by Lois Chapin
The roads are good for playing chicken with 50s or 60s cars. Anatomical hieroglyphics are spray-painted on the hovels. The desert is hot and empty. The post-apocalyptic get-away is a foreshadowing of what a real ocean will do one day. I shudder.
We drive out to Slab City, a community of hermits living on an old bombing site in camo-netting-covered enclaves. My Lexus is in one cross hair after another as we drive to the top of the “art gallery.” Rebel flags, barbed wire and hand-drawn cardboard signs discourage my asking to borrow a cup of flour. This is the anti-OC with found art sculptures reaching toward the Mojave sky with their last hospice breath. A wind chime of beer cans and whippets chatters in the hot breeze. We haven’t seen another human, only their attempts at statements, Vesuvius artifacts proving we’ve been the same forever, always being reclaimed by Mother Nature. The Mother’s Day a mother deserves.
Never Brought It Up
My daughter thanked me
for never bringing
it up.
It was all
my mother
spoke of.
I played with Barbies
on the floors
of TOPS, OA and Weight Watcher’s.
At twelve,
she showed me
how to throw up
in the stall
at the Chinese restaurant.
My friends’ daughters
stayed
on the streets
on purpose.
On speed, the new
belted jiggling machine.
I shrunk to threats of divorce
over seven pounds,
at pig calls
over an extra five.
Soooooeeeeee!
The scale,
my magic eight ball,
predicted how
my day would go.
Studied for GRE’s
on an apple a day
and an oatmeal bar.
Counted every hated calorie.
Bragged size two.
Twenty-four inch waist.
Diluted good wine
with soda water.
Solid food on days
that began with “S”
Slim Fast for all the others.
Nine-month famish
back down
to a hundred and ten
after each birth.
Tiny was the only safety.
Of course, I never
brought it up.
A woman isn’t more
by being less.
Trick or Treat
Latex dresses
vacuum seal
in her naiveté.
Stilettos for stomping
on paying patrons.
Six-foot whips to whirly-bird
her invisible shield.
The pin up girls
on the front of the flying fortresses
that Grandpa,
a B17 pilot flew,
had her blonde hairstyle.
Even her drug of choice
borrowed from the Beat poets.
I don’t celebrate anymore.
Lights are off in my house
by dusk.
I don’t want to drop paper-wrapped
corn syrup treats
into pillow cases.
Those little costumed tricks
that hide pranks
until puberty.
Sitting on my office floor,
the child of Christian parents
places a Jack-O-Lantern
in my sand tray.
We are both working tonight.
Fearless
I watch your eyes track the posters
on the wall of the underground.
They do that nystagmus thing
the way they did
when I held you to my breast
for the first time.
Like you are trying to focus,
but so much is happening,
so much to take in,
try to make sense of.
Then you latched on
and your eyes closed.
Now you sign the letters
of the words
racing in your head.
I try to read the words
expressed by your body
but they are your own
rendition.
This trip our roles
have changed.
You are the one familiar
with the terrain.
I am the stranger.
You teach me what words mean
like, “alight” for “get off,”
“proper” for “decent,”
“lovely” for “awesome,”
and even “aubergine” for “eggplant.”
You teach me how to share,
share a hostel room
with five other people.
How to take turns
on a roundabout
in downtown Milan
in 5:00 PM traffic.
You teach me to trust,
trust people
with different clothes,
languages,
smells
and colors.
You model trying
new things,
practice saying words
over and over
until they come out
like they’re supposed to sound.
You’re fearless,
flips and sweats
where everyone else is dressed
for high fashion shopping.
You wear woman’s sizes
when everyone else
is in child-sizes.
How to break out in laughter,
share a table
with strangers
and find a few words in common,
enough to smile
make a toast,
and maybe become
Facebook friends.
You show me how to ask
for what I want.
How to speak up
to a gondolier
for pick up
at our canal-side table
or entrance to your university
with a smile-pass
for your mother’s admission.
The belief that you’ll figure it out
with a partial address
and train transfers
to the teppanyaki restaurant
in the heart of London
where they set your ice cream
on fire.
You demonstrate that it’s what’s inside
that counts
while wearing three-day old jeans
and hiking boots
in fine dining establishments.
You show me,
guide me
and have patience with me
over six boat trips,
two plane flights,
two crazy taxi rides,
innumerable train connections
and 1000 miles of driving
a subcompact manual transmission.
Thank you,
my teacher,
navagatrix,
and daughter.
Granddaughter
I admire your audacity.
My father admired mine.
I wonder what he would have thought
of you.
Outrageous,
smart,
quick,
resourceful,
fearless.
He was Spectrum “pai
nfully shy.”
He said this about himself
many times.
I took him to a private magic club
once.
He loved to perform sleight of hand.
I thought he would climb out of his skin,
picking at bites
of the fine dining.
He let my mother dictate how everything should be.
No one dictates anything to you.
You stand with your feet apart,
melded to the floor,
and scold the Polish man with a cockney accent
for drinking our cheap wine
while we toured Italy.
You smile
but your tone says,
“This won’t happen again.”
I smile,
preemptive,
there are now two expensive bottles hidden
under your bed,
our bed.
I’m on the top bunk.
My father never stood his ground.
He was always vigilant
about where he was expected to move
and tried to anticipate what others wanted.
You watch for what’s expected
and do the opposite.
I think it delights you to see people staring
at your bare toes
in the rain
or see shock on their faces
when you answer questions
about your major.
People remember you.
My father put effort into blending in.
Attracting attention was equivalent
to nuclear fallout.
He would be intrigued
watching you.
Alone though,
he could be fearless.
He gave us kids eyedroppers to suck up
mercury off the lab floor
after a machine broke,
spraying quicksilver over the linoleum squares.
He hiked us into desolate areas
and lived off what we carried in our back packs.
He would get stuck exploring dirt roads
in the family station wagon,
lock us in,
and hike out to go get help
long after dark.
He would’ve liked your uniqueness.
He would’ve understood your certainty
that you will always have a place to lay your head.
He would’ve got your self-sufficiency.
He kept his van stocked with provisions
for similar reasons.
I will have to be the one to tell you
he admires you.
Another Thing
“With this anxiety,
I can only get out of my car
at about half the meetings,” she says.
A “One minute” chip hangs from her key chain.
Her makeup is perfect and her eyes are clear.
She’s a grown woman.
But she still smells like my little girl.
Away for six months fighting demons.
I want to believe
she’s slaughtered them all
at one of those seven hospitals and rehab centers.
“But that’s good,” I say. “Right?”
I swipe my 76 card for her pump
and then mine.
It’s like she’s dragging a corpse around.
Slows down everything
she tries to do.
Dead weight.
Dead dreams.
Dead as a doorknob higher power.
Dead ends and blind alleys
always leaving her
dead fucking last.
She squeezes the metal handle
and I hear gas pouring into her car.
“Enough for my court card
so I don’t get kicked out
of my sober living house,” she says.
She shares a room
with 3 of the 19 women in her house.
She never had that many girls in any grade
at the hippie dippy school
where she was a Butterfly,
a Spelunker,
and a Chameleon.
This is all my fault
just like my mother and my ex said.
I’m nauseous.
It’s the gasoline.
There’s a soggy lottery ticket on the asphalt.
My handle pops down.
The tank can’t be full.
I squeeze with both hands.
“Fucker,” I mumble.
“What?” she says.
“Nothing, just air backfilling,” I say.
Her new sponsor
has eighteen years,
sort of.
She’s a dry White Supremacist,
well at least into Norse mythology.
Gets into fights,
orders bad boys around.
Doesn’t believe in promiscuity
or abortion.
But she’s clean and sober.
She’s working on a Ph.D. in psychology.
Hauls around a dual diagnosis too.
She’s moving her ten year-old son
in with the latest skinhead.
She met him three months ago.
She and her NRA card want
behind the Orange Curtain,
out of the IE.
My daughter’s tired of the little men
behind the Orange Curtain
and wants to go back
to London.
Back to the LGBTQ
BDSM scene
with an accent.
She’s doing better at brushing her teeth.
“Did you pick up my prescription?” she says.
Her eyes are testimony
to the absence
of tablets, capsules, sublingual strips, needles and patches.
“We’ll stop there next,” I say.
My girlfriends rave
about her complexion,
weight loss
and new energy.
The men in my life
see something else.
Something dark.
Something lurking.
Something only men know.
Something wounded.
Something predators watch for.
Something yet to be addressed.
They refuse to speak to her
or ask her about her recovery.
They hide their helplessness in their resentment.
A drizzle of gasoline slides down the paint on my car.
I grab a squeegee out of the muck.
I don’t want to see what they see.
The secret that stole her innocence.
The unspeakable taboo.
The thing that gave her a phobia of fish mouths.
The thing her aunties only spoke of in their fifties.
The thing that draws her to be pressed down and squished.
The thing that made her slam the book shut
when I read how babies are made.
The thing that skulks around her subconscious.
The thing that is only silenced
by needles
and prescription pads.
The thing that steals her,
her serenity,
and her beautiful voice.
Another thing I can’t control.
I slam the little gas door closed.
Aspiration
At my office, the terrified caller
found a phone video of her
teenager giving head.
Was sure it was her and her wife’s fault.
Orange County’s still voting on prop 8.
The Syrian mother, in a western dress
that revealed her limp (the price of escape)
speaks only Arabic to her five-year-old.
In an accented whisper, she told me
his teacher says the other kids are scared
when they play Power Rangers with him.
The mountain waiter repeated, “Gentlemen,”
with distain, to my trans kid and her dad.
She ran to the restroom in tears,
proud she could bounce.
The date-rape victim lied to me.
She won’t make a police report on her way home.
I’d ask how many men might have raped her
at the party.
She was drugged. Out cold.
Hadn’t considered the pain and bruises
could’ve been from more
than just her ex.
The soldier, trained with the US military,
10 years’ active duty,
needs yet another psych eval,
to amend his application for citizenship.
ICE “lost” all his documentation.
His skin’s too brown,
accent’s too Latin.
Vet charged me $110 for doggy Advil.
Well, 70 of it was to rule out cirrhosis.
Closet drunk.
My brother’s still radio silent.
Not fake news.
This Christmas my son unwrapped
two YUGE scrapbooks from Grandma.
I was 10 the last time she gave me something
that was less than a month
past its expiration date.
I got jealous when my lover shared a bottle of wine
with another woman, at his house, in the afternoon.
He got mad at my tears. He doesn’t know
how good he is in bed.
I found the Roku remote,
the one I accused everyone of stealing,
at the bottom of my backpack.
My esthetician left a brownie on my desk, so I could sleep.
My lover bought me sunflower seeds
in a brown paper bag with the sides rolled down
to keep me awake.
Eighteen long months, living in a world gone crazy,
since my daughter aspirated her own blood
up inside a steel needle
before she shot up.
Day Pass
The Preacher droned on
entertaining himself.
The lady next to me
smiled like she knew me.
I scooted toward my daughter
on the other side.
She wore the red prayer beads
I’d bought her at the bookstore
yesterday.
She’d picked up a used book of Apocrypha quotes too.
