& try to hide the history
of where my people from
the ones that got a pit bull with a chain around its neck & smoke clouds everywhere
I put a T-shirt on top
& try to hide where I come from
the kind of folks that park on the lawn & clean they car
with the Gap Band blasting out the door speakers
I put a T-shirt on top
& hope no one asks where my dad works.
Where my dad is?
Why my sister, Essa, & I always fight on the lawn?
I just want to swim
in the teal green sorta blue bubble
& forget all the things that make me different
for a little while.
BASKETBALL DRILLS #1
both hands grip the orange world
ridges in black talk back to my fingertips
James
Bird
Bryant
Catchings
Jordan
Leslie
Curry
Hammon
Jackson
Iverson
Johnson
For every letter of their name
I plant my feet aim & shoot
if I flick my left wrist perfectly
I’ll soar like the greats.
AFTER MY DRILLS
Lay Li & I both sit in the shade
on the front lawn of the neighborhood candy house
Miss Irene got white hair & a permanent scowl
She got white hair, a little white lapdog & wear a dusty muumuu
She smokes cigarettes, the white stick hanging from the cliff of her lip
Like a daredevil
Miss Irene say she ain’t got time for us kids
& don’t let nobody curse on her front yard
But she got a Costco card & charge pennies on the dollar
for our favorite sweets
We get a dollar worth of candy in a plastic sandwich bag
that we share
After my basketball drills, I walk around the barbed gate
of the neighborhood pool
I climb into the blue green water and float for days
Really I only got an hour before the pool closes
But I don’t care when I’m floating
It lets me think
My eyes closed or searching the sky for animal figures
Ice cream cones & airplanes that skip across the blue blue up
The aqua water carry my arms & legs
A body of girl & whoosh
When I’m too tired to move my calves & arms
I climb out the water & feel less rubber band
& more light light
Most days the water burns everything
my nose & eyes & even my hair is too dry
but I feel clean
I feel more me than when I arrived
Lay Li meets me after the pool
She ain’t get in the pool but she still wears
her tube top bikini, a towel draped around her shoulder
like a comma.
She bites at her cuticles & I already know
It’s been almost two years since silly boys slapped water in the pool
Now the boys are gone & it’s just me doing floating like a log
while Mommy & Me classes happen in the shallow end
my muscles hurt after playing Horse alone
A girl on the basketball court ain’t no different
than any other baller, if you work hard enough
that’s what my cousin Inga say
She the first one to teach me to hold the globe with both hands
to use my right hand to guide the ball.
Finally out of the pool
I can see the harsh water peels my skin
I don’t have any cocoa butter on me
So I pull my legs up, crisscross-applesauce
& focus on Lay Li.
When she bites her nails it’s not because she’s nervous
More like anxious and angry
& always it’s about her mama
“So what happened?” I ask
& she frowns at her hands
Then covers her face from the dipping sun
She shrugs
& instantly I feel bad
I know what it feels like to have
Too much to say
So much you can’t speak
I make noise when I’m nosy
I slap the mosquitoes gnawing at my legs
It’s been a year since we last talked
about her mama but that’s the only
thing that bothers her enough
to bite-ruin her perfect nails
But Lay Li don’t sweat it
she don’t swing at the mosquitoes
she don’t even miss a beat.
“That woman been gone so long
I can barely remember what she looks like.”
I CAN’T IMAGINE
what it’s like to forget my mother’s face
I sit quiet & wait for her story to unfold
My mama still on drugs
& my daddy ain’t got time for all that
He don’t want us girls to see her like that
He says every child deserve to be the sun
To know they come from the sun
& if the sun snuff itself to dusk before its time
& no shine is left to see
Let it be
One day we woke up & she was already
a cloudy shadow of herself
Then one day we woke up & she was
gone
She only come home when she clean
She only call home when she sorta sober
She ain’t never remembered my birthday
or my sisters’ birthday & I’m like whatever.
When you live where we live
You say what it is & if you can’t say what it is
Or if it hurt too much
Or maybe it’s too confusing
You just say “whatever.”
That way you ain’t no lie
DON’T NOBODY WANT TO CALL IT
Especially when it got more faces than any solitary name
but if I’m honest
I want to know if Lay Li seen the zombies too
The ones who take over my uncles’ bodies
after weeks of playing ghost
only to return him to our front door
with his clothes all crumpled
& eyes brimming red
Lay Li is the only one I can talk to about
The smell of hot ash & burned glass
“You know what it looks like.”
She stands up from the grass
swinging her dry striped towel in the air
“It looks like the walking dead.”
ON THE WAY TO MY HOUSE
I need to rinse the chlorine off my skin
I need to remember who I am
Lay Li say, “Where’s your cocoa butter?”
& I know she wants to call me ashy.
When I walk through the front door
I’m surprised no one is home
I turn on the television & tell Lay Li I’ll be right back
Right out the blue Lay Li calls to me already running up the stairs
“I’m just tired of crying
over someone
that’s been gone so long.”
LAY LI LAUGHS
like the joke’s on everybody but her
Lay Li
&nb
sp; squints into the mirror & pouts
Lay Li
applies more lipstick than a little
Lay Li
takes my lip gloss as backup just in case
Lay Li say
“It’s so boring here. Let’s call Shawn.”
I laugh like the joke is on Shawn
He’s her old crush & first real boyfriend
Since her mama left the house
But then I realized she just called my house boring
& now my feelings are hurt.
Lay Li say
“Don’t be like that. I ain’t mean nothing by it.”
Lay Li
pull my ponytail a little
Lay Li
is forgiven
again.
I MOVE
her hand & brush at my hair
I mimic the mirror
Reach to take back my lip gloss
& my pride
from Lay Li’s hands
It’s the inexpensive kind from the neighborhood CVS
She pretends she’s gonna keep it
like a child & its pacifier
her arms swing above both of our heads
helicopter style
Out of my reach
She is pleased with herself
& giggling to my hands
waving in the air
fire the roof is on fire
but it ain’t
& I don’t crack a smile
This makes her laugh even harder
All her teeth showing
All my steam moving like a cloud when I cut my eyes
She sighs
rolls her eyes
then tosses it to me before she grabs the phone
& dials with one last perfect pink nail
same color as Essa’s (I think)
But I don’t say anything
Just pucker my lips as
she watches me with boring eyes apply the sheen
Like an impostor.
SNITCHES
get stitches
So I know how to mind my own business
& make sure I don’t tell everybody
the things I know.
It’s funny
I ain’t realize how much silent sauce I got
Until someone stop talking when Lay Li walk by.
Everything go quiet
Like midnight black
Like static on the TV
Like the sound my mama made that time I asked
“Where is daddy?”
Or like the sound my mama made the time I asked
“What is prison?”
I know what silent sounds like
Lay Li & I haven’t talked not once
Since the phone call with Shawn
It’s been a whole week
& the argument has grown teeth
Buried its fangs into our friendship
& won’t let go.
I tried to shake it loose
Even after she accused me
“You trying to break me & Shawn up?!”
Her and Shawn been on and off all summer
He go to high school on the west side of town
& one of the freshest high tops.
She say “You trying to break me & Shawn up?”
And I think I want my friend back.
But not like that
Just want to be able to talk to the only one
who care about how I look when I leave the house
“Girl, brush your hair”
Just want to be able to talk to the only one
who cares about how I look
“Lil, give them basketball shorts a break.”
Even when she get on my nerves & fix me up with boys
Who can’t seem to stand me
The same boys who get mad when I beat them on the court
They say I talk too much mess
I say “Only on the court”
& I ain’t no liar, on the court is where it belong
With Lay Li I don’t have to think too hard
I’m the friend of the star
& I don’t mind, not at all
It gives me time to think about my dreams & the WNBA
But when I call Lay Li & she don’t pick up
A pit in my stomach grows like a redwood tree
A WEEK LATER
& Lay Li still avoid me like the plague
Or a pop quiz
Or a dentist appointment
Or that person who just ate onions for lunch
She don’t pick up my calls & now I see her with Samantha, Octavia, Teeja & Tiffany.
So I start to spend every day after school at the basketball court doing drills
I think
Maybe today I’ll run into Lay Li at the pool
Maybe today she will show up
Maybe today she won’t be mad at me anymore
Maybe today she treat me better than dirt
I only get sad when I round the corner & see only
the Mommy & Me group is in the pool
I pull off my basketball shorts & tug the straps of my stupid swimsuit
before I dive into the deep end.
THE NEXT DAY AT SCHOOL
I’m mad
Essa got on my nerves the night before
& made a joke about me not having no friends
“Look at Lay Li,” she said. “Even she don’t want to be around you!”
Today, I sit around the taco bar
near the far side of the lunchroom
& remember all the places I can easily disappear into.
1. Sit by the bench under the tree by the bus stop
Sit next to the girl with her brand-new bra gleaming in the locker room
& I can hear everybody lying to each other.
I sip on my Capri-Sun
& remember what happens
when everyone talks around me
like no one is listening.
2. Sit by the hopscotch outline on the concrete
by the house
3. Sit by the stairs near the attendance office
I hear them say
I sip tea
I say
I mind my own
But everything is everything when you are just who you are
No one special enough to cause a stir
No one who would cause boys to break their necks
I ain’t mad that I don’t stand out
I just know I’ve never stood out before.
When I was younger, I thought I had superpowers
Thought if I sat real still and stared at a book
No one would be able to see me
I got so good at it
I forget that I’m the only one playing the game
Sit still with a book or my head down & you can go missing
& just like that
Everybody talks so much around me
It’s like I ain’t even there
Sometimes
I forget I’m there too
that’s how I hear too much information
that’s how I learn all the things I didn’t know
I want to know.
My lunch of hard shell tacos turns to mush in my hands
Just like me
They can’t hold on to everything anymore
I’m tired of chasing people to be my friend
In my head I can still hear her when we argued
“You ruined everything”
“You ruined everyt
hing”
“You ruined everything”
I’m tired of being worried about people not liking me
I can’t do it anymore
I can’t let Essa get under my skin
I can’t let my opponents on the court make me feel like I don’t belong
I don’t even want these damn tacos anymore
I drop my tray in the trash & head out the door
BASKETBALL DRILLS #2
My sister, Essa,
is the smart one
I shoot swish
But she also lies so much
I think it’s her favorite song
I shoot swish
She lies so much she never know when the truth sneaks up
I shoot
She lies so much it sound like a history lesson
miss
She lies so much she’ll make you believe rain is a color coming out the sky
I shoot
& when she lies like she do
I still think she makes rainbows
miss
Because no one forgets her name.
I shoot
backboard bounce swish
Everywhere she goes they laugh at all her jokes
Everywhere she goes they call her brilliant
Everywhere she goes they also call her slick talker
I shoot miss shoot miss shoot bricks
Essa lies so much she never knows when the truth sneaks up
& smack her in the mouth!
shoot: swish
(That’s what our grandma Maxi say)
& I think it’s hilarious
I laugh & laugh & laugh
with all my teeth showing
shoot: swish
except Grandma Maxi don’t play that
“kids laughing at grown folks’ jokes.”
So
S H O O T MY S H O T
I grin real big
with my lips shut
t i g h t…
(swish)
ON THE WEEKEND, I GO TO THE MALL WITH ESSA & INGA
Chlorine Sky Page 2
