Bronx Singular

In the confinement of my solitary childhood
I did a little wandering.
So many things to see and ponder—
bars next to bake shops,
whining expressways,
shrines to the Virgin Mother
set up on people’s lawns.
Some days I’d straggle very far,
past weedy lots and car lots,
through the labyrinth of the projects
to the spot where avenues ended
or else where they began.
There was a beach down there,
I swear it,
a tiny inlet strewn with bottle tops
and sludgy rubbers,
mussels too,
and once a horseshoe crab.
There’s where I did my best thinking
as oily water slapped into my sneakers
and jets descended,
low and lower,
to LaGuardia across the way.
Here is not where I belong
is what I’d say out loud to no one.
My real neighborhood is elsewhere.
I’m from there.
I’m going there, someday.



Early Lessons: Despair

(The Mosquito Netting)

Intense and terrible, I think, must be the loneliness/Of infants . . .
—Edna St. Vincent Millay

It is my first memory—
a crib memory—
the form of my father
looming high above me

and then his voice
and mother's voice
and meaning in their words!

I kept looking up,
hungry for their faces.

I kept reaching my wild hands up to vacuous air.

Then came the fright:

A tall caul
billowed over all
and then descended—
so white!

And all the yellow light went white.

And I was sealed off
from the outer world
and left alone
to scream a lung into the white night.

And yet, a small desertion.
Others would ensue in the course of life.

Even today, this moment,
a scrim descends before me.
I reach out,
I touch the web-like pall
and pull away.

I scream out.
The ghosts beyond grow small
and do not hear.




Early Lessons: The Quest

Little legs running, little legs pumping—
from living room to kitchen to cousin's room I ran,
not knowing what kept me going,
not knowing, not knowing . . . .

But I was after something!—
some secret that swirled like smoke
around the tweed knees, the nylon shins.
The hushed talk of the grownups made an electric din.
It charged me up, v’room, v’room, and I kept going

from hall to porch to stoop and back
through perfume cloud and fog of cigarette
and the phone kept b'r'ringing
and my legs kept ru-running, ru-ru-running

till I scooted to a narrow hall outside a bedroom
and a door left temptingly ajar.
O I peeked in!—
and suddenly stood still,
stood very, very still
and glimpsed the secret
displayed, plain as morning, on a yellow spread:

the body of Aunt Peggy on the bed.



Early Lessons: Submission

She hates it, they make her eat it,
she mustn't leave the table until every slice
of cold boiled carrot is off her plate.
6:30, 7:00: she sits there, staring
at those vomit-orange pellets
on pink Melmac, stabbing
at them with a fork, smelling
their sickening odor.
7:30, 8:00: now and then she thumbs a wedge
into her pressed mouth, gagging.
8:30, 9:00: her father holds firm,
she has to eat them.
Her mother warms them up and makes
a carrot sandwich: carrot bits,
pocked with mayo, poking
out of soft white Wonder bread.
It feels moist and lumpy in her hands
but the ruse helps.
She gets most of it down
and is released to one TV show,
a cupcake, her sheltering bed.
Then it's time for breakfast.
They feed her boiled eggs
with raw running whites,
and orange juice, mossy with pulp,
and bacon, blubbery with slick fat
and she hates it and has to eat it.



Early Lessons: The Litters

Rouge, the tabby who matched my mother's hair,
had kittens in the crook beneath the stair.

Mink Max had hers on the porch, on a perch of dried
cloth. My mother didn't let her come inside.

I was four when Rouge brought forth her litter.
I named each kitten: Puffy, Winky, Glitter.

I was eight when Max grew swollen-large.
She'd purr and preen and queenly strut, garage

to snowy gutter, stoop to alley to back-
yard. And Rouge? Daddy put her kittens in a sack

and drowned them in the toilet. The sack throbbed,
the sack mewed. I held my ears and sobbed

though he said to let them die was just humane.
Max glared at me one day beyond the windowpane.

She seemed untamed, she snarled and hissed and rolled
her arching back. Her newborns: dead of the cold.

I had to see. I let one chill my palm.
I weighed the awful event with icy calm

and coldly cursed my mother for allowing the kittens' fate.
Thus it was I learned terror and hate.



The Big Wave

     . . . bulged far out in the dark Sound,
          a great rolling gut, bottle green,
     lip in jut. It leaned beachward,
full tilt, like mean cartoon men,
     barrel-chested, out for blood.
          Our gentle waters, sheltered
     from Atlantic's bulbous swirl,
some seismic gulp has muddled up!
      My mother, squinting eastward,
          sees the peril first. Firm
     on the pier, she points, claps,
pulls the buoyant children out.
     On that pier beside her,
           I dip my hand in hers.
     The tide's in chops:
the wave nears, nears.
     I feel her fear—
          I always feel her fear—
     but watch the coming wave and notice
depth and might and mind
     in a form pleasantly plump.
          It rolls in under my feet:
     I extract my hand and jump.

      A salt second later, I bubble up.
Eyes filmy, lungs choked up,
     I bob and sputter, swim pierward,
          clamber up, out, into mother's towel.
      I search her face for a verdict—
what have I done?—
     but can't read the wet eyes, the bit lip.
          I look away, get nervous, shiver, giggle.
     The inkling comes:
Faced with "safe" and "separate"
     I took the gamble.
          Down the pier, into tomorrow,
     I scramble!



Night Crawlers

Cool as skin after a swim,
that rock,
heavy as a secret.

We peeled it back
from the yard's muscle.

Ted's flashlight
showed three slugs
hugging the bottom.

Jon pried one off
and Ted petted it.

Its little twin headstalks
stood up and reached.

Under us, the grass
seemed jumpy. Over us,
the streetlamp's halo buzzed.

Nobody said much.

Then, tender as anything,
Jon put the slug down,
the rock back.

Later we swiped fireflies
from the sticky air—
cupped them, smelled them,
stroked them, let them go.

Jon and Ted
kept to themselves
for the rest of the summer.

Me and my girlfriends
did the usual stuff.

Things were different, though.

Nothing I put on Barbie
fit right
and jump rope seemed stupid.

My mother kept accusing me
of sulking.

I wasn't sulking!

I was living it again—
that humming, humid night

when the boys let me
come with them,
crouch with them
in the damp August grass

to look for night crawlers.



The Carpenter's Daughter

. . . watched her father
wield the saw,
sand the wood.
She'd crouch close
as planks were split,
press nose to teak,
tweak pine's knots,
bold against splinters!
Down canted stairs
she'd run
to where a wild dust
fogged the air
and wires wormed
and boards
were everywhere.
God of that untidy
underworld,
wizard of tools,
how I loved
to watch you work!
Your wide hands:
so precise.
Your concentrating eyes:
so piercing-clear.
"See: a delicate mechanism,"
you'd say,
lifting up a drill
or gear or blade,
admiring
some new infatuation.
In deference
to its elegance,
you stayed sober
as if escorting
a fine woman.
In deference
to your reverence,
at your side
I stayed as quiet
as the wood.



Eels

. . . in the pail, looped like bowels in their salt
broth, still alive, giving off peristaltic shudders,
close odors. One slimy writher butters
its brine with a slick spit. I find no fault

with it, though other kids flinch and go yew yew
when I tell them I have eels for dinner. Daddy hooks
them, hauls them out of the choppy Sound. Such looks
he gives me! They dangle like privates and slurp, spew.

Home, at the sink, he denudes them of their skin.
A few slits, a long yank: it's a cinch to strip off.
Then mother chops them in eights, dredging the soft
chunks in a dune of cracker meal. What a din

as she slides them into the frying pan! The cat
goes wild, hoisting a tail to the feast in that hot fat.



The Beer Garden

. . . where I climbed a tall stool to wood
perch then peered over amber flora:
my father's secret world. An aura
glowed above all beer pulls, each hood
a lit-up Rheingold or Schaefer logo.
A beer and a ball for him, a coke
in a cocktail glass for me. Smoke
snaked while I chomped chips. Row
upon row—the liquor behind the bar
in lavish overgrowth; on it, lily-
pad coasters: cardboard sponge. Silly,
but I liked to sniff them. There, far
from mother's frowns, me and daddy, in cahoots—
together tasting heady, intoxicating fruits.



The Intimidata

What they taught us:
To sit still.
To walk in tidy lines.
To keep our hands folded.
To pray to Mary to keep pure.

What they feared:
A cacophony of chattering children
in a rhapsody of learning.
A mess of joyful children
swarming through the hallways.
A mass of sexual children,
touching forbidden fruits.

What we were:
 Reined in, like broken animals.
Mute, like plastic dolls.
Little kneeling intimidata
shrinking under our own sin!

What we did when they left the room.
Threw spitballs.
Shrieked with talk and laughter.
Listened for the clank of keys and rosaries—
their inevitable return.



Wild Women of Borneo

. . . was what a red-faced, stamping nun
called the eighth grade girls
who bleached and teased their hair
into moonlit jungles,
whose ripe mango breasts
pressed against their uniform jumpers,
whose pierced ears glittered
with bright primeval hoops.
Wild Women of Borneo:
barefoot at the Christmas mixer,
rocking and rolling in shameless ecstasy.
Wild Women of Borneo:
smearing their cheeks with rouge!
Hidden behind my books,
I watched them smoking in the school yard,
their private rite.
Singing of the Virgin's power,
I saw them primp at holy mass,
their minds on no immaculate conceptions.
They favored white lipstick,
black slips,
a perfume called Tabu—
I tell you, I studied those girls
the way I studied my catechism,
reading them for questions,
memorizing their answers
and never quite solving
their glorious mysteries.
O Wild Women of Borneo,
that red-faced, stamping nun
who gave me A's and praises
never guessed
with what transfixion
my heart attended you—
or with what unrest.



Opaque

Her mother pried,
her father harped and criticized,
the priests undressed her soul.

To outwit them, she became opaque.
Her curtained eyes gave off no luster.

At concealment, she became a master.
Flab hushed the language of the body
and kept her essence sealed.

Her body bloated but her voice grew small.
She sugared it with nicety.

She squashed all authenticity.
No blushes. No tears.
Silent laughter, a covered mouth.

See how she sits with her feet tucked under her!
Most hours of the day, she sits.

Her hands she keeps folded whether she is praying or not.
It is like being manacled.

No one asks about plans or interests.
Ask her. She will say "Anesthetist."

Unconsciousness! This is her destiny—
in sterile robes, to usher the sick to Morpheus.

She will be ready.
In the methods of stupor, she will be wise.
She is apprenticing even as she sits before us:
corpse-still, crypt-quiet, with unlit eyes.



The Parrot Child

. . . performs! Cocking her head,
she repeats her catechism perfectly.
Standing erect, her wing bones jutting,
she wins the spelling bees.
It's a breeze.
Inside she's hollow:
the letters echo forth
     and echo forth
           with ease.

This child is mother's pet:
what more could mother ask?
Pledges allegiance,
rattles off her rosary,
sleeps long hours under the family pall.
Oh she's cute, in a gawky way.
Flighty, too!—
would “lose her head if it wasn't attached,”
tends to scratch the paper casings off her crayons,
leaving nasty droppings on the living room floor.

She's good company withal.
Her green exotic eyes reflect her mother's every move.
After school, perched on the couch,
they watch the game shows,
clucking at wrong answers,
chirping in delight
when one of them gets it right!
Her spark is ember-dim, her soul in coma.
She says her little scripts like a broken record,
     -ken record,
            -ken record:

such a bright, bright child, they say,
such a darling thing!
They think she'll grow into the ideal woman,
mimicking her professors,
mirroring the needs of spouse and boss.

But there's a chink in their theories.

One day she'll go from memorizing the catechism
to memorizing poems.
Then it will be inevitable.
She'll see things new.
She'll renounce the parrot's truth for the poet's truth
and the cooped up wisdom of thirty years will come
      geysering
            geysering
                  forth
from the unkillable well, the shrewd root.



When Girls Fight

There were no rule books for girlfights.
It was a mayhem of pushing, mutual struggling,
our posture almost Greco-Roman,
the nobility spoiled by biting and scratching, dirty play.

There were no lesson books for girlfights.
We were two young shebeasts wrangling in the yard
then grunting in the alley amid garbage cans and flies.
We drove our knees into each other’s stomachs.
We shoved.
We pinched.
We scowled.
We yanked at hair.
Jeanie's hair was short and wiry.
Her tanned skin bore a horsy gloss
and smelled tar-like, milk-like.
Tar-dark, milk-white were her eyes.
I saw my own eyes mirrored in their cold glare.

There were no trophies for girlfights
and no commiserations.
After, in our dim kitchen,
my mother poured peroxide on my scratches
and swabbed them with Mercurochrome.
She washed my face and tamed me into braids.
Then she screamed at Jeanie's mother on the telephone.
She screamed like a shebeast and tore her own hair.



Lots

Lots! In the Bronx there were lots,
lots carpeted with the burrs of the sugar maple,
heaps of them, and green apples, small as marbles,
profuse among the bottle caps and weeds.
You had to watch out for poison ivy and poison sumac,
mosquitoes, hissing alley cats,
broken glass, all manner of danger.
How we wallowed in the danger!—
as we blazed trails in our yellow Keds
or journeyed to the center of the scary earth
where we clambered and clamored and searched
and found what we found.

Row houses went up on my favorite lot.
New kids moved into them
and men in green laid tidy tiles of lawn.
It got so I preferred confinement,
in a book, in my room,
and sometimes in my father’s Chevy.
We’d cruise around the neighborhood
to admire the new developments:
churches, projects,
a white-bricked mall where they sold tires and liquor
and clothes we could afford.
“You’ll buy your prom dress there, Cathy,
your first lipstick, your . . ..”
…“ first bottle of champagne?”
I saw his point, I could barely wait
for tomorrow to happen.
I was in thrall to it,
to its coming, to becoming.
I didn’t miss the old lots at all.



My Father's Drunken Boat

After two years of hard toil in workshop and on dry-dock, my father's boat, a streamlined cabin cruiser, was finally christened.

He named it the "Bel-Bar" to evoke the dull toll of bell buoys, and vistas of sand bars.

Mother pressed her lips and frowned when she saw the name so large on the gleaming stern; she knew he also meant a bar for drinking.

True enough: great coolers of bargain beer weighed down every sailing!

At first, going out on the boat was pure spree. We'd get up at half past five and put on nautical whites. Mother would pack a picnic, daddy would get his gear, and soon we'd be tramping the creaky decks and docks of Higgs Marina.

Oily water sloshed along the piers and silver killies streaked by everywhere you looked. Salt and gasoline: that was the smell of things.

It was always a thrill to putter off. In minutes we'd be at full speed, coursing underneath the Whitestone Bridge, borne up by the good Long Island Sound.

At Sands Point, in mid-Island, Daddy would drop anchor, then start reeling in the flounders and the eels. My mother brought a few in herself.

Me, I’d sunbathe on the cabin roof, and soon be stupefied and restless. I'd go back and forth, back and forth, studying the pails of edgy fish one minute, peeling my sunburn the next, whining to go home to comic books and Barbie.

By noontime, I'd be feeling seasick and we'd all be pretty sick of each other. The beer would be nearly gone. The arguments would start.

By mid-summer, my father was taking the Bel-Bar out alone.

At dawn his key would clack the lock. At dusk he'd be back, our own ancient mariner. "Here he comes," my mother would say, mocking her mother's brogue, "makin' esses."

Then he'd stand tipping in the kitchen, his eyes like blood, reeking of dead fish and rotgut.

The Bel-Bar sailed for only a few summers. Then she was in dry dock, on rickety stalks, right behind some canted wire fencing. My father drove there every Saturday to look.

He kept saying he would make her seaworthy again, but the Bel-Bar just kept rotting.

By the end of his life, she seemed to cave in on herself. Her paint was all crackles and blisters, and barnacles clung to her hull. She was a sad old sight.

After he died, I'd imagine pushing her back into the Sound with his body at the helm.

I could just see it: that crazy, wobbly cabin cruiser, veering and yawing, pitching and leaning, makin' esses into the listing, bloodshot, vaporous horizon.


Acknowledgments

Thanks are due to the following publications where some of these poems first appeared:

The Centennial Review, Eclectic Literary Forum, Facets,
Hudson Valley Echoes, Poets On, Without Haloes

"Wild Women of Borneo" appears in Catholic Girls, eds. Amber Coverdale Sumrall & Patrice Vecchione, Plume/Penguin USA Books (New York), 1992.

"The Carpenter's Daughter" appears in The Tie That Binds, ed. Sandra Martz, Papier Maché Press (Watsonville, California), 1988 & 1992

"Eels" appears in Sonnets, ed. Ira Rosenstein, Starlight Press (Long Island City), 1992

About the Author

Kate Bernadette Benedict's collection Here from Away is published by CustomWords. Her work has been appearing in literary magazines since 1980.  Her credits include print journals such as Slant, Rhino, ELF, Thema and The American Voice, and online journals such as The Cortland Review, The New Formalist, BigCityLit, Disquieting Muses and Perihelion.

The poems in Early Lessons are based on Kate's experiences growing up in The Bronx, first in Throggs Neck and then in a neighborhood commonly called Castle Hill though its proper name is Unionport. Since the late 1970’s, she has lived with her husband John Leahy in a “cozy” apartment on New York City’s upper west side; they surround themselves with totemic objects and thrift-store treasures.  She has worked in book publishing and finance.