The Lesson

we morphed through adolescence and sex ed in 45 minutes vaj-eye-na ee-jack-u-late pee-nis and got it when she told us the origin of her name “Twinkle” a metaphor, and laughed out-loud behind our hands don’t tell the boys skipping toward home I remembered I am grown up now and stopped tried to walk like Doris Day in “The Thrill of It All” ur-in-ate (not tt) in-ter-course and, it’s not a doodle testing the new syllables outloud with each step Imusttellmymothereverything always pulling the heavy worn dictionary from the shelf because how could she have known those words my mother having learned them from her mother and her mother before her? I rush in and vocabulary spills like sugar cookies bursting in the vanilla scented kitchen but she turns heat rising slams the oven door and the sound bangs against the window above the lilies in full bloom while she white knuckles the black receiver to call the school no I try not to fall into the chasm in the linoleum take a deep breath will myself to appear to her what I must have been before lunch a vein in her neck bulges beneath the strand of silk pearls my heart thuds against my training bra and finally she replaces the receiver smoothes her apron her face proud that I am such a bright little girl and every day—after that—I walk home and pause at the front door to change my face fold the new one carefully between the clean pages of the crisp black and white text how was school today? she asks fine I answer and bite into a warm oatmeal cookie while she hands me a tall cold glass, of milk

Cruella Deville

For Julie who said that I should stop playing it safe with my writing. That was when she found out that I actually do more poetry writing than non-fiction or fiction. So just for you Jules, here's one based on a childhood event in Memphis:

Cruella Deville

always parked her long menacing car sideways on the un-mown scorch in her yard until the night she lurched into our driveway, rode over my bicycle, the headlights two crazed eyes staring through the walls of our house, pounding her drunken fists against the door, ‘Let me in my house!’ When my father opened the door a shaft of light fell, broke into a thousand tiny pieces on the porch.
That’s when I saw the cracked ochre teeth, the red mercurochrome eyes like the time I skinned both knees, smelled grape vinegar leaking from the ends of her wild, sizzling hair. We huddled in our pajamas against our pure cotton mother who always smelled of lilac and yellow, while my dad stepped easily over the broken shards into the darkness, his voice warm music just like the minister’s on Sundays, to gentle Mrs.Deville across the imaginary line between our yards, the one my brothers dared to cross, press their virgin freckles against the big dirty window, see if Satan owned a color television. After my dad fixed my bike I slid onto the seat, closed my hands around the rubber grips and pushed off, picking up speed the pink and white plastic tassels and long flying hair streaking the sun but it never rode straight after that.

The front tire always wobbled just a little.