with a pungent, sticky-sweet aroma,
smudged with rosy lipstick.
This makes me think of my grandma Ruth.
Sometimes, often, when she’s sipping coffee,
she becomes gossipy.
She calls Joe “a good earner.”
But after a glass or two of wine,
she claims, in her clotted Hungarian accent,
“Your farder, heez a ladyeez man.
A ‘playing boy.’”
I correct her:
“You mean a ‘playboy,’ Gran?”
“Yes!” Then she quickly adds,
“But he has to be in his business.”
She sneaks a glance at my mother.
I wonder what she’d say about the lipstick?
She’d say something, that’s for sure.
TA-DA!
I show the evening bag to Judith.
But I’m already wondering,
who used this little beauty before me?
What does she look like?
Who is she?
Joe brings Davy into the living room.
For him, there’s a tissue-soft leather wallet.
Davy discovers ten thousand Lira inside!
“Italian money looks so cool,” he says.
“Pretty,” my dad explains.
“Not worth much, but enjoy.”
Davy tries to read the bills:
“Banca D’Italia…”
“Ta-da!” My dad presents my mother with perfume.
“Don’t you ‘ta-da’ me,” she says.
“You buy your daughter an evening bag,
but for me more perfume?
I bet it’s a stupid sample!
You probably didn’t even buy it, Joe!”
My father yells that the perfume
was more expensive than my bag.
And she should read the label.
It’s not his brand, for Chrissake.
“Did you hear that, Davy?”
my mother says,
trying to get him on her side.
She hurls the bottle across the room.
It smashes and breaks.
Our house will reek for weeks
from the scent
of their bad marriage.
LOATHSOME VISITOR
I’m getting cramps!
They’re growing more and more intense,
roiling my insides
as if I swallowed a typhoon.
There’s a thick, gluey wetness
between my legs.
It’s the loathsome “visitor.”
Finally!
I’m nearly fifteen, way overdue!
Thick, warm, cherry-red blood
almost gushes out of me.
I open the drawer where my mother
keeps her sanitary pads,
stick one in my panties, and lie down.
Getting to be a woman
is a huge, life-changing moment.
You can’t turn back.
The cramps are telling me
that I’m growing up
and that growing up isn’t going to be—
OUCH!—any sort of picnic.
HUMAN FEMALES
I want an aspirin. Or a kiss, maybe.
Or wine, and I don’t even like wine.
I hear my mother’s shoes stomping toward me.
Could this moment be special,
simply about being human females?
Should I tell her?
No!
But then I’m on my feet,
running into the kitchen.
“It happened!” I blurt out.
“My period! It’s happening right now!”
Her hand goes back and stings my cheek.
Thwap! Then again, the other cheek. Thwap!
“Don’t look so stricken, Maisie,” she says.
“My mother slapped me,
her mother slapped her.
It’s good luck, a Hungarian tradition.
One day you will slap your daughter, too.”
She phones her mother to tell her the news.
I wonder if this truly was a good-luck slap
or just another lucky chance to hit me.
SHE CAN REALLY DANCE
When the cramps finally quiet down,
I get up and decide
to listen to my favorite fast songs
on the Chubby Checker album.
I play the same track over and over,
play it loudly.
I’m twisting, and I’m shouting,
twisting on the outside
to match how twisted I feel on the inside.
I’m dancing, madly dancing
alone in my room for the longest time.
If you saw me from outside my window,
I bet you would think, She can really dance.
But what I’m mostly doing
is trying to feel the ground under my feet.
BITE INTO LIFE
The next day, as soon
as I get home from school
and walk into the apartment,
Judith starts in on me.
“I still have cramps,” I mumble.
“So do I!” she says.
“The worst one is named Maisie!”
So I call Rachel,
ask her if I can bring over some rugelach.
“We have coffee cake!” she says.
She sings a little happy song.
“So hurry!”
As I walk toward her building,
I pass Richie sitting on a bench reading.
Nearby, kids are playing stickball.
One makes a hit.
The ball goes hurtling straight for Richie,
just missing his head.
None of the guys stop,
not even for a minute to wonder,
“Hey, are you shook up?”
None of them approach him.
Not one “sorry, man.”
I wish Richie would stride over to the mound,
like his stocky, fierce dad might,
and warn them not to mess with him.
But he only turns around, stunned and dazed.
There are times, like now,
I worry that Richie,
unlike James Joyce,
doesn’t want to bite into life.
I worry that if he did,
he’d spit life right out.
COLORED BOTTLES
A few blocks down,
I spot Rachel on the street.
She’s waving goodbye to someone.
A boy! He’s tall, walks with a swagger.
I can’t see his face.
But something about him makes me want to.
When I get closer to Rachel, I ask,
“Is that the ‘crush’ guy?
Nice shoulders!”
“Gino has nice everything,”
she says suggestively,
adds a giggle I’ve never heard before.
I wonder what “everything” she means?
“He’s a senior, too!
A senior, no less!”
She does a little twirl,
then points up to her building.
“Look up! Look at my mother’s newest creation!”
Yellow, blue, red, purple bottles reflect
the last moments of the late-October sun
in one of Rachel’s windows.
Who would ever think of displaying colored glass
to create an urban rainbow?
BLUE-AND-WHITE FLOORS
Inside, Rachel’s kitchen
has blue-and-white linoleum floors,
like a checkerboard.
“The decor was my mom’s idea.
Once we moved all the furniture
and played checkers sitting on the floor!”