The Magical Imperfect: Parts 5–7

Too much stress.
It might cause more reactions.

My father moves
around the workbench,
his voice loud, muffled
through the window.

It says she’s fourteenth, just after Molly,
who’s playing piano,
and before William,
who is doing a monologue
from Shakespeare.

She unwraps the scarf
from around her head,
takes off her glasses,
her swollen eye partially closed,
that side of her face,
a little red from the eczema.

We can’t really see onto the stage
but we hear guitar chords
and the occasional clapping

When the little ballerina
slips on stage,
her parents
pick her up,
help her finish,
to a standing ovation.

She looks at her cassette
to make sure it’s wound to the right place,
then hands her cassette to the Covenanteer,
who takes it to the theater tech.

We step between twisted light fixtures
and broken glass.

Every light fell from the ceiling,
fluorescent bulb glass
and metal wires webbed
across turned over chairs.

In front of the bakery,
the crack in the earth
is a gaping mouth.

The world is not itself.
It feels held together
by a huddle of people.

Then, like the world getting up,
the sudden whir
of the refrigerator going on,
the static of the TV, the blink and shine of the lights
like we’re waking up from some strange dream.

Mr. Agbayani drives up,
headlights beaming
on one million flecks
of lingering dust
thrown up by the earth.

and then we see it,
the Bay Bridge.
The two layers
intersect,
a piece of the top, split,
broken, falling down
into itself,
cars trapped underneath.

Mr. Agbayani can tell I feel nervous,
so he assures me that my father
must be fine.

He asks me lots of questions
about baseball,
kosher food,
earthquakes,
the Calypso,
being Jewish

They talk and watch the TV;
news reports cut back and forth
with cartoon pictures of the Santa Cruz Mountains
and the San Andreas Fault like a dark river.

No traffic lights, no anything, just chaos.
We didn't even know what roads were broken;
if we could drive on them at all.

The doorway to the apartment building
is hollowed out, the glass cleaned up,
the debris swept away.

At the apartment we eat bagels
with lox and cream cheese.

You are almost thirteen,
you should have some of these things,
but I have one condition.
Go back to synagogue.

It's old, he begins, much older than anything else.
An artifact of our family,
something you should have now.

But why not. Isn't that the point? she persists.

When the jar is full, we look at it.
Full of water, perfectly still,
a tiny reservoir at the top.

The table is laden with tinfoiled boxes of chocolate,
silver candlesticks,
baskets full of challah
and pandesal,
bowls of gefilte fish,
bowls of steaming rice,
dishes full of adobo,
platters piled with lumpia
circling around rich, red sauces;
steam rises from pans
full of brisket and vegetables,
Crock-Pots of corn soup,
and shining bowls of honey carrots.