Brown Girl Dreaming: Part III

...Maybe that's where
there is money falling from the sky,
diamonds speckling
the sidewalks.

...A small fountain sent water
cascading over statues
of Mary, Joseph and Jesus.

This house is protected, my mother whispered to us.
By the Saint of Ugly Sculpture.

I don't know how my first composition notebook
ended up in my hands, long before I could really write
someone must have known that this
was all I needed.

Some days in this new place
there is only a box of pancake mix
an egg, and faucet water, the hiss
of those together
against a black cast-iron pan,
the pancakes sticking to it
syrupless but edible and us
complaining about it wishing like anything
we were back in Greenville,
where there was always something good
to eat...

Sometimes, Gina says,
Maybe we should pray for the kids inside
who don't know that God said
"No other idols before me." That our God
is a jealous God.

...But Hope and Dell tell us
that we're too immature to even begin to understand...

Robert opens his hand to reveal a pair of silver earrings,
says to my sister, This is a gift for how smart you are.

If you catch a dandelion puff, you can make a wish.
Anything you want will come true, he says as
we chase the feathery wishes around swings,
beneath sliding boards,
until we can hold them in our hands,
close our eyes tight, whisper our dream
then set it floating out into the universe hoping
our uncle is telling the truth,
hoping each thing we wish for
will one day come true.

In all our moving, we've forgotten our family in Ohio,
forgotten our father's voice, the slow drawl
of his words,
the way he and his brother David made jokes
that weren't funny
and laughed as though they were.

Was he a hugger like Grandma Georgiana holding us
like she never planned to let go or
did he hug hard and fast like Mama,
planting her warm lips to our foreheads where
the kiss lingered...

We are fascinated by him, goggled and bent over the stove
a clamped test tube protruding
from his gloved hand.

For three hours we move through
the streets of Nicholtown,
knocking on strangers' doors, hoping to convert
them into Sisters and Brothers and children of God.

Soon, it'll be near evening and Daddy and I
will walk slow
back into the house where I'll pull the Epsom salt
from the shelf
fill the dishpan with warm water, massage
his swelling hands.

We drag our feet below our swings,
our arms wrapped lazily around the metal links
no longer fascinated by the newness
of the set, the way we climbed all over the slide,
pumped our legs hard—toward heaven until
the swing set shook with the weight of us lifting it
from the ground.