Lilly Makes An A
My daughter sits in the kitchen with a square of paper,
her big black shoes crossed tight under the chair.
When the teakettle whees, I tip it up
and watch her dark brown stare, intent as a sparrow’s,
following the letter curving out of her gripped pencil.
In her eyes I see the black linoleum
of St. Helena’s hallways, shining like urine
on a cloudy winter day. Water melting from black rubber boots
in a row, the cloakroom smelling of feet and snow.
In front of our desks Sister Mary Francis
outlines our first letters on a blackboard.
White flakes twirl down windows.
A tall, black robed woman against black --
nothing else showing of how she stood
nor how her long legs met her hips
or the smooth muscle of her arms shivered.
Instead the blazingly white chalk meets the hard board.
Her voice startlingly calm, sweet as a flower:
“Children, take out a piece of lined paper.”
The acrid rubber nipple of a curved glue bottle
on the corner of my desk smells orange like the wood,
perfume soaked into the room.
I put it in my mouth and suck on it to stop
the excitement in my stomach that spurted up
when I put my pencil to the soft page
the way she touched the board with her stick of chalk.
I am making a letter, a mark on the page
that grows out of my body like a root in a cage,
a tall black shape beautiful and strange.
It will tell everyone what I cannot say.
When I look up, she smiles at me.
We are speaking, the sister and I.
A hot wave begins carrying me out of the high
square windows, over the black upright piano,
beyond the rows of heads shining like brown pennies.
My body quivers:
my voice is louder than God’s.
We put the pencil boxes away.
Look, Lilly says.
I made an A.
Rosebud