by Betty Culley
participating in class
or handing in assignments.
I lean over his desk
and tap my ears.
I can’t always hear
what’s going on.
He looks relieved.
Well, I can see that could
be a problem.
I’ll make an appointment
for you
with the school audiologist.
In the meantime
I can arrange that you get to sit
up front.
I raise my hand.
Oh no, please,
I don’t want anyone
feeling sorrier for me
than they already are.
He gives me a kind
counselor smile.
Got it, Liv.
Elinor
At the soup kitchen
people say
Hi there, singer girl
and talk to me for the first time.
Hunter isn’t there.
Elinor and I work in the
walk-in cooler,
checking expiration dates.
Donated food
goes bad, too.
Only one more afternoon
with us, Elinor comments.
I’m guessing she’s thinking
I’m gonna say
how much l love volunteering
how much I’ve learned
how I want to keep giving back,
finding meaning here.
I’d like to come visit
your mother,
Elinor says.
I don’t know about that.
Mom’s kinda busy
working at Tractor Barn.
Trying to clean the house
on the weekends.
That last part
about the cleaning
isn’t exactly true.
Elinor gives me a
mind-reader look,
Your mom and I used to hang out
with the same crowd in high school.
My brother worked with your father
in the mill.
My aunt lives one block over from
where you live.
Maybe some Sunday
your mother has off?
Right, this is a small town.
You don’t need to give anyone
your résumé.
They already know everything
they need to know.
That’s up to you.
Try giving her a call
is the nicest warning I can think of.
Sounds
The school audiologist
is friendly,
at first.
I like the sounds the machine makes
in my ears.
They remind me of the sounds I hear
in class—
Bip Barp Eet Dud Deep
When we’re done
she says she didn’t find
any problem
with my hearing.
I scored well
on high-pitched sounds, too.
Oh, like what a dog hears
or a bat?
I ask her.
I forget which animal hears those sounds
or makes them.
No, she says,
this test is for
PEOPLE.
I confess,
It’s more the words
that are the problem,
not the sounds.
I see, she says,
but does she?
River
Next time we meet
at the river,
Clay’s hair is wet
and he smells like soap,
but there is still a chemical smell
in the air.
He looks even skinnier.
Are the chemicals slowly
exterminating him
like a bedbug or a flea
or a carpenter ant?
Would the river
wash him clean?
Would it wash
both of us
clean?
I don’t have the heart
to play Three Things.
I lie back on the dock
next to Clay.
The snow is gone
from the banks now,
and today for the first time
I heard the loud honking
of Canada geese,
returning north for spring.
If it wasn’t half dark
we could see the sky.
So much sky
over the river.
If we fell asleep right here,
I say,
when we woke up
the first thing we’d see
is the sky.
That’s true,
Clay says.
He’s nice enough
not to point out that
even though it’s spring,
we’d freeze
if we tried to sleep outside
this time of year.
Gwen
One morning
Gwen is waiting for me
on the line again
in her bathrobe.
I know about the river,
she says.
What about the river?
The river belongs to
everyone.
Does Clay talk to you there
at the river?
He won’t talk to me.
He won’t listen
about going back to school.
Can you talk to him?
Please.
It’s the please
that gets to me,
and the bathrobe
and the fact
that she won’t
cross the invisible line.
Talk about what?
Talk about anything.
We don’t know
what he’s thinking
anymore.
What he wants.
Gwen reaches a hand out
to me.
I tell my hand NO
but it grasps Gwen’s
across the line.
I don’t know what I have
promised Gwen
or how I will keep
that promise.
Friends
It’s decided
my time-out
from the cafeteria
is over.
The office secretary says
she’ll miss my company
at lunch.
Rainie, Piper, and Justine
make room for me at the table.
This is what’s in my school salad—
two large pieces of lettuce,
brown and curling in on the edges,
four skinny slices of carrot,
one long slice of celery,
two cherry tomato halves.
I think about making a beach bungalow
with my salad.
I could stand four carrots upright
and cover them with the largest
piece of lettuce
for the roof.
For the palm tree—
little cuts in the top of the celery
to make fronds.
Instead I eat a carrot
and the palm tree.
Rainie leans her head against mine.
When we were little
and people said our hair
was the same shade of brown,
we’d say it’s ’cause
we’re best friends.
We missed you, Liv.
That was so unfair,
Rainie says.
Piper puts the two halves
of the cherry tomatoes
together
and gives them to me.
Justine asks,
So, is Jonah getting better?
It is not my friends’ fault
what they say
what they don’t say.
I remember the quote
> on the blackboard
in English class.
How can you expect a man
who’s warm to understand
a man who’s cold?
From One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Mrs. Osgood asked us,
What do you think that means?
Gavin raised his hand.
It’s wicked cold in Russia?
We laughed at that.
I think I could answer
Mrs. Osgood’s question
now.
My father had a lecture
Jonah called
Dad’s everybody-has-something sermon.
Dad believed we
couldn’t judge anyone
’cause we could never really know
what it was like
to walk in someone else’s shoes.
Justine doesn’t see
how beautiful she is,
how everyone wants
to be her
except her.
She thinks her legs
are too long,
her chest too big,
her hair too thin,
her eyes
too far apart.
Justine’s mother died
of an overdose
when she was a baby.
She says she sees her mother
in her dreams,
and is sorry when she
wakes up.
Rainie
can’t stop herself
from shoplifting,
even though her father
is a police officer
and she hears his stories.
Her mother has no clue.
I know that Rainie’s hands
are in charge
and I
can’t judge.
I picture
a small hungry animal
burrowing inside Rainie,
and her hands
finding things to give it,
to make it
less hungry.
Piper worries she’ll die
from the superbug
and is afraid of germs
I can’t even pronounce.
She is sure
flesh-eating bacteria
are everywhere.
She was born in India
and her mother, Millie,
adopted her
when she was two.
Millie wants to
take her back there
for a visit this summer,
but once Piper heard
the shots she’d need—
against diseases like typhoid
and rabies and yellow fever—
she wouldn’t go.
Everybody-has-something.
I have Jonah.
Soup Kitchen
Hunter is back
and his fiddle
is on a chair next to him.
I got a book
of fiddle music.
I’ve been practicing
the “Erie Canal” song.
Elinor says we should play
after lunch.
Hunter looks out at the crowd of people
with the fiddle in his hands,
I’ve got a mule and her name is Sal—
Fifteen miles on the Erie Canal.
She’s a good old worker and a good old pal—
Fifteen miles on the Erie Canal.
We’ve hauled some barges in our day
Filled with lumber, coal, and hay,
And we know every inch of the way
From Albany to Buffalo.
His right foot keeps time
like the music
is inside tapping to come out.
Low bridge, everybody down,
Low bridge for we’re coming to a town.
And you’ll always know your neighbor
And you’ll always know your pal
If you’ve ever navigated on the Erie Canal.
There’s laughing and clapping
and waving as people leave.
I turn the urn spigot for a few last drips
of coffee
scoop sugar into it
and raise my cup to Hunter.
That was great.
Jonah’s nurses are planning
a birthday party for him.
Would you come and play?
Sure, just let me know when.
He zips his fiddle
into its case.
Of course
in our small town
there’s no need to explain
Jonah or nurses
to Hunter.
This is your last afternoon,
Elinor says,
as if I hadn’t been counting
them off.
Don’t be a stranger.
Termites
The days are getting longer
and the half dark comes slower
down by the river.
Are your eyes green or blue or brown
or yellow?
I ask Clay.
Every time I look
I see a different color.
It’s like a kaleidoscope.
Mayflies and yellow-eyed crickets
have yellow eyes,
not people.
he says
It’s just like Clay
to be studying about bugz
when he is not “managing” them.
Clay points to the half-light sky and then the river.
You’re probably just seeing reflections
of colors
in my eyes.
What about my eyes?
I ask Clay
Dark brown with little orange streaks.
You didn’t even look at them,
I point out.
You think
after all these years
I don’t know
the color of your eyes, Liv?
I turn my face
so Clay can’t see
what I’m feeling.
Tell me three things
about termites,
I say.
Clay groans.
Really, Liv?
I poke him in the chest
with my finger.
Play the game.
First Finger.
Only the worker termites
can digest wood.
Second Finger.
They are responsible for
building the mud tubes and nests
for the whole colony.
Third Finger.
Worker termites are blind
and work twenty-four hours a day
for their entire two-year life.
I’m sorry I asked
about termites.
Clay sounds so sad
about the worker termites’ life,
I don’t know what to say.
That’s the problem with the
Three Things game.
You have to tell the truth
and sometimes the truth hurts.
I think about my promise to Gwen.
I did talk to Clay.
We talked about eyes
and termites.
That will have to be enough
for now.
Mom
Mom watches me make
my morning coffee.
She stands at the counter
with one finger
in her mouth.
She’s pressing her finger
on a tooth
and I see her flinch
like she just got
an electric shock.
Then she speaks to me.
I hear you’re working yourself up
to repeat your sophomore year.
Did you change your mind
about college?
What do you think you’ll do
with a tenth-grade education?
I dump an extra spoonful of sugar
in my coff
ee
and turn around to look at my mother.
Her work shoes are scuffed,
her face is puffy.
It’s been a long time
since she’s had her hair trimmed.
Even so,
I raise my hands in the air
my palms facing upward,
and shrug my shoulders,
Work at Tractor Barn?
Jonah
Ga-Ga-Ga-Rah Ga-Ga-Ga-Rah
Zombie Vest makes Jonah’s sounds
vibrate.
Ga-Ga-Ga-Urgh
Suck-It-Up makes Jonah gag.
Ook Ook Ook
Food Truck
delivers too much supper
and Jonah cries in pain.
Sometimes the machines
are Jonah’s friends.
Sometimes they betray him.
When the machines are bad
I put them in the corner
of the room.
I tell Jonah,
Don’t worry about Food Truck.
I pressed the Pause button.
And I warned Suck-It-Up
he’s next.
There’s a calendar
in my head
and all the months
say “Jonah.”
Instead of
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday,
the days are
Good Day, Bad Day.
If there are more Good Days
than Bad Days,
then it’s a Good Month.
The Deal
Gwen is very impatient.
She is back on the line
again.
Same faded bathrobe,
accessorized with
worn slippers.
Did you talk to Clay?
I did.
Gwen ties another knot
in the bathrobe belt.
And?
We talked about eyes
and termites.
It was only one time.
Muh Muh Muh
Gwen sounds like Jonah,
making sounds but not
words.
I have seen his struggle
so the new nicer me
just waits.
Gwen can’t look at my face.
My guh guh . . .
My gun is gone.
I realize she can’t speak
the word gun
to me
any louder
than a whisper.
You think Clay has it?
I don’t know,
Gwen says.
Why don’t you ask him?
Gwen lets her arms
hang down by her sides.
We both know she can’t
ask him.
Okay,
I say,
okay, I find your
gun
and you move
off this street.
Gwen nods YES
to the deal.
Logs
My dad’s father
was a log driver
on the Kennebec River,
this same river
that passes behind our house.
My grandfather rode the logs
down the river
to the mill.
All he had was
spiked shoes
