Ordinary Hazards

by Nikki Grimmes

  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

  the serious business

  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,

  along with Kendall, Brad, and Grace,

  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.