my mother’s trouble for me.
REPAIR
Head on my pillow,
I remember Richie’s white envelope
from before.
“Before” seems like lifetimes ago.
I’m too tired to read it.
I remember the first note he gave me
in the fifth grade.
That one was something about
some book he liked.
I should have known!
It was about James Joyce,
naturally!
I think, no matter what,
it’s easier to be a boy.
All Richie has to do for school
is comb his reddish-blond hair.
He has a white complexion, slim body,
and a look on his face that says
do not touch!
It keeps people guessing.
I toss around, unable to give in to sleep
though I crave it.
I argue, plead with my brain:
Stop chattering!
Pure exhaustion eventually takes over.
I descend into the catacombs of unconsciousness.
SMILE A LITTLE
Later, at 7 A.M.,
the sun blasts through my window,
the most jubilant of friends.
Despite last night,
the miracle happens again:
I can somehow face the day.
I get close to the mirror.
My ears are too large,
my breasts are teeny.
My hair just looks depressed,
and where does my nose
think it’s going?
I check for food stuck in my braces,
always a potential embarrassment.
The only positive development:
My eyelashes are getting thicker.
And my skirt seems kind of short.
Does that mean maybe
my legs are getting longer?
Judith peeks in, catches me looking.
“Don’t fall in love with yourself.
I was better looking
when I was fourteen and a half.”
“I know you were beautiful, Mom.”
This sentence always pacifies her.
It happens to be true.
My mother was stunning.
But I wish I could ask her,
“Mom, how could I be in love with myself
when no one else is in love with me?’
GIRLS NAMED TIFFANY
I’m wearing my plaid navy-and-ochre
shirtwaist dress.
My brown eyes pop from the color contrast.
I refuse to wear bright shades,
like pink or periwinkle.
“Periwinkle” even sounds idiotic.
It’s good for girls named Tiffany
with moms who say “I love you”
every other minute.
I have a lot of opinions
when it comes to colors.
Leslie was the one with the great complexion,
blond, blue-eyed,
she just couldn’t wear purple.
Which I discovered!
Whenever I’m worried,
I close my eyes
and mix paints in my head.
COME ON!
Davy’s sitting at the kitchen table.
Mother’s in her silk robe, making breakfast.
“What do you want to eat?”
she grumbles.
Davy’s shirt is rumpled,
his shoelaces aren’t tied,
and his hair is sticking straight up.
I wet it down for him,
but he wriggles away.
“Stop fussing over me, Maisie!”
He tackles his scrambled eggs.
When she’s in the picture,
all alliances are officially suspended.
When Davy and I get to the door
with our book bags,
my mother opens it, smiles.
“You two!”
She looks at us almost tenderly.
Longing rises up my spine,
a hungry snake.
It threatens to make me
feel something moronic:
a belief that affection could be
just around the corner.
I know better than to allow
that brief glimmer of kindness to mean anything.
It could undo me.
I say gruffly,
“Davy. Put on your scarf already!
Come on!”
Davy hugs her.
We ride to the lobby silently.
Then we tumble out
into the brisk Bronx morning
without a word between us.
HUNGRY LOOKS
I form a plan.
On the way to school
I’ll drop the unloved me
like an ill-fitting garment
and embrace the other, bold, sassy me,
who sneaks a new mascara wand
from her pocket, who jokes and flirts,
arches her back because she loves it
when boys get those yearning looks
on their nerdy, awkward baby faces.
They’re full of devilish wonder to me.
Even Richie sometimes radiates that magic.
ROSY RED CHEEKS
Outside, the furious September wind blasts
as if it means to banish the leaves,
newspapers, soda cans, and detritus everywhere.
I hope it gives me rosy red cheeks, bright eyes!
Davy and I walk together
until we get to his school, PS 106.
“Don’t watch me leave.
I’m not a baby!”
he says and trundles inside.
Farther on, my high school’s jumping!
Outside, there’s first-day-of-the-year excitement.
You can almost see hormones
leaping off people,
making them behave like nervous mosquitoes.
Some are smoking, some giggling.
The cool kids hold back, watching.
The pretty girls look one another over
as if they’re judging
a Miss America contest.
GYM
The gym is crowded and hot,
steam rising out of the radiators
like a dying volcano.
It already stinks like a basketball game,
and it’s not even 9 A.M. yet.
There are some familiar faces
and ones I’ve never seen before.
What’s important right now is
will any boys look my way?
Or will they pretend I don’t exist?
And if they pretend I don’t exist,
is it because they like me,
or is it because
I really don’t exist for them?
Maybe if my mother didn’t
spit out my name like a curse
and my father didn’t use our front door
like the turnstile in the IRT,
the opposite sex wouldn’t seem so intriguing
and so absolutely necessary.
BUT CRAZY
It was Leslie who said
I had an unnatural hunger
for male attention,
the way some girls have for chocolate
or new clothes or ballet class.
She even said I was famished!
I couldn’t argue.
I’ve been this way for as long
as I can remember.
I’m not proud of it, but it’s the truth.
In the sixth grade I made up a game.
I flirted with every single boy.
As soon as they began
to follow me around,
I brushed them off.
I didn’t miss a one.
I knew it was over the top.
But it was fun. But too much.
Still, it made me feel extra alive.
I’ve studied magazines,
learned how to smile a certain way