That Said Read online

  because she would do it even if we said no—

  her father and I argued until we finally said

  okay, just a little one in the front

  and don’t ask for any more, and, also,

  no double pierces in the future, is that a deal?

  She couldn’t wait, we drove straight to town,

  not to our regular beauty parlor, but the freaky one—

  half halfway house, half community center—

  where they showed her the sample card of swatches,

  each silky hank a flame-tipped paintbrush dipped in dye.

  I said no to Deadly Nightshade. No to Purple Haze.

  No to Atomic Turquoise. To Green Envy. To Electric Lava

  that glows neon orange under black light.

  No to Fuchsia Shock. To Black-and-Blue.

  To Pomegranate Punk. I vetoed Virgin Snow.

  And so she pulled a five out of her wallet, plus the tax,

  and chose the bottle of dye she carried carefully

  all the car ride home, like a little glass vial

  of blood drawn warm from her arm.

  Oh she was hurrying me! Darting up the stairs,

  double-locking the bathroom door,

  opening it an hour later, sidling up to me, saying, “Well?”

  For a second, I thought that she’d somehow

  gashed her scalp. But it was only her streak, Vampire Red.

  Later, brushing my teeth, I saw her mess—

  the splotches where dye splashed

  and stained the porcelain, and in the waste bin,

  Kleenex wadded up like bloodied sanitary napkins.

  I saw my girl—Persephone carried off to Hell,

  who left behind a mash of petals on the trampled soil.

  My Mother’s Chair

  Coming home late, I’d let myself in

  with my key, tiptoe up the stairs,

  and there she was, in the family room,

  one lamp burning, reading her newspaper

  in her velvet-and-chrome swivel chair

  as though it were perfectly natural

  to be wide awake at 2 A.M.,

  feet propped on the matching

  ottoman, her orthopedic shoes

  underneath, two empty turtle shells.

  Like a mummy equipped for the afterlife,

  she’d have her ashtray and Kents handy,

  her magnifying mirror,

  and tweezers and eyeglass case,

  her crossword puzzle dictionary.

  Glancing up and down, she never

  appeared to be frisking me, even when,

  just seconds before, coming home

  from a date, at the front door,

  I’d stuck my tongue into a boy’s mouth.

  I’d sit on the sofa and bum her cigarettes,

  and as the room filled up with smoke,

  melding our opposite temperaments,

  we’d talk into the night, like diplomats

  agreeing to a kind of peace.

  I’d feign indifference—so did she—

  about what I was doing out so late.

  When I became a mother myself,

  my mother was still the sentry at the gate,

  waiting up, guarding the bedrooms.

  After her funeral, her chair sat empty.

  My father, sister, husband, and I

  couldn’t bring ourselves to occupy it.

  Only my daughter climbed up its base

  and spun herself round and round.

  In the two years my father lived alone

  in the apartment over their store,

  I wonder, did he ever once

  sit down on that throne, hub

  around which our family had revolved?

  After my father died, the night

  before I left the place for good,

  the building sold, the papers signed,

  before the moving vans drove away,

  dividing the cartons and the furniture

  between my sister’s house and mine,

  a thousand miles apart,

  I sat on the sofa—my usual spot—

  and stared at the blank TV, the empty chair;

  then I rose, and walked across the room,

  and sank into her ragged cushions,

  put my feet up on her ottoman,

  rested my elbows on the scuffed armrests,

  stroked the brown velvet like fur.

  The headrest still smelled like her!

  Swiveling the chair to face the sofa,

  I looked at things from her point of view:

  What do you need it for?

  So I left it behind, along with the blinds,

  the meat grinder, the pressure cooker.

  The Closet

  Wearing her baby-blue nylon nightgown,

  not the muslin shroud we buried her in,

  my mother stands before my closet, puzzled.

  Why are her dresses mingling with mine?

  For once, my mother doesn’t talk.

  She bears no message from Jewish heaven

  where the dead have nothing to do all day

  but sit around and advise the living.

  More like the Ten Commandments:

  Never wear white in winter or velvet in summer.

  Buy life insurance. File a will.

  Does she want me to choose an outfit for her?

  This is a first. She was always the expert on clothes.

  Perhaps when you die, the first thing to go

  is your fashion sense, because in Paradise

  everyone’s dressed the same.

  I remember how, in her store, she’d

  run her eyes over the racks of merchandise

  and know exactly which dress

  her customers should wear

  to their fundraisers, cocktail parties, christenings.

  But where’s she going that’s so important?

  Since she’s lost all that weight

  her dresses just hang off her,

  so she might as well be naked.

  Yet her eyes seem to be begging me

  to help her, help her slip back again

  into the shackles of clothes.

  Possession

  Nesting in my nest, she slept on my side

  of the double bed, stacked the books—my books—

  she was reading on my nightstand.

  In the closet, her dresses pressed

  against my husband’s pants.

  These I boxed up for her mother,

  with the baby’s toys.

  I tossed her blue toothbrush

  and her tortoiseshell comb in the trash.

  Police took away a rug. My two best knives.

  But the kitchen still smells of her spices—

  her cinnamon, curry, cloves.

  The house an aromatic maze

  of incense and sachet.

  Almost every day now something of hers

  turns up. The way La Brea tar pits

  keep disgorging ancient bones, squeezing them

  through the oily black muscles of earth

  to the surface.

  A yoga mat.

  I don’t need it. I already have my own.

  Prayer beads. A strapless bra.

  A gold ring. It’s pretty.

  It fits my pinkie.

  I wash my face with her special soap,

  a cool oval of white clay,

  one thick black hair still glued to it.

  And is it wrong to brew her herbal teas, try her

  aromatherapies, her homeopathic cures,

  the Rescue Remedy she’d told me

  really worked? The amber bottle’s full.

  Why waste it? So I deposit

  four bitter drops on my own tongue.

  Trouble Dolls

  Guatemalan Indians tell of this old custom. When you have troubles, remove one doll from the box for each problem. Before you go to sleep, tell the doll your trouble. While
you are sleeping, the doll will try to solve it. Since there are only six dolls in a box, you are allowed only six troubles a day.

  Every morning, I unbend

  their wire limbs and lay them

  back in their tiny box where

  they sleep all day like vampires.

  Their lidless eyes cannot close—

  the pupils dots of black paint,

  bull’s-eyes ringed

  with insomnia’s dark circles.

  Scalps sprinkled with black salt.

  Arms opened wide,

  as if expecting to be hugged

  or crucified.

  What were their troubles

  before they came to me—

  these brothers, husbands, wives,

  this neighbor’s son-in-law,

  born in the old country

  where churches collapsed

  on their babies, and police

  dragged off the baker,

  soldiers raped the sister,

  and a brother came home

  with his arms twisted, and

  the father with no arms at all?

  Single file, they descend

  the mineshaft of my unconscious,

  with only a pickax and hardhat

  beam to light their path.

  Yet I worry that one night,

  opening their box, I’ll find

  five dolls left, and the next night

  four, subtracting a doll a day—

  until, like the Disappeared,

  they’ll all vanish without a trace,

  leaving me to worry all alone

  in bed with their empty coffin.

  The Blue Address Book

  Like the other useless

  things I can’t bear

  to get rid of—her

  nylon nightgowns,

  his gold-plated

  cufflinks, his wooden

  shoetrees, in a size

  no one I know can use—

  I’m stuck with their blue

  pleather address book,

  its twenty-six chapters

  printed in ballpoint pen,

  X’d out, penciled in,

  and after she passed away,

  amended in his hand,

  recording, as in a family

  Bible, those generations

  born, married, and since

  relocated to their graves:

  Abramowitz to Zimmerman.

  Great-uncles, aunts,

  cousins once removed,

  whose cheeks I kissed,

  whose food I ate,

  are in this book still

  alive, immortal, each

  name accompanied

  by a face:

  Fogel (Rose and Murray),

  474 13th St., Brooklyn,

  moved to a condo

  in Boca Raton; Stein

  (Minnie, sister of Rose),

  left her Jerome Ave.

  walk-up for the Yonkers

  Jewish Nursing Home.

  The baby-blue cover

  has a patina of grease,

  the pages steeped

  in cigarette smoke

  from years spent in my

  parents’ junk drawer.

  Though scattered

  in different graveyards,

  here they’re all

  accounted for.

  Their souls disperse,

  dust motes in the air

  that I inhale.

  Dummy

  He lolled on my twin bed waiting for me

  to get home from Girl Scouts or ballet,

  but I couldn’t really play with him

  the way I’d played with my other dolls—

  buttoning their dresses, buckling their shoes,

  brushing and braiding their long, rooted curls.

  He had the one crummy green gabardine suit.

  His ketchup-colored hair was painted on.

  And while my baby dolls could drink

  from a bottle, cry real tears, blow bubbles,

  and pee when I squeezed their tummies,

  my dummy didn’t have the plumbing.

  The water bottles I’d jam in his mouth

  scuffed his lipstick, mildewed his stuffing.

  Prying his smile apart, I’d run my finger

  along the seven milk teeth lining his jaw.

  But look inside his head. Completely empty!

  No tongue, no tonsils, no brain.

  No wonder he had to wear his own name

  on a label sewn above his jacket pocket

  to remind himself that he was Jerry Mahoney

  and his straight man an eleven-year-old girl

  who jerked the dirty pull string at the back

  of his neck, making his jaw drop open,

  his chin clack like the Nutcracker’s.

  That lazy good-for-nothing! I had to put

  words in his mouth. His legs hung limp,

  his arms flopped at his sides. He couldn’t

  wink or blink or quit staring to the left;

  brown eyes painted open, perpetually

  surprised at what he’d blurt out next:

  “Grandma Fanny has a big fat fanny!

  Uncle Fred should lose that lousy toupee!

  Aunt Shirley dresses like a goddamn tramp!

  That son of hers, Moe, a moron!”—

  what they said behind each other’s backs!

  He did a slow one-eighty of my bedroom.

  “How the hell did I wind up in this joint?”—

  that low, unnatural voice straining through

  my own locked teeth. “Good evening, ladies,”

  he leered at the dolls propped on the shelf,

  cocking his head to see their underpants.

  How old was that wiseacre supposed to be?—

  thirteen? thirty? my father’s age?—the little

  man sitting on my lap, telling dirty jokes