Doll’s shoes, made 1775-1825
Black leather; white silk on paper embroidered with colored silk and silver
Image Courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago
Ten-year-old you sealed
your mouth shut with duct tape, battleship gray
strips enough to patch a corsair;
you otherwise engaged with books and b-ball,
miming Emmett Kelly’s sad smile,
in making layup after layup.
The baby giggled; Grandma and I shrugged
through our housework drudgery. I avoiding
your drawn eyes, lower lids yanked down
into the bloodshot spaces.
Then the doorbell:
new neighbor with a package,
wrongly delivered, you getting there first,
taking the mail, nodding, nothing to it.
But Grandma rushed the storm door, gushing,
“My grandson’s a little silly . . . still thinks it’s Halloween,”
anticipating a call from Child Protective Services.
She and I’d howl about it long after,
when it seemed no big deal,
though it would take a day
to scrub off your heavy beard of adhesives.
We lived then in the Lead House,
so dubbed because of the toxic dust we breathed
when the landlord sanded down the shiplap.
So many years of bad moves,
but an improvement over the Drive-By Shooting
house in West Balto and the Roach Coach
trailer of What Cheer, IA.
We had little money in the bank; we had some love,
but what did we know?
What could we have said, anyway?
What.