Red Gingham

When I am so little Mother dresses me to match her; in

in red gingham we go to the park where she doesn’t watch 

me 

but drinks her wine and smokes, and I am smacked by another 

child, fists shaped like buckeyes coming at me fast. Blackened 

eye

bloody nose, no hug, she tells me Buck up, little girl, then

sends me back to the hard jungle gym and the children with 

no shame 

and I learn to run fast, fleet-footed, into the sun away

from them, from her. This park is built for child’s play, not

me.

Cap and gown, arts degree conferred, so many smiling others

celebrating that day, happy grads, proud parents. Her words came 

like a threat Get a paying job. Mother promised me nothing, no

money, no home, only warned me to beware cheaters, stealers, men, 

the world.

I read Sylvia’s “Daddy” and had wanted one too, but mine was gone

from me long before hers. Didn’t we also share beyond that? Yes, but I 

lived.

I wanted to love Mother, tried sometimes but she refused it, had 

never reckoned the bother of me, didn’t like what it took to

raise the child she hadn’t designed. Spent her life avoiding the 

feel of what was too big, too sharp, too unknown, never cried a

tear.

Never drove a car, never voted in an election. Believed she had 

religion, though what God allows for a mother who scorns her own 

child? 

Not so with my own daughter in the years that followed. In spite of her,

because of her, my girl and I became a pair. Bound in a fuller world of

feelings 

through words, laughing, longing and love, we rode the waves of her

adolescence together to land ourselves on solid footing, in a real life.

The night of the park she says Get to bed, little girl, and I go to sleep 

bruised and wondering what in the world a mother is good for.