
the other men standing by him
and the blood puddle,
black on wood?
Does she know
I’ve drawn my daddy
and the man he killed?
Did she read the question
I wrote on the table:
Why would a man
beat another man
to death?
I’m really sorry, Paulie,
Charlie whispers so soft
I almost don’t hear it.
My nose burns.
Charlie might be
my only friend in the world.
CHOICE
Charlie climbs up the boards
at the foot of my bed
and into hers.
She didn’t close our door.
Mama’s voice in the kitchen
joins Aunt Bee’s.
They are talking quiet,
but we can still hear.
A new school
might do them good,
Aunt Bee says.
Let them come to mine.
They could start over
and no one would know.
Aunt Bee is a principal
at a big elementary school
in the city.
We celebrated real good
when she got the job,
being as women aren’t usually
picked for things like principals.
I bet she’s a real good one, too.
A little scary, but not too much.
A little nice, but not too much.
Things are just as bad
over there, aren’t they?
Mama says.
I lift my head to hear better.
Maybe worse, Aunt Bee says.
I expect we’ll have
some protestors.
Maybe violence.
Some white students
leaving the district.
Hundreds, you mean, Mama says.
It’s happening all over now.
They’re calling it
the new white flight.
I guess they think
schools with blacks
aren’t good enough
for their precious kids.
It’s real sad.
I have no idea
what they’re talking about.
I know all that, Aunt Bee says.
But it doesn’t matter.
There’s a long silence
before she says,
It would give Paulie and Charlie
a new start.
No one would know
their white daddy killed a white man
to protect a black man.
The air is sucked
right out of my lungs.
I can’t breathe.
I don’t know if I’ll
ever breathe again.
Paulie would never
agree, Mama says.
Paulie doesn’t have
another choice, Aunt Bee says.
Her voice is louder this time.
She sighs.
I could pick them up and
drop them off every day.
You wouldn’t have to
worry about it.
They’re quiet
for a few minutes,
and then Mama says,
I’ll talk to them.
FACE
My daddy killed
a white man
to protect a black man.
Did I ever really know
my daddy at all?
My heart beats
loud and hard.
My legs are too hot for covers.
I throw them off.
Mama passes by
and closes her door.
Charlie falls asleep.
But I stay awake for a
long time. My head
can’t stop spinning.
I take out my sketchbook,
straighten my torn drawing,
and by the light of the hallway,
I shade in the face of the man
standing next to my daddy.
GRANDDAD
The morning is warm and wet.
Dewdrops curve across
the branches of the bush
beside Gran’s porch.
The drops look like
glass tears.
Granddad is working
in his garden out back.
Me and Charlie
let our garden die when
we forgot to water it.
I’ll share what I grow
in my garden so you don’t
have to eat that trash
Bee brings over, he said
when he found out.
He only trusts
the food he grows or kills
with his own two hands.
I watch Granddad pick up dirt
and let it slide between his fingers.
He sits back on his heels and wipes
his hands on dirty overalls.
Granddad looks at me.
Why don’t you give me
a hand, Paulie? he says.
I kneel beside him,
and we work together.
He tells me a story
of his railroad days,
when men laid miles
of track in a day,
and a story about Gran
while he played guitar,
and how he taught my daddy
and Aunt Bee to play guitar, too.
She doesn’t
play anymore, he says.
Wouldn’t even take
Reta’s old piano we gave her.
Reta is Gran.
He says the last part
real soft, like it’s just
a thought he didn’t mean
to say out loud.
PLAY
Will you play me a song? I say.
I want to close my eyes
and see my daddy.
Granddad looks at me
for a long time.
His white hair, what’s left of it,
shakes.
Then he turns back to the dirt.
I don’t think these old hands
could play anymore, he says.
You should ask your aunt Bee
to play something for you.
Then he shoos me inside
to clean up for breakfast,
and I know our talk is over.
Gran will be in the kitchen,
flipping pancakes onto a plate.
But before I go,
I look at the dirt.
He’s written a word:
Play.
I once heard Mama
say that Granddad
is a stiff man who can’t hear
a heart’s cry for help.
But I think maybe
Mama’s got it all wrong.
My heart feels like
the bush I pass
on my way back up the porch,
like i
t holds glass tears.
NEWS
Aunt Bee hasn’t laughed
since my daddy left.
She stands around,
looking out windows
or flipping through
news channels.
They are all reporting
about the new
Westheimer School District
some white people are trying to start
so their kids don’t have to
go to school with black kids.
She shakes her fist and
talks to the screen,
and I’m pretty sure
I’m not supposed to hear
the words she says.
LAUGH
I heard Gran tell Mama once
that Aunt Bee turned sour
after her husband left her.
But Aunt Bee
never looks sour
when she laughs.
She has this laugh
that lights the day.
She laughs and laughs
until she quits
making any sound at all.
She shakes all that laughter
out into the world
so everyone around her
starts smiling and then
laughing and then
shaking, too.
My daddy used to do
all sorts of things
to get her to laugh like that,
and I thought there was
nothing more magnificent
in the world than my daddy
cutting up just so
Aunt Bee would laugh.
He would say, Jesus, Bee,
you’re gonna hurt yourself,
and Gran would wag her finger
in my daddy’s face and say,
Don’t you take the Lord’s
name in vain, you hear me, boy?
and Aunt Bee would just
laugh harder.
Sometimes Aunt Bee couldn’t stop
once she got started,
and Mama would have to
pound her back and yell,
Breathe, Bee! Breathe!
and my daddy would
wipe tears, too.
NOTES
1. Mama chopped off
all her hair.
It sits in tight curls
around her face,
smelling like smoke
when she walks
in the door.
2. There’s a bottle
in the back of the refrigerator.
Its level drops
every day.
3. Aunt Bee sits here
late into the night,
snoring in my daddy’s old chair.
SUMMER 1972
PENCIL
The pencil I use
for drawing
got too small
last week.
I looked for another
everywhere in the house,
but I couldn’t find one.