Cover art: Breaking Free
Artist: Megan Merchant
What I Didn’t Know I Didn’t Know
the old women, the crones, the crossed,
the witches, the wise, the weary, the widows who wear
grief like a full-length mink stored in the cool dark.
Consider their wounds, the warnings, the fractures,
their cautious steps, the invisible, the inevitable.
Consider their bobbing chins, creased eyelids, lined lips,
fixed smiles, misheard words, memories misplaced
like a sequined black dress stowed in a back hall closet.
Consider their struggle to recall anniversaries, birthdays,
the youngest, the oldest, the miscarriages, the chemo.
Consider their longing, the loneliness, the lost lovers,
the moves, the mirrors, everywhere the mirrors, mocking,
reflecting, rewinding—days consumed with refills, missed
appointments, forgotten plans, lists of what to take when.
Consider their red walkers, the caretakers, the matinees,
the confiscated keys, the condescending conversations—
now picture fresh squeezed orange juice in a plastic cup,
a straw pushed through the hole on top, and understand
the only way to drink is for a stranger to bring the straw
to your mouth. As the cold liquid trickles down your throat,
consider the time when squeezing an orange was as simple
as turning off the light before you turned over to sleep.
Daddy died six months after I was born.
It was sudden. A heart attack.
He left me and Momma a yellow duplex.
Sometimes I go upstairs to help feed baby Freddy.
His mama and pappa rent the second floor.
Freddy laughs when his pappa makes funny faces.
His mama shouts stop, but then she laughs too.
In my jewelry box is a picture of Daddy standing
on our front porch, smiling and smoking a pipe.
I imagine his voice having a twang, like Sky King’s
when he’s flying with Penny to save someone.
For lunch I make mayonnaise sandwiches on Wonder Bread.
My favorite dinner is Swanson’s turkey with trimmings.
I love to watch the steam rise when I peel the tin foil back.
Sage and thyme fill the air. Almost like Thanksgiving.
Momma says, If your daddy was here things would be different.
I ask, Does different mean you’d cook and clean?
She tells me not to sass.
Most days Momma won’t let friends come by
complains she’s too tired to clean. So, I clean.
She claps when she sees the room sparkle,
rays of sunbeams bouncing off the windowpanes.
Soon she’s climbing into the tub for the afternoon.
I wait in the hallway, writing in my pink plastic diary.
One day, I will live in a one family house.
At night I lie in bed and listen to the cool whistle of the train
that runs by the jeep factory near our house. It sounds
so close, as if its cars might rumble right into my room.
after “Waving Goodbye” by Gerald Stern
I wanted to know what our lives were like before you died
and before she let our grass grow wild with weeds, and before
I could comprehend what it meant to find where you began—
why she needed me to carry the melody for her solo performance,
so I looked for light to lead me down to where she buried your books,
volume after volume stacked with stories of how things were
and found what she stored in the corner against the cold brick,
shoved under old rakes, brooms—six embossed leather scrapbooks
with your initials stamped on the cover, a trove from the past waiting
and offering me a choice to open what was there or turn away
from what I didn’t know I didn’t know, like the neighbor who said
you can’t miss what you never had, the people who looked on us
with pity, the widow and the fatherless child, the shopkeeper who said
he was a mensch if I ever knew one—if that’s all you know, you know enough.
My bare legs dangle from a straight back chair.
The plastic seat sticks to my skin. There is no air.
I bend down to touch the soft ruffles on my pink socks.
The socks are there, so I know I’m there.
But for a Star of David, the yellow windows, thick
like the bottom of a glass bottle, blur day and night.
Outside, the wail of sirens reminds me how near
we are to the hospital where he was taken.
Mourners arrive with sorrowful words.
Sorry for your loss. Sorry it happened like this.
Mother isn’t sorry, though she talks as if—
She looked for help. She didn’t believe he was serious.
Forbidden to speak of the forbidden, I say nothing
about the nightly clashes, glasses thrown against the tile,
calls to police by neighbors out of concern
or because the shrillness shatters their midnight silence.
When mother’s sister whispers He did you a favor,
I begin to see his death as a reprieve. In his absence, I find presence.
Even now, looking through pictures, knowing and not knowing,
I feel the relief I felt when he ceased to be—the breath I found
when his asides about my too pink lips, too long hair, and budding breasts,
stopped.
Invited to a Bar Mitzvah, I am divided.
Directed to sit behind a gauzy screen in the balcony.
My Siddur lies on my lap open to a random page.
Ancient words in a language foreign to me.
I stand on command, a stranger in my old house.
Near the end of a long hardwood pew by the exit
I watch a round-faced woman, young enough to be my
granddaughter, hair hidden under a shiny black sheitel.
A bevy of blue ribboned ponytails nestle their restless bodies
close to her. In a meditative moment she stands, then presses
her back against a wall. Eyes closed, she rests her fingers
in the sliver of space between her breasts and burgeoning belly,
then turns and gazes at the five fresh faces looking at her.
Each one returns her gaze, leaning toward her like a chain of flowers.
She pulls a fistful of candy from her pockets & passes pieces
of the sweets down the row, then beckons her girls closer.
Locking arms, they rise and follow her out to begin the long-skirted
walk home. Too late to catch her eye, wishing I could have told her how
I once sat & fished rock candy from my mother’s pockets, my tight
ponytail pulling at my forehead. I think of what it is to want and not want,
to separate from what is given. Boxed & bowed, waiting for me to open
the lid to take what’s there, a package I have been unwilling to unwrap.
After the last prayer is recited, I hurry down the stairs. For a minute,
I imagine there’s time to catch up with the mother and her five Shana Maidelas.
I don’t know how to be old.
Everyone I loved died years before old age.
My mother, father, friends taken without warning.
Most days, my brain lies to me. It says I’m young.
It doesn’t take long for my body to say otherwise.
Yesterday, the woman who colors my hair watched me
struggle to open a bottle of water. She offered to help.
Her look said, Poor old lady, I’ll never be old like that.
Any bit of patience I possessed has vanished, like the years.
My therapist tells me to be understanding with my husband,
who is fine with being old. When he asks, What did you say,
for a third time, don’t confront. Answer again and again,
if necessary. She says I shouldn’t complain—that most women
my age would give anything for a man who rubs their back.
The first thing I smell in the morning is the bitter scent
of my husband’s burnt toast. He says he can’t smell it,
so I crack open the window and wonder why we have tiles
that read Home is Love and Joy on the sill when we still
argue about silly things, like the time I asked if he’d move
the porcelain chicks from the middle of the table onto a shelf.
He declined. Our conversations are riddled with deliberations.
We discuss the dishwasher. Should we run it, or wait?
What do we want to eat tonight? Carry in or cook?
Catch a movie or stream something to watch?
Today was too cold to be out. I barely made it to the grocery.
Sleep, when it comes, is a relief. Somewhere only I can go.
We climb the steps of the synagogue, when my granddaughter Annie asks, What is Jewish?
She is the child of a Jew, a son who cried when his piranha died, whose hockey player hubris
sank like salt in hot water when his first love ended, a son who threw the opening punch after a
teammate taunted, I didn’t know your mother was a kike. In those days, I was an indifferent Jew,
married to a man uninterested in my history. My whiteness a cloak, privilege buoyed by the
belief that never again was more than aspirational. Thinking if I distract her she might forget, I
take Annie’s arm and swing her up two steps at a time. How will I protect her from the
cacophony of hatred that still swirls?
he disappears into his brown leather chair
shrinking lips wet with hope a tongue
that still wants to press itself inside of me
a soldier who went up came down
a red beret rifle at his side
he wonders if he forgot to close the garage door
on the mantle he smiles into the Israeli sun
his arms reach out as if to offer a favor
last night he walked in circles meditating he claimed
framed in brown khakis his shirt tucked in clean shaven
he holds a curly-haired girl atop a Yamaha twin scrambler 1967
driving now he murmurs a prayer only he understands
downstairs schnitzel fries
a thick smell of grease threads through the air
coating the walls with a filmy glaze
we laugh about the sign on the corner complex
Senior resort living we wouldn’t have to travel far
I turn away a man one car over smiles
At first, surrounded by the suddenness
of your death, I convinced myself
you were out walking with your dogs.
In a few minutes you’d come back
to grab your red jacket.
It’s chillier than I expected,
want to walk with us?
On rare occasions, I’d accept.
Mostly, I’d go upstairs to write,
seeking solitude. From what? I’m not sure.
Memory makes a mockery of truth.
Partners in a second marriage
that wasn’t working, our bodies shared
a bed still warm with yesterdays.
We slipped so easily from the early days
when we were each other’s second chances,
a respite from bad marriages, unhappy children.
The night before you died, we argued.
I resented your devotion to your dogs.
You begrudged the time I spent writing.
The next morning you apologized.
I echoed your apology,
then questioned our coexistence.
How could we have another failure?
Was it too late? Maybe therapy.
I clung to possibility.
Even now, I can hear the dogs
howling at the foot of your stairs.
Merciless messengers. I followed
them down to find you. Arms splayed
across your desk. Solitaire
frozen on the screen.
where I come from. This isn’t a question I can easily answer. I am powerless to shove this
narrative into a stanza that still leaves me asking, is that how it happened? If I’d never known the
truth, would it have mattered? Is what you don’t know can’t hurt you a paradox or an axiom? I
come from an episode told so often it became memory. It was like it happened yesterday. When
they told me your father keeled over dead, I grabbed the pair of dolls cousin Lillian made and
smashed them. Slivers of pink glass sliced my bare feet. Know this: I come from luck, taken from
my mother’s arms by a doctor concerned her keening might compel her to throw my body down,
like her once-cherished ceramic figures, inanimate objects of regrettable rage.
Acknowledgements
SWWIM Every Day : “Consider”
3rd Wednesday: “Downstairs, 1960”
Poetica Magazine, Contemporary Jewish Writing: “What I Didn’t Know”
The Jewish Writing Project: “An Invitation”
ONE ART: “Burnt Toast”
The Write Launch: “Going to a Wedding”
The Scapegoat Review: “These Days”
The Hole in the Head Review: “Elegy for Second Chances”
The Writers Foundry Review: “You Ask”
Unpublished: “At My Stepfather’s Levaya”