keeping a firm grip on me
which was fine by me.
The good father took me to church
let me play with my white prayer book
with the gold cross hidden in a place inside the cover.
He pointed to the altar in front
when the three bells rang —
the priest held the white circle bread high.
The good father slept in the big bed
on white sheets with blue lines.
He lay next to my mother, slender, dark-eyed.
Laughter came from their room at night.
He drove us to Florida in his gray car with three pedals.
I tried to stand up in the back all the way to Virginia.
Dirty water came out of the hotel’s faucet in Charleston.
We heard the trains whistle all night.
He brought me a Charlie McCarthy doll
so I could talk to everyone and not be so shy.
He brought me a doll so I could rock her
even though she was not my child.
He smelled of aftershave and orange bath soap.
I traced the scar on his forehead with my small hand.
And later, the sad father came in our house.
He wore a heavy brace on his leg.
A black steel bar ran up the side of the boot.
He walked with a wooden cane.
Bottles of pills filled the medicine chest.
He was early to bed — we had to be quiet then.
Hollyhocks in the Alley
A flower from an English cottage garden,
a word hard to wrap the tongue around,
a six-foot-tall stalk with colored orbs, one maroon
so dark it fades into licorice black.
We stood on our godmother’s wooden porch
looking towards the alley that ran alongside her yard.
In narrow garden beds that lined the concrete walkways
tomatoes prospered in the city heat.
We watched the hollyhocks, tall as men.
They loomed week after week
as each bright green bud awaited its turn
to open into a flower with a five-inch span.
We tracked their progress,
counted bees that poked into those flowers.
They weren’t staked — we never saw anyone
stand over them with a watering can.
They took care of themselves till September
when their spent blossoms hardened
into fat seed pods stuffed with black disks.
My Father’s War
He’d always loved boats, being on the water.
Enlisted in the Navy at thirty-three, took up smoking too,
signed up for top secret hazardous duty overseas.
But he didn’t go to sea — he went to
fight Japan from the ground in Manchuria,
aerographer’s mate first class. He told us he
Learned to track clouds — cirrus, cumulus, nimbus. Shaved his
head, all the men did, naval intelligence said
that would fool the Japs when they flew over.
They lived with Chinese soldiers and spies,
ate rice and whatever meat
their hosts could scare up. It might have been dogs.
I forecasted the weather, he told us, but
the records say otherwise: to Calcutta for indoctrination,
how to eat with chopsticks, never insult the Chinese hosts.
Flew over the Hump, on to Happy Valley, east of Chungking.
Lived in camphor wood houses, drank boiled water.
History books say they spied on Japanese ships,
blew up enemy supply depots, laid mines in harbors,
trained Chinese soldiers in guerrilla warfare,
rescued downed aviators.
When he left for San Pedro, my mother saw him pack
a long knife and a gun in his suitcase.
Orders, he told her. Top secret.
He told the same story twice
about the gash on his forehead that
grew fainter till it was a thin line
etched on his weather-beaten brow.
He returned from his war malnourished, his teeth
rotting, he drank whiskey, chased it with beer.
He brought home silks embroidered by the Maryknolls.
He hated the Communists, Chiang Kai-Shek was his man.
I never knew it till after he died —
he was no weatherman.
We Called It Armistice Day
Until we didn’t—on parents’ day at school
our teacher asked Does anyone know
the new name of this day —
I turned around, looked at
my father seated on a folding chair
leaning against his cane —
cracked, speckled terrazzo floors
in the halls, dark wood in the classrooms.
Windows climbed up to the ceiling.
Playground, half-cement, the rest blacktop —
the farther from the school the rougher the boys played —
the girls sat on the brick wall by Christopher Avenue,
in sixth grade some got bras, the rest of us were
flat-chested under our white safety patrol belts —
My father always asked, was her father in the service?
Army? Navy, maybe? Only my uncle stayed out of the war
— he was too old, had kids had asthma —
My father got a scar on his forehead
and a smoking habit, lost forty pounds in China.
He claimed he studied the clouds in Manchuria,
ate rice and — he averred — dogs and cats,
flew over the Hump — then sailed to Oran,
took a troop ship home, limped off the gangplank.
My mother said he didn’t sleep well,
her Dalmatian growled at him.
My father didn’t like the house
she’d bought when he was away —
He