WHAT CHILDREN REMEMBER

"Children remember departures from the norm, breaks in the routine, disruptions."

Mother was having one of her "spells."
I was old enough to know it meant
she was somehow sick but not enough
to wonder or to ask. I knew
that's why I'd come to stay awhile
with Ruth, my aunt, and Uncle Roy
and their four girls. All but the oldest,
Ellen, would perch, before we went to bed,
like birds on branches, listening to the stories
he concocted every night. I knew
they weren't true, but didn't care.
He made us laugh, then shiver. I could tell he
enjoyed when we would beg for just one more.
That's all tonight, he'd say and whisk us off to bed.
I can't remember that I worried.
That came later.

CIRCA 1953

There was a room in Danny's house
they called the junk room. His
mother said we could clear
a space for an old mattress so we
could practice the holds we'd seen
the wrestlers use on television:
head locks, full nelsons, toe holds.
We imagined ourselves in a crowd-
filled arena with cigar and cigarette
smoke churning up to the rafters.
We'd pretend to be in pain when
caught in a Japanese key lock,
screaming our agony convincingly.
Danny said they got the mattress
because his aunt who had cancer
died on it so her family threw
it out but it was okay because
cancer wasn't contagious. Really.
I said I know it isn't but how
about we go outside now and
play football.

TILLIE

The youngest and last of her clan
(there were eleven)
she lived alone in the place
that once housed them all.
She invented a word for the herd
of nieces and nephews who'd
mostly moved away -- niblings --
and dead-panned it at you
to see if you had a sense of humor.
Thirty years after she bought it
new she was still driving
her bright blue Fairlane that
had once made everybody talk.
She wore her religion lightly
like a spring jacket
but on one of my visits said
that when she died she wanted
her favorite niece to sing
You Can Have the Whole World
But Give Me Jesus.
I said if I was still around
I'd see to it.

I was.

I did.

SKEPTIC

Brothers and sisters, the preacher
warned us, God is not mocked.

I was nine and impressionable.

He told a story, true he said, about
a car full of laughing young people.
It came screeching up to the stop
sign where an old man stood waiting
to cross the street. He said to
the driver where are you going
in such a hurry? The driver tossed
an empty beer bottle at the man and
said we're going to hell, wanna
come along? A mile down the road
the car crashed into a bank, three
of them were killed. O brothers,
O sisters, what you sow you shall
surely reap. The wages of sin is
death as it says in the holy book.

I was nine and impressionable.

But I wondered if he hadn't made the whole thing up.