Irene: 1952 to present

she put flame to the needle	       and
 
the needle to her nail
 
and began to        press


  

hard.


  

"there's blood under there," she said.
 
"i have to drill it out."	       and


  

her thirteen year-old face was a study---stacked 
 
with carefully organized and catalogued freckles
 
and pimples
 
and patches        of dirt and food from that evening's repast and the rounds of 
 
hopscotch and double-dutch that followed with her older sisters . . .
 
all of these becoming copious volumes---a diary in reality, rather than script---
 
each telling a story.
 
each falling wide open.
 
each flipping through pages
 
with very large        unflowery, 
 
unpretentious print.


  

and she didn't think about the pain it would cause
 
and it was no use to even attempt to reason	       with her:
 
that the nail would grow out,
 
that the scar underneath would heal.
 
that before school started the injury would be a passing fancy in the minds
 
of more 	       debutante-bourgeois ruminations.
 
she just kept repeating
 
"but they'll see it and they'll know . . .
 
they'll see it. 		    i wanna be clean."


  

when her father found out what that man had done to her,
 
he ran out of the row house with his gun, out up the street.
 
but he didn't hurt him.
 
he only scared him.		       and in seventy-two hours, they'd let him out of the cell
 
soon enough
 
to go back home and nurse his little girl back to health and
 
by then, 	       there was not a scratch on her
 
but the small dent by her left ear
 
and the bruise beneath her fingernail where she'd try to claw her way out
 
from underneath the weight of him.
 
all else was internal 	       and already done.



  
*  *  *


  

she got married when she was little more than 20, i think.
 
and she had a baby girl of her own. a tiny future 	      for a tiny life, 
 
little direction and even less money.
 
a man who beat on her one minute and fucked her the next.
 
a life that fed her hunger	       	just enough
 
to keep her lithe, alive
 
and pretty	even with a shiner.


  

*  *  *


  

she finished art school at 34
 
and approximated what one might call		a home.
 
a family.	       a kitchen full of heavy cast-iron frying pans, with painted brick
 
and a ceiling lamp. a working stove and a gas oven.
 
day trips 	       and report cards to sign
 
and a mother to defer to 
 
and a father's grave to visit on sundays.


  

at the age of 38,
 
another fetus set down its roots in her womb and made itself at home.
 
and called itself her savior.	        claimed itself an angel.
 
and the little man-child whispered secrets to her
 
through the umbilicus	        and wrestled with the walls of her uterus.
 
"he kicks well. he tucks himself up underneath my side at night."
 
and her mother predicted correctly---before she passed too---that
 
"this one	       will be . . .
 
a boy."


 

*  *  *


  

we visit my father on alternate saturdays now
 
at the nursing home. he's a retired alcoholic
 
and a recovering
 
son-of-a-bitch.
 
she takes trips now. 	       keeps her paintings in the basement under plastic
 
and composes songs in her spare time.
 
when she got back from new orleans, 
 
she gave me 	       an enlarged	       	 black and white photo
 
of her sisters crowded 'round her
 
as she took her 	first steps	
 
in a little white dress, with a bonnet and baby-janes on.
 
and she's my mother. and i, her son.
 
and i came from her as she from her's . . .
 
and we, from ours, remember.




*  *  *


  

her face is still a study. it still has that youthful air
 
despite the years of domestic torture, some stitches
 
and a c-section crease in her middle.	        like she'd been stapled.
 
and she still has the freckles
 
and even 	       now and again
 
a pimple,	and every one night at least out of the month
 
she plays her piano
 
and she calls me at school.
 
she's lost the innocence,
 
and she doesn't fit the baby-janes anymore,
 
but she's survived, and 	       i admire that,
 
and the notes that shake from the keys she pounds remind her of that
 
simple fact . . .
 
and her childhood, that little girl, hangs on	        for dear life
 
inside the picture frame
 
on my wall.


 

• Chy Ryan Spain

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