Poncho

One morning in fourth grade my classmate Lisa Mansfield sashayed in wearing a poncho. I’d never seen one before and marveled at it. Was it a scarf? Was it a sweater? On top of being an engineering miracle, it swung to her hips, was adorned with buttons and fringe and even had two slits for her hands. It was the color of buttermilk. With every swing of her pom poms Lisa rose through the ranks, and by day’s end she was in mortal danger of social ascension.

I rushed home and demanded a poncho of my own, knowing full well the futility of such a request. Ours was a purely functional situation. Gifts were dispensed at birthdays and Christmas, and other than those two days any swag received came from those who didn’t know any better (aunts or uncles who did not know the rules) or our own tiny allowances. My lack of financial savvy never allowed me to save up for anything larger than a pack of Bazooka.

Even while asking, in the space before my mother’s eyebrows went up, there wasn’t any real hope in it. I didn’t even wait for the “no” but simply bleated my futile request, more as a matter of formality than anything, and retreated to my shared bedroom.

Amongst other immigrant traits (including photographing every new piece of luggage) the knack for sewing had followed my mother into the new country like a cold virus and inflicted its results on us. She collected Butterick and McCall patterns and showed them to us. “Aren’t they nice?” she asked, but the question was purely rhetorical. We knew that shortly there would mysteriously appear from the fabric pinned to the tissue two new dresses, the wearing of which would set us further back on the school social hierarchy. And there was nothing we could do about it. We walked the earth like the scary hallway twins from “The Shining”, except we weren’t scary at all. We didn’t even have that going for us. 

Now I listlessly began to pick at the laundry I had been tasked to fold in my bedroom, when suddenly I brightened. Pulling a homemade dirndl skirt from the pile I inspected it. Elastic waist, not too long. Yes, it would do.

I called out that I was going to the playground across the street and before the answering query regarding chores could come I skipped out and headed for the swings. I slipped the skirt over my head, allowing the elastic waist to bunch loosely around my throat (it was a fall print, with little leaves on it and no pom poms, but you take what  you can get) and arranged it neatly around my shoulders. I thought I looked pretty damn good.

There were two other girls on the playground. I walked right up to them and planted myself in an adjoining swing. They both stopped talking and stared. “Hi,” I said lightly, walking my feet backwards to initiate the first swoop. I let my feet go and started pumping to gain momentum. 

“Why are you wearing a skirt around your neck?” asked one of the girls. I laughed carelessly. 

“It’s not a skirt, it’s a poncho!” I, said importantly, pumping harder. They looked at each other and one girl mouthed “SKIRT.”

“It’s a poncho!” I insisted. “My mother made it for me, that’s why it looks a little different.” I stopped swinging so I could list its features. “See? It has pockets.” I awkwardly snaked my hands up from beneath the hem and parked them jauntily in the inset pockets, which were unfortunately located directly below my neck. The two girls rolled their eyes and moved away to the jungle gym. I swung a little more then decided to chalk it up as a failed experiment and went home. 

Lisa wore her poncho a few more times to school but a couple of weeks later Shelley Cobham came in with white go-go boots and that was the end of the poncho craze. Side note: go-go boots are much harder to replicate at home. Suffice it to say that the tin foil did not go over big with the girls on the playground. 

I housed a country 

In the cliffs of my clouded bones

My strength was coined in a thousand 

              pounding

                    doubts

Vines and roses cosseted imagined grace 

A mockery of peace

Yes, I will stay.

Till today, when you broke the glass 

I cornered my eyes at the splinter of sharp sky

You bled the doors open, unfurling my breath

Look, you said.

Look.

Just look.

And I stumbled, starry and broken, out of this night

oh
          
                    light

Sprinkler

A perfect summer day in Takoma Park: huge lazy bumble bees droning over the flowers, the humidity heavy as porridge and the backyard peppered with a million buttercups.

My dad was dressed to the nines watering the flowers along the back fence, his back to me. I was horsing around in my bathing suit with the hose, spraying dandelion puffs into oblivion and generally just making a mess. 

“Dad!” I called, waving the sprinkler around teasingly as he bent over, presenting a perfect target. He straightened up and saw me. Out came the admonishing finger.

“Don’t you do it,” he wagged at me. “This is a new suit.”

“I’m not,” I whined. “I was just pretending.”

I turned away sullenly and drenched an entire planet of clover, grabbed a handful and tasted them. Not as good as the onion grass. I yanked a blade out and gnawed on it, the hose dribbling into the earth. 

The sun and humidity increased their conversation, several bees joined in, and the sleepiness factor of the afternoon jumped by a good sixty percent. I heard the broken song of the ice cream truck a few blocks away. Kids shouted on the basketball court in the schoolyard across the street. My father continued to bend temptingly over the flower bed, in his perfectly pressed dark suit. 

In that moment time slowed down and the universe seemed to expand in slow motion. I could see molecules and light and sound, but as though I was in a neighboring galaxy, everything seemed far away. I floated above my body and watched as a graceful perfect arch of water sprayed over the afternoon light. Rainbows glistened in its curve. Wildflowers bobbed their heads in encouragement. Clouds of butterflies circled above me, and somewhere in the distance a meadow lark sang, but its dreamy song seemed to be eclipsed by some sort of snorting. My consciousness slammed back into my body and my brain noted with interest that my father had spun on his heels to glare at me, clouds of steam issuing from his ears and a broad wet patch slowly inking its way across his new suit. I looked down. The smoking hose hung from my sweaty hand.

As my father began his charge, time snapped back online and shouted to self preservation, which sprinted back into the game and urged me to become ambulatory, the sooner the better. I took its advice, dropped the hose and ran.

Past the side of the house, out onto the sidewalk I raced, my nine year old pace effortlessly outstripping that of my angered father’s. Running came effortlessly to me then. My breath in my ears, my heart chugging, I noisily flew, knowing I could do this forever. My father was falling behind, but his yelling was still close enough to spur me on.

In the midst of this merriment, a simple epiphany revealed itself: I’m nine! Where the hell am I supposed to go? This sudden, heavy truth slowed my steps and I allowed myself to be caught and bundled back to the porch steps to receive my paddling. 

Fear opened my lungs, eliminating the need for vocal warmups. I let out a perfectly swooping preparatory yell as my father launched into the first few smacks, but stopped, surprised, in the middle of the next wail. The truth is that my inch thick red white and blue bathing suit had become so waterlogged that it was like I was wearing a hazmat suit made entirely of bubble wrap. My father’s disciplinary action felt as light to me as a butterfly making a three point landing on my backside. Hard on this heels came the realization that this information, joyful though it made me, would not please my father. 

Self preservation, suddenly free with the advice, urged me to turn on the siren in an attempt to divert suspicion, which I gladly did, false though it sounded to my ears. I tore the air with Oscar worthy wails. They were so believable that my father, usually so hell bent on not sparing the rod, let me off easy after two or three thumps. I launched myself into the kitchen, subtly poking myself in the eye to generate tears and perpetuate the fiction. My mother, turned from the stove and gathered me up in her arms, then tucked me into a kitchen chair with a warm peanut buttered chapati. I was unsure of how long to cry, so decided to fake weep for about three or four bites, whereupon I would pretend to lose myself in the yumminess of the food. That was my first ever production decision. It was a good one. My father stormed in to the house to change from his ruined suit, then joined us at the kitchen table and said grace, blessing the food, our family and friends, and the world in general, but neglecting to pray for the sins of his eldest daughter, which I took as a sign that forgiveness, or at the very least, leniency, had already been granted.  

The Power of the Glori

Mark Spitz took home seven golds under the shadow of the Munich massacre. The World Trade Centers, their two peace fingers bisecting the clogged Manhattan sky, were proudly unveiled. Nixon went to China. In the universe according to grade school girls, however, the headline news was the emergence of a line of Barbie doll knock offs, known as Topper Dawn Dolls. As my parents murmured to each other in the kitchen about rising gas prices, my sister and I held long conferences detailing the virtues of each doll. Dawn was the line’s namesake, leading the league of ridiculously proportioned supermodel miniatures. The dolls were a perfect size: large enough to hold their own in a toy box filled with big bald baby dolls, but small enough to tuck into a school bag with a PBJ. Both came to the table dressed in full drag queen glamor, replete with tiny rubbery heels and plastic chunks of handbag; both had numerous fashion accessories (sold separately), but only Glori had a thick hedge of bangs that nearly tangoed with her spidery lashes. She had red hair. She had a side part. I wanted her.

As Christmas drew near, the number of presents beneath the tree mounted, and my sister and I began our annual ritual of snooping around the tree, stacking, tallying and cataloging. When caught and questioned, we informed our suspicious parents that we were “arranging” them, a thinly veiled ruse that was nevertheless an extremely important pre-Christmas activity, for otherwise how else could we know which of us our parents loved best, and by extension, exactly how upset to get on Christmas morning? My parents wisely countered this competitive streak by purchasing identical gifts for each of us, simply varying in color or type, but never in size or amount. 

Around this particular Christmas Eve our television set broke, and my father in his infinite wisdom (or more likely immigrant cheapness) chose not to repair it. The oscillating lights of the tree were a crappy yet acceptable substitute for our TV starved brains, and the endless hours freed up by no longer having to keep abreast of Fred, Wilma, Ginger, Maryann and the whole Brady Bunch allowed us many more hours of haunting the tree. We sorted and shook the gifts until my sister triumphantly held up a package that had been poorly taped by our sleep deprived father. Carefully she weaseled the edges apart to discover (oh, happy day) a Glori doll for me. Locating the identical twin package, we managed to nudge enough of the paper apart to see that the name on the edge of the box started with a “D”, and was clearly the companion Dawn doll. Satisfied, we shoved both boxes to the farthest point under the tree to avert suspicion, brushed teeth, said prayers, and tried to go to sleep.

After what seemed like two weeks, Christmas morning finally arrived. I eagerly tore open my gifts, mentally tallying as I went. Mostly clothes: red checked pants (my sister got blue). Green tennis shoes (my sister’s were yellow). Religiously themed children’s stories. The heap beside me, mostly destined for “accidental” loss in the coming months, grew as I methodically worked through my small pile. My sister worked feverishly beside me, focused, unflinching. Finally I pulled out the compromised gift with a fake cry of “oh, there’s another one back there I think!” and arranged my features into a rictus of joy before ripping into the paper, but alas, when opened, the little plastic coffin held not Glori but the middle parted jaundice haired Dawn. I blinked in shock, then burst into tears and ran for the bedroom, my beliefs in a benevolent God slipping down around me like a too-small bath towel. Apparently all of the “rearranging” had caused several gift tags to fall off, and my father had simply slapped them back onto the packages willy nilly.

After a little light grilling, my sister caved like a philandering televangelist and weepily confessed everything, a character flaw which to this day she mistakes for truthfulness. My father asked her to trade dolls with me but shrewdly sensing a lucrative business opportunity, my sister declined. It was only after he successfully bribed her with a quarter that she relented (though later she pretend not to have received it and got a second payout). In this manner the spirit of Christmas was restored: for me, through the acquisition of my beloved Glori doll, and for my sister, through a newly refined business sense as well as double the asking price.