for my slow motion watch to tick off
three
full
minutes.
I’m sidling over
and sneaking through the same hole
into the shadows,
into the warm flanneled arms
of my partner
in delicious crime.
EVERY DAY WHEN I GET HOME FROM SCHOOL
I find televisions on in the living room,
the family room,
the kitchen,
and each of the bedrooms.
There’s even a little teensy one on
in the bathroom.
My mother says
it’s so she won’t miss anything
when she’s going around sweeping
and dusting and putting away laundry
and emptying out wastebaskets
and cooking.
Which is what she does all day long.
Except for when she’s lying in bed
watching television.
That’s where she is
every afternoon
when I get home from school.
She glances up and says hello,
then goes back to watching.
I walk from room to room
switching off all the other sets,
wishing she would show
half as much interest in my life
as she does in Luke and Laura’s.
HER SOAPS
My mother says
they keep her company.
But it’s just the opposite for me.
Listening to that music
that swells up in the background
whenever someone announces they’re pregnant
or dies of a drug overdose
or maybe finds out
their husband is having an affair
with their best friend’s
stepsister’s daughter-in-law,
makes me feel lonelier
than when I was little
and my mother used to
make me wait for her in the car
while she did her errands.
I used to be so scared
that the car would roll away.
So scared that my mother
would never come back.
Sometimes,
when she’s watching her soaps,
it feels like she never did.
MAYBE DAD LOVES ME
But it’s sure hard to tell.
I don’t think he’s ever
kissed me or hugged me
in his life.
Sometimes I hug him
but he doesn’t hug me back.
His body just goes all stiff,
almost like he’s scared of being touched.
Sometimes he jokes around
by putting his palms on my cheeks
and then leaning in
and kissing the back of each of his hands.
When I was real little,
he used to hold his long arm out straight
and put his hand
on my forehead.
Then he’d challenge me
to try to reach his body
with my short arms.
And of course I never could.
He seemed to think this was a riot
and I used to laugh right along with him,
but secretly I wished
he’d cut out the stupid game and hold me.
Dad’s not that way though.
Even before they started fighting,
I never saw him touch Mom.
Not even to hold her hand.
I guess he’s just not
the affectionate type.
And come to think of it,
neither are his parents.
Maybe it’s hereditary or something.
I sure hope I’m not going to be like that.
But judging from how hard it is
for me to keep my hands off Dylan,
I seriously doubt it.
DURING LUNCH
We’re
searching the campus,
hand glued to hand,
hip glued to hip,
looking for a place
behind every hedge,
for just one small
and private spot
where we
can be alone
long enough
to do the serious kissing
that we absolutely
can’t live without
for one more
minute.
ART CLASS
Mr. Schultz
has us building
found-art sculptures
with all this trash we gathered
from under the bleachers
next to the football field
and I’m so into it
that until the bell rings
I don’t even notice
that I haven’t
thought about Dylan once
for the entire forty-eight minutes.
I think I just set
my new world record.
SECRET SHELF
I’m rifling through the dust and jumble
of my parents’ walk-in closet,
searching for the perfect belt
to wear with my new blue skirt,
when I happen to glance up
and see a small shelf
above the door
crammed with paperback books.
Strange to think that
I’ve been in this closet
hundreds of times before
and never once noticed it till now.
I pull over the chair
from my mother’s dressing table,
climb up to take a closer look,
and just about faint:
here are some of
the dirtiest books
I’ve ever seen
in my life.
I try to picture
my mother and father
sitting around reading them,
but it’s just too gross
and I suddenly realize
that I’ll never be able
to think of my parents
in quite the same way as I used to
and that every time they go out
and leave me alone in the house,
I’ll be racing right back up here
to grab another one off the shelf.
MOM AND DAD USED TO BE IN LOVE
Way back in the beginning anyhow.
I know because I can see it in their eyes
when I watch the old home videos
of when I was a baby.
They were really in love,
like people in the movies.
But now they have
these hideous battles all the time.
They scream their guts out
at each other about things like
how they should be raising me
or about money or the in-laws
or even just what movie to go see.
Their shrieking whips around inside me
like a tornado.
And no fingers crammed in my ears,
no pillows held over my head,
can block it out.
It makes me want to throw on my coat
and rush over to Rachel’s
or to Grace’s.
But I can’t bring myself
to set foot outside.
What would I do if
I ran into one of the neighbors?
A neighbor who’s heard
every
single
foul-mouthed word?
I’VE GOT THIS PROBLEM WITH CRYING
Once I start,
I can’t stop.
And what makes it so awful is
that if I cry any longer
than five minutes
(which of course I always do)
my eyes swell up like a boxer’s
for at least twenty-four hours.
&nb
sp; I’ve tried ice packs.
I’ve tried the cold cucumber cure.
I’ve even tried raw steak.
But nothing works.
Ever.
So when I’ve been crying,
I pray for sunshine
because if it’s cloudy out
everyone keeps asking me
why I’m wearing my sunglasses,
and I get so embarrassed
that I start to cry,
and once I start,
I can’t stop.
DINNER DOWNER
Seems like Dad’s been going
on more and more business trips lately.
And when he’s not out of town,
he’s at his office twelve hours a day.
But once in a while
he makes it home by six
and the three of us have dinner together,
almost like a regular functional family.
We sit down at the kitchen table,
Dad flicks on the TV,
and we watch the evening news
while we eat.
Sometimes
I wish
I could just
switch it off,
so we could actually make
dinner conversation,
like they do over at Rachel’s house,
and at Grace’s.
Every now and then,
during the commercials
Dad will say something like,
“How was school today, Sophie Dophie?”
Once I said, “We played strip poker
during third period and I lost.”
Dad just said, “That’s nice,”
without even looking up from his meatloaf.
Lately, I’ve been trying
to concentrate on Dylan during dinner.
On imagining we’re at Miss Mae’s Diner.
Just the two of us.
It helps a little.
AT MISS MAE’S DINER
tucked in the corner
of our favorite booth
next to each other
instead of across
I’m trying hard to focus
on reading the menu
but his hand has slipped
under the tablecloth
and his fingers
are stroking my knee
DYLAN AND I BUMP INTO HIS OLD GIRLFRIEND AT THE MALL
She’s
batting her lashes at him,
touching his arm,
saying how great he looks
and calling him Pickle, as in Dill. Ha. Ha.
He’s
blushing and
flashing her these intimate grins,
as though her calling him that stupid name
is bringing back all these
secret fond memories.
And I’m
just standing here
with this paralyzed smile on my face,
wishing I could grab his hand
and make a dash for the elevator.
BY COMPARISON
Watching Dylan
with his old girlfriend Ivy
makes me feel
like I’m some sort of
Amazonian freak of nature,
like I’m the Mount Everest
of teenage girls.
I bet whenever they went to the beach
he used to pick her up
and throw her in the water.
I bet if he tried to pick me up
his knees would buckle.
Not that I’m fat.
It’s just that I’m tall
and there’s so darn much of me.
I’m thinking
Dylan should be with someone
more like Ivy,
someone petite and blonde
and infinitely perky.
I’m wondering what he’s doing
with huge old, mousy brown,
terminally sluggy me.
But when she finally wiggles away,
Dylan turns to me and says,
“Man, I used to hate it
when she called me Pickle.
And I forgot how tiny she was.
How could I ever have gone out
with someone who looks like
she could be my baby sister?”
Wow.
He always says
just
the right thing.
How does he do that?
I’m the luckiest
fifty-foot woman alive.
IN ENGLISH CLASS
If Mrs. Livingston glances up
from the stack of essays she’s slashing
with her famous red pen,
it will appear as if I’m reading
The Grapes of Wrath.
But if she comes around
to look over my shoulder,
she’ll catch me
staring at the photo
I’ve tucked into the center of the book,
the one
that Dylan slipped into my pocket
last night
just before
we kissed goodbye,
where he’s
standing on the beach
with this surfer boy smile on his lips,
the wind tossing his blond curls
everywhere,
the one that says:
“for Sapphire
from a secret admirer”
inside a little heart
on the back,
the one where he looks so amazingly cute
that Mrs. Livingston might
just find herself
instead of giving me detention.
DURING FRENCH CLASS
Je ne peux pas conjugate the verbs
parce que I’m sitting right across
from my old boyfriend Lou
and his lips.
I feel myself turning green
when I look at them:
thick, chapped,
gleaming under a drizzle of spit.
How could I ever
have let him kiss me?
I can even remember
wanting him to kiss me.
What could I have been thinking?
That mouth of his,
so perpetually overflowing
with saliva.
It touched mine.
Just last spring
that drooly tongue was in
my mouth.
More than once.
I think I’m gonna be sick.
WALKING HOME FROM SCHOOL WITH RACHEL AND GRACE
Listening to Grace moan about
how horny she is and about how if
she doesn’t find a boyfriend soon
she’s going to die of lackonookie disease,
and to Rachel complain about how
Danny can’t take her out on Saturday night
because his parents have grounded him
again,
I see Murphy
trudging along up ahead
looking so immensely
alone
that I have to fight the urge
to run to catch up to him
and fill that huge empty space
by his side.
I’d never
be able to explain
a move like that
to Rachel and Grace.
ANOTHER NUCLEAR MELTDOWN
My parents just had
World War Twenty-seven.
Dad slammed out the door
and tore off in the car,
burning rubber like a thief
escaping from the scene of the crime.
Mom started bawling
and said that Dad
was a selfish son of a bitch
and that he makes her life miserable
because he doesn’t give a damn
about her feelings.
She would have said
a whole lot more
but I told her I
didn’t want to hear it.
I said she ought to go see a therapist
if she was so unhappy,
and tell the therapist about it.
Mom said,
“If your father sees a therapist,
I’ll be cured!”
I guess that just about
sums up her world view
in a nutshell.
GROWING UP . . . AND OUT
My Aunt Betsy,
who lives in Hawaii,
has a bamboo forest growing in her backyard.
She says a bamboo stalk can grow
as much as four inches in a single day
and that if you sit there and watch it
you can actually see it getting taller.
Well, my breasts
have been growing
so fast lately
that if I were to sit there
and watch them for awhile,
I think I could actually
see them getting bigger.
Dylan hasn’t said anything,
but I see him sneaking peeks
all the time.
It is pretty astonishing
how my molehills
have turned into mountains
overnight.
ICE CAPADES
Sometimes
on chilly nights
I stand close to my bedroom window,
unbutton my nightgown,
and press my breasts
against the cold glass
just so I can see
the amazing trick
that my nipples can do.
IT’S THAT TIME OF THE MONTH AGAIN
I wore
my brand-new white satin panties
to school today.
So,
naturally,
I got my period.
When Rachel gets hers,
she calls it riding the cotton pony.
Grace calls it surfing the crimson wave.