On days like this,
when rays crack into our room,
it is a good sign.
It means that my mother will fold back
the blankets on her side,
pour hot water for ocha,
and make us breakfast of fresh rice
mixed with a raw eggs, shoyu, and Tabasco.
I will take my time getting dressed,
let the shower water heave me into normality
with the scrubbed, squeaky skin of a nine year old.
I won't have to watch, like a soothsayer
divining what gesture,
what hue, will hurl her from this world.
I won't have to dial the Uncles
or stock up on oranges and incense sticks by the dozen.
There won't be talk of my father
and why she banished
his weak Irish blood,
that curdled hers,
almost cutting off its flow.
I will say a secret prayer of thanks for her balance,
her american-ness, even though
it is see-through and short-lived,
and set aside a mound of rice for the gods.
I will beg them, like only someone who knows,
not to let me find her
broken and undone, restless and ruined
until I have to rub her bruised back,
braid her unkempt hair
feed her bit size bits of aloe and moche
until her eyes are drunk with sleep
so I can apply vinegar to stop her swelling skin.
With each white grain I set aside,
I lick it first,
letting my tounge almost swallow it
then spit it out with string of saliva
bonded to it
so the gods smell whose breath
this prayer emerges from,
whose body is beholden.
I thank them for tormenting someone else.
One days like this, my mother and I
walk down our water-rotted hallway,
Side- stepping stinking trash and half naked drunks
with their foul eyes eating away at us.
Outside on the sidewalk we stand side by side
and wait for the NO. 8 bus
that will take me to elementary school
and my mother to her fry cook job.
No once notices that
my mother may be a murderer and I her accomplish.
No one can understand why we hide
and how we bow our heads to unseen things.
Save for the gods, on days like this we can manage.
|