But I also imagined my mother, loving him, a confidante, wanting to help if not always knowing how.

 

Bell City

 

My mother was not particularly pretty.

Short, willful, ruddy of face and hands.

“Spunky,” I think they called her,

even in the ‘50s, when young women were,

more often than not, only ladies.

 

Once they called her brother a “fag”

and she never forgot it.

Even in her old age,

when the past had crystallized

into mortgages and kidney stones,

the memory warped her

present.

 

Nothing was to be

forgiven.

 

One time especially,

late November, frost,

wind, iron in the vein,

stone cold, I think they called it,

the beating was not particularly

pretty.

 

No proof to be had.

No raid on the lovers.

Nothing like that.

Just suspicion and thoughts,

wind, iron in the

vein.

 

I know she wondered.

He could he take it?

How did he do it?

And, more, what could she have

done? What could she give

him?

 

Then Christmas with cheer and

peace, a midwinter hiatus

in the grinding of people into

memory and the future.

The Snow Queen Dance

and Mother took Glen, the fag,

as her date.

 

Thoughts and suspicion,

wind, etc. But she would have

none of it.

 

They danced and

danced, the last to

leave. Even so, I know

she wondered. How could

he take it? What could she give

him?

 

It wasn’t long and then they were

gone, together to New Orleans,

the city of sin, they called it,

even in the ‘50s. But it wasn’t

Bell City. It wasn’t

home.

 

They lived, worked, married

after their own fashion.

One of them had children,

the other did not.

And then one of them

died, leaving the other

with memory and the future,

which, though not particularly

pretty, were spunkier yet. After all,

they had brought her home:

unforgiven, cold,

iron in the vein.

What else could she give him?