Girls Department
I stared at my shameful flesh in the three-way mirror.
Mother, my guide, my witness, pinched me between
her fingers, thinking aloud: could she work
with the skimpy seam allowance? Get it to fit?
My model-thin cousin Nancy sent me a box
of hand-me-downs: soft wool skirts, an orchid
sweater-set a size too small –– another girl’s raiment.
My sister meant well, Mother instructed,
then took me to Brigham’s for a treat: hot fudge
melted breast-like pyramids of peppermint-stick
ice cream, and I crunched the small clear candies.
I sang in a talent contest once, “Indian Love Call”
in a green tulle gown Mother grabbed from a bin.
She had an eye for a bargain. She took up the hem.
* * * * *
1961
What was I doing
looking for help in the phonebook?
Then walking up Prospect
to the doctor’s polished boat of a desk,
that face the color of thin milk.
I needed a diaphragm. Unmarried ––
his steel-rimmed glasses glinted.
His satisfied look was a cat’s.
If I thought about anything then
it was how to make five dollars
feed us for a week. How to soak
kidneys in vinegar to draw out smell.
They had a bluish undertone
like the alizarin crimson
Robert squeezed onto his palette
to paint the thrift-store wineglass.
Thirty-nine cents a pound ––
relief from tamale pie.
Whatever he thought, he ate it
and went back to his painting.
The pregnancy lasted a few weeks
past the wedding. What’s still
with me: the shape the doctor’s mouth
made in that dim office. Disgust.
Nothing could leach it out of me.
I’m still breathing its faint
unmistakable odor.
* * * * *
All at Once
I bent double, sounds came out of me.
No way to stop the dark flood
soaking into the passenger seat.
More blood than a period, but too late:
my wax-white bridal dress, your
friend’s cello in the echoey chapel
already behind us, parents receding
like the road in our rearview mirror.
My wet skirt stuck to the seat.
That breathtaking fist of pain
when the thickened wall I couldn’t see
shed its unbreathing ball of cells
as if it had made a decision ––
something I shrank from
in my somnambulist life
unless we count the times
I’ve cut and run. I still see you
speechless behind the wheel,
jaw clenched as you swerve
toward the lit Esso station,
last chance for a long stretch of miles.