Day of the Dead: Secrets
Be careful what you say—she’ll write about it.
---My mother
1
When my young aunt went crazy
that night in Venezuela, they lured her
into the plane by running backwards
holding her purse. Give it back!
she cried, chasing it down dark streets
past men, leering like skeletons
dancing out of her closet.
In the Fresno sanitarium she clutched
that purse like the child she could
never have, or the husband we couldn’t
mention. Why is Auntie crying? I whispered.
She’s sick, my mother said.
She was sick all her life, headaches,
pains in her legs, back, neck
and, of course, her heart. In her last
years she married an oxygen tank,
breathing her solitary secrets.
My uncle, who hated her—and Niggers,
Chinks, Jews and filthy rich folks—
stole her money after she died. Locked
the door to her apartment so my mother
couldn’t take a single ashtray, cup, photo
or rope of fake pearls.
No one mourned my uncle when he died
of lung cancer or entered his rooms,
black with smoke and ill-will. His table
piled with gambling debts that drove
wife and children away, while out
in the Tropi-Cal courtyard, a golden
Buddha guarded a gated pool.
2
Did my grandmother know her husband
rode buses around Pasadena looking
for redheads? Their bedroom in our house
reeked of Vicks VapoRub and Christian
radio. Grandma made pots of fudge,
howled hymns to keep the devil away.
He’s a schoolteacher, Mother said, not
mentioning his ninth grade education,
all he needed back then in Kentucky.
Mother remade her mother—dyed her hair,
painted her fingernails, bought fancy
dresses, shoes that squeezed her feet.
But she couldn’t remake that backwoods
Kentucky accent. Dying on her hospital bed,
Grandma opened her eyes and said, Git on
yer horse and git me outta here!
3
Eldest of nine children, Mother redesigned
them all. Claimed they came from a grand
Louisville plantation, their fortune
lost in the war. I imagined Confederate
dollars swirling over wastelands of heroic
dead. But never the truth, until I saw
their old, rundown farmhouse, its rickety
porch, broken piano, paint peeling
sadly from splintered walls.
My father said he was born on a kitchen
table in Chicago, not Kiev. His birth
certificate conveniently lost, so we also
never knew his age. Was his grandfather
a wine seller or a rabbi, before the czar
began eating the Jews? Because
a story is a secret, does that make it true?
Donna Spector