I’d be at that shithole school across the street
and never get out of this place.
Cal said he’ll stick around until I go to college.
Then he’s moving to Colorado.
He likes snow.’
Yasmeen lies back on Jon’s bed and hums,
Tippi checks out his tower of DVDs,
and I watch Jon digging
under a mountain of creased up laundry,
wishing I had the courage to tell him
that his mother should have stayed,
he didn’t deserve to be abandoned,
and
that
leaving him
was the stupidest thing
she ever did.
Well, It Can’t Hurt Me
For my tenth birthday
Mom bought me a silver
rabbit’s foot pendant.
Since then, I’ve not taken it off,
never let a day go by
that I didn’t have luck
lying against my skin.
‘What’s that?’ Jon asks,
turning the pendant
over in his fingers,
his hand smelling of soap.
‘It’s for luck,’ I tell him.
He narrows his eyes,
moves closer to me on the bed.
Tippi and Yasmeen aren’t listening.
They are looking at a takeout menu
and choosing pizza toppings.
‘You really believe in that stuff?’
Jon asks.
I lower my gaze
feeling suddenly very young.
‘I don’t know,’ I say.
‘But it can’t hurt, can it?’
‘I don’t know,’ he says,
letting go of the rabbit’s foot,
‘I really don’t know.’
Jealousy
Jon gives us a ride home
in Cal’s car
and I have to work really hard
not to be mad at Tippi
for being the twin on the left
and sitting
so close to Jon
for a full fifteen minutes.
Waiting Up
Dad is lying on the sofa,
alone in the dark.
‘You’re very late,’ he says.
‘Sorry,’ Tippi and I reply together.
We step towards him.
‘I was worried,’ he tells us.
The darkness eases.
‘Well, you’re home now,’ he says.
‘Good night.’
And without another word,
he slinks off to bed.
Anything But
Tippi fidgets in the bed next to me then
gets out her phone,
its light
bright on her face.
‘Something on your mind?’ I ask,
waiting for it,
whatever it
is.
She rolls her head
to the side
and looks at me with a sad expression
that is mine.
‘Oh, Grace,’ she says.
She blinks with my eyes
and bites my lips.
We look so much
the same person
that sometimes I am repulsed
by her,
sick of staring into
a mirror
every day of my life.
‘We can go to school,’ she says,
‘and get jobs
and drive and swim and hike.
You know I’ll follow
you anywhere, Gracie.
Anything you want,
tell me,
and we can do it.
We can do anything,
OK?’
‘OK,’ I say.
‘But we can never
ever
fall in love.
Do you understand?’
‘Yes,’ I whisper.
‘I understand.’
But her warning comes
too late.
The Bunker Boys
The original Siamese twins,
Chang and Eng,
Left and Right,
The Bunker Boys
as I like to call them,
were born with a band of cartilage
connecting them
chest to chest.
They were the poster children
but successful ones
once they dodged King Rama’s
death sentence
as babies.
And despite what Tippi says about love,
Chang and Eng Bunker
had two wives and twenty-one children
between them.
They lived, loved, fought,
and died together,
which gives me hope
and makes me wonder
what’s stopping us
from being
a little Siamese
ourselves.
Word Association
‘You seem distracted,’ Dr Murphy says.
Tippi is listening to some new album.
Her foot taps out the beat.
I wish I were with her in the music
instead of here
with Dr Murphy who is doing nothing useful—
just trying to make
me
feel.
‘I’m good,’ I say.
‘I love the new school.’
Dr Murphy’s eyebrows seesaw.
She puts down her clipboard and pencil.
‘Let’s play word association,’ she says.
We’ve played this game before.
We’ve played this game and I’ve always
lied
because what could
any
one
word
tell her?
How could
one
word
show her who I am?
‘Marriage,’ she says.
Marriage:
Mom, dad,
bad, sad,
snapped, broken,
empty,
alone.
‘Cake,’ I say, and clap lightly like I think this is a
game and not a way for her to root around my mind.
Dr Murphy says,
‘Sister.’
Sister:
here, now,
joined, blood,
bones, break,
faint, fall,
die,
alone.
‘Dragon,’ I reply.
Dr Murphy sniffs and I can’t tell whether
that means I’ve passed her test or not.
It doesn’t matter, though.
Our time is up
so no more
probing.
Not
until next time.
The Waterfront
Tippi and I walk uptown then
east
to the waterfront
to meet Mom getting off the commuter
ferry from the city.
The Shipyard isn’t like it was
years ago,
a home for metal workers and longshoremen,
a practical place of industry.
Nowadays it’s overrun with
juice bars and
yoga studios,
pushchairs more expensive than cars.
The ferry docks.
I put my hand on the back of a bench,
shut my eyes,
pant like I’ve just run a marathon,
my
heart racing,
begging me to slow down.
‘Grace?’ Tippi says.
I open my eyes as
Mom appears on the
wide gangplank
and waves.
The boat spews black smoke into the Hudson River.
I wave back and so does Tippi.
‘All good,’
I say,
and we go together
ready to meet our mother
with a smile.
A Bit of Breathlessness
‘Something isn’t right,’ Tippi says
on the train to school next morning.
‘I don’t want to go to Rhode Island
any more than you do.
But something’s wrong.’
I hold her hand.
‘It’s just a bit of breathlessness,’ I say.
‘Right,’ Tippi says.
‘So you won’t mind me mentioning it
to Dr Derrick at the next check-up.’
Saint Catherine
examining the mind–body argument
through the ages so we can
prepare for a debate.
And I am all about
Saint Catherine of Siena, born in 1347.
She survived the black death
as a baby,
though
died anyway at thirty-three because
she would not eat.
Tippi says it was undiagnosed anorexia
but Saint Catherine said she didn’t believe
her soul needed that sort of nourishment
and focused,
instead,
on God and prayer,
on giving up on matter
and climbing a ladder to the divine.
Sometimes I wish I could be like that:
committed
to my soul
instead of worrying
about this body all the time.
A Surprise
Instead of wearing her green school skirt,
Yasmeen is in a denim mini
and a pair of leopard print pantyhose.
She’s sprayed her
pink hair
up high
into a cresting wave
and the teachers don’t make her change because
today is her seventeenth birthday and everyone knows
birthdays
for the sick
are sort of sacred.
‘I might have sex to celebrate,’ she says,
and whoops so loudly
everyone in the art room
suspends their paintbrushes
above their watery
self-portraits
to look at her.
Instead of a party
Yasmeen is having a sleepover.
That’s what we tell Mom.
We don’t tell her we’ll be
squatting at The Church on Saturday
under bare branches
and blinking stars,
creeping around the school grounds
when it’s locked up for the night.
Once Jon’s gone to mix more paint,
Yasmeen passes us a card,
a glittery heart with the word
LOVE in swirly capitals
like a monogram
on the front.
‘It’s from Jon,’ she says.
‘I wish he wouldn’t.
I’ve told him how I feel.’
My heart
rams my ribs
like I’ve been
hammered from
behind on the dodgems.
I hand back the card without reading it.
Yasmeen’s self-portrait is black,
the eyes tiny pebbles in a too-round face.
‘Bad, isn’t it?’ she says.
I don’t know whether she means
the portrait or the
Problem of Jon.
All I know is that
I can think of harder knocks
than being liked by him,
than opening a card
covered in his kisses.
‘You’re probably making too much of it,’
Tippi tells Yasmeen.
She opens her mouth
to add something
but changes her mind
and strokes my side instead.
‘You all right?’ Tippi asks later.
I nod.
I’m fine.
And then I say,
‘I’m getting drunk at The Church.’
I Watch Him
I watch how he is with Yasmeen
but I can’t see his love for her anywhere
and I wonder whether
she could be wrong,
whether the card
really means
what she suspects.
Either she is wrong,
or I am blind,
because from where I’m standing
I can’t see that he treats us
any differently.
Eating for Two
I’m not hungry.
Even the sight of the peppered chicken
on a bed of yellow rice
makes my stomach turn.
I have to look away.
‘You don’t want that?’
Tippi asks.
I push
my small plate toward her,
my half of the serving.
‘You have it,’ I say,
and quickly she gobbles up
enough for the both of us.
More Important
Bruised clouds gather in the distance.
‘I hope
it doesn’t rain tonight
and stop us from going out for
Yasmeen’s birthday,’ I say.
Tippi tows me away from the window.
‘Worrying won’t help,’ she says.
‘Worrying won’t help what?’ Mom asks,
coming into our room,
peering over the tower of clean clothes
she is carrying.
‘Grace doesn’t want it to rain,’ Tippi says.
Mom puts down the clothes and picks up
two dirty plates
covered in crumbs.
‘If I were you,
I’d worry about
something more important,’ she says,
and without saying what that should be,
leaves the room
and carefully
closes the door behind her.
Palmistry
The Church is alive with the yipping and ticking
of night bugs.
The moon is hidden
behind thick clouds.
A chill inches its way
beneath my sweater and
into my bones.
I thought the beers I downed would quell
my feelings for Jon,
chase them into a quiet place
and leave room for me to think of other things—
things
that would be
possible.
But it’s the opposite.
My head is fogged up with words I want to whisper
to him here in the darkness.
His face is more beautiful now than ever
and his laugh makes my muscles tighten with longing.
Tippi feels it, flinches,
then sips at an almost empty
bottle of red wine and nibbles on a hash brownie.
Yasmeen strums out some Dolly Parton
songs on a guitar and sings, too.
Jon is sitting next to me on the damp
log.
‘Give me your hand,’ I demand,
and take it,
turning
it palm up
to face the black sky.
‘Tell me my future,’ he says.
I draw my thumb
diagonally
across his palm
and stare at him in the moonshine,
absorb him
and our closeness.
‘Your head line shows you’re curious and creative,’ I say.
‘And the heart line is strong.’
‘I see,’ he says,
widening his fingers
and offering me his whole hand.
The beer is trying to bully me
into saying something I shouldn’t.
I clamp my tongue between my teeth
until I taste blood.
Tippi shivers and pulls a blanket around her shoulders.
I jump and stare at her.
‘What?’ she asks,
‘Did you forget I was here?’
She laughs
and I look away
because
yes,
actually,
for a moment
I had forgotten
her.
The Gift Our Mothers Gave Us
We finish fortune-telling,
singing, drinking,
smoking, celebrating,
and are quiet.
Yasmeen breaks the
silence and says,
‘My mom gave me HIV.
She didn’t know. She just gave birth then
breastfed, and I didn’t stand a chance.
I sucked that nasty stuff right out of her.’
No one replies
but I don’t think Yasmeen needs us to.
A shooting star glitters across the slate-coloured sky
and I hold my breath and wish upon it—
sending all its good energy
Yasmeen’s way.
Tippi takes my hand and nestles closer
because we know how Yasmeen feels,
how it is to be burdened at birth
by a curse your mother
never knew she was under.
Maternal Impressions
If we’d been born in another century
fingers would have been pointed and
questions raised about
what was going through Mom’s
mind while we were growing inside her.
Back then they would have said
she’d been looking at
pictures of devils or reading satanic stories