Audacious, p.7
Audacious, page 7
There is only one acceptable answer
And questions like that
Should never be asked.
JEALOUSY: PART TWO
Later, in the library
David finds me.
Are you okay?
Fine, I say, why?
You look, I don’t know, agitated.
I laugh at his choice of words.
We sit in silence for a moment
Finally he speaks
I just want to say I’m sorry.
For what? I ask, but looking up
I see something in his eyes
That makes me catch my breath.
He looks, unbelievably, like he’s going to cry
Like a child, frightened.
What’s wrong?
He doesn’t answer
And is still staring at me
When Samir appears beside him
Hey Sam, David says to the tabletop
Samir doesn’t answer.
There is hostility, even menace, in his posture
David looks up, perplexed
Can I do something for you, he says
You can go the fuck away, says Samir.
I’ve never heard Samir use this word before
It’s unexpected and violent
Like a gunshot
But David gets up to leave
Chill dude, he says, we’re just talking
Talk to someone else, Samir says.
LET ME MAKE THIS CRYSTAL CLEAR
I don’t belong to you
Or anyone else
I don’t take orders from you
Or anyone else
I don’t appreciate you
Or anyone else
Interfering in my private conversations.
Is it me who says this
Or someone else?
TAKEDOWN
I feel like a shirt
That’s been washed too many times.
Faded and worn.
I’ve run my entire love-life cycle
Beginning, middle and end
Wash, rinse and dry
In one 24-hour period.
Thus I’m under the covers
When the doorbell rings.
There’s something hard in Dad’s voice
When he calls up the stairs.
There’s a policeman at the door
But Kayli
And Mom
And Dad are right there.
Samir?
But there’s no accident
Not that kind anyway.
Next thing I know
I’m getting my coat.
DAZED
This isn’t real
They didn’t confiscate my laptop and camera
And drive me away in a police car
Did they?
I’m not sitting here
With Dad beside me
Across from a detective
Am I?
He didn’t just say:
Child pornography
Or
Disseminating
Explicit
Material
To a minor
Did he?
He didn’t just read me my rights
Did he Dad?
Daddy?
Dadda?
SLEEPLESS NIGHT
A clerk took pity
And locked me in an empty windowless office
Instead of in a cell.
The fluorescent light flickers
I lie on a lumpy sofa, under an itchy blanket
Trying to piece it together
Sometime, around three am
I remember David’s cell phone at the art show
And his apology.
WHAT DAD LEARNED OVERNIGHT
Dad turns up at dawn
With a lawyer
…sixteen-year-old girl you should be ashamed of yourselves
is this some kind of fascism over a photograph what has this
world come to how dare you keep her here overnight with
the drug dealers and hookers what were you…
I think I like My Lawyer.
Now this is what I know:
David, who turns sixteen in three days,
Took a cell-phone shot of my artwork
Just the center panel
He sent it to some of his hockey friends
One of whom is only thirteen years old
Bad luck
The thirteen-year-old’s father is a Mormon minister
Worse luck
David’s father is a public prosecutor
Worst luck
Someone needed to be blamed
And that someone is me.
The one who’s been suspended from school
The one who might go to jail
Who might have a record
Who might have to register
As a sex offender
For ten years.
Oh yes.
Raphaelle
Nice to have you back.
chapter nine
BOOKS
MORAL SUPPORT
You’ve really done it this time
Kayli says
Mom and Dad have both
Carefully articulated their
Measured outrage
And unconditional support
But I know secretly
They were expecting
“Something like this.”
But Kayli is genuinely impressed
Splayed across my bed
Yelling through the bathroom door
While I soak away the jail filth.
You got ARRESTED.
That is just so totally epic fail.
Thanks, I say.
I’ll NEVER live up to that.
All right, let it go.
I emerge in my pajamas
As disinfected as I can get.
A SEX offender,
I mean total etch-a-sketch huh?
She means, would I like to erase it?
But before I have time to consider this
The doorbell rings again.
Maybe that’s the police
Coming for you, I say.
Kayli snorts as she rolls off the bed
And trundles down the narrow staircase
I stand there, in the quiet alone
Stare at the wall
And try not to cry.
Slow footsteps pad up the stairs
I don’t even look up
Raphaelle?
In two strides Samir has crossed the floor
And wrapped me in his arms.
A BOY IN MY ROOM
You knew, didn’t you?
Is what I say to Samir
In the library, with David
You knew what he did?
I heard it from Khalid
He says in a soft voice
It was all I could do not to strangle David
Right there in the library
And I yelled at you, I’m sorry
I don’t even know why I did that
I understand about your parents
My parents aren’t going to be thrilled either.
Raphaelle, is someone up there with you?
Mom yells, as if on cue
Could you ask your friend to come downstairs?
We’d all like to meet him.
She thinks we’re up here making out
Even saying it makes my heart race
Mom, please can I have some privacy?
We’re just talking about school and stuff.
You’ve been suspended, I hear
Bad news really tweets fast these days
It’s not fair; it’s David’s fault
Ms. Sagal has been suspended indefinitely too
I’ll tell them she didn’t know about it
This is true after all
She’s a single mother; she needs her job
Maybe they’ll go easier on me, since I’m a kid.
SAMIR’S SIDE
My parents are furious
Remember I said that Hala
Secretly loved it?
Well Yusif, her husband,
Was somewhat less enthused.
Khalid goes to a prayer group with him
And told him
About you
And he told
My parents
And…
They were talking
About sending me to the Muslim School
You know the one, out on the prairie?
It’s a forty-five-minute drive each way.
They said they’d buy me a car
That’s how mad they are.
Hala managed to convince them
That you are just misguided
And need direction
And that we should be charitable
But I should not seek to be alone with you
Or be intimate in any way.
They actually said that
“Don’t be intimate in any way”
I’m not sure what ways they have in mind
Although I can certainly think of a few.
It’s nice to see you smile
Still, a car would be cool.
Oh, my father wanted me to give you this.
A SMALL BLUE BOOK
Penguin Editions
With Arabic and English
The Holy Koran
Perhaps I’ll read it
And mend my rebellious ways
See the light, maybe
It’s his father’s gift
I’m speechless but understand
He thinks I’ll convert
Samir’s face shows me
Embarrassment but some hope
Our love will prevail.
See, I’m forbidden
So when Samir looks forward
He sees us apart.
Now is not enough
I suppose I should be touched
Yet I want to laugh.
Me as a Muslim
Is just as funny as me
As a Catholic.
For in that instant
In that flash of clarity
Something starts crumbling.
LOST IN DECEMBER
Are you coming to Mass tonight?
Mom says after Samir leaves.
(His departing kiss still tingles on my lips)
Why? I say
I’m pretty sure it’s not Saturday
And anyway I hardly ever
Go to Mass anymore
Mom looks at me
Something in her expression
Exasperation?
It’s Christmas Eve, she says.
CHRIST IS BORN
We put on quite the show
The felon
I walk as though shackled
Just for fun
People actually look at my ankles
NO ONE GETS SHACKLED ANYMORE
I want to yell
But I can’t
Because it’s church.
The skeleton
Mom looks extra thin
In her black church dress
And two days without sleep
Haven’t helped her sunken face
The consumptive
Kayli wheezes through the sermon
Sucking on her inhaler
Shaking
Sucking
Shaking
The drunk
Near the end, Dad
Who had a brandy
Before we left
Gets the hiccups.
DEAR SANTA
Please make this a dream
Please make me a different person
One who would not do something
So stupid.
Please make Mom start eating
And stop barfing
Please make Kayli breathe better
Please make Dad stop pretending
Like nothing’s the matter
Please Santa
Make me
Believe
In you
Again.
AFRAID OF THE DARK
Sometimes the dark is velvet comfort
Soothing the chaos in my head.
Sometimes the dark is as menacing
And cold as a locked steel door.
Sometimes the dark brings slumber
And escape from the drama of my day.
Sometimes the dark awakens
The things that seek to trap me.
Sometimes the dark relaxes
The nerves that coil around me.
Sometimes the dark paralyzes
The muscles that would rescue me.
Sometimes the dark is as quiet
And familiar as a library on Sunday.
Sometimes the dark rings and echoes
With mocking jealous voices.
Sometimes I ride the dark
Like a deep blue wave to dawn.
Sometimes in the dark
I drown.
MARION HOUSE
For as long as I can remember
Mom has disappeared
On Christmas morning.
After the croissants
And fresh-squeezed juice
And presents of course
She loads up a box and drives off
Leaving Dad to entertain us.
But today I ask to go with her
We cruise through the quiet streets
Deserted but for the odd cat or sparrow
Huddled (not together) by a heat outlet.
Marion House is attached to a church downtown
It’s a bland building
That looks a lot like my school
Inside, ghosts and wraiths, invisible ones
Society’s rejects line up politely
For Christmas brunch
Turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce
Potatoes, yams, corn and peas
It’s my job to prepare dessert
Christmas cake made by church ladies
With a dollop of whipped cream
Flavored with artificial brandy
After dessert there are presents
A local bookstore has donated books
And socks and hats have been knitted.
THE PHANTOM
I remember you
Camera girl
Come to take my picture again?
She reeks of whiskey
Unbelievably
It’s barely 11 AM.
Do you have any red socks?
Red is the color of love you know
It’s passionate
The word “passionate”
Is lispy and slurred
Because of missing teeth and liquor.
What’s this book about?
Shopaholic? What’s that?
Don’t you have that vampire one?
I go and check.
But all the books have been given out
And tucked away in bags and shopping carts.
What about something serious?
You know. Literature!
What do they think we are, children?
Without knowing why
It just seems right
I give her the little blue Koran.
What’s this? Arabic and English?
Read it, I say.
It will change your life.
THE WORST CHRISTMAS EVER
When we get home
Kayli is wearing the nebulizer mask
While she and Dad
Watch The Wizard of Oz
The turkey is glowing gold in the oven
And filling the house with
A sleepy, winter smell
The smell of hibernation
That’s what Christmas is, I think
It’s some primal memory
Of ice-age winters
When the family settled in
Never leaving the cave
Until the snow melted
Living off fat reserves
And stories in the night
Now reduced to one day per year
Though the fat and the stories
Still figure prominently
In our Christmas sojourn.
We eat copiously but this year
Quietly, because the conversation
Will naturally stray to topics
Best left for other days.
Mom eats and eats and we watch,
Grinning until she goes upstairs
I follow and wait and eventually
Force the door and see.
SIRENS: PART TWO
I have heard the Sirens singing
On Christmas Day
Calling me
Urging
Me
To sail mindlessly into the rocks
To doom my shipmates
To crush my ship
And then give
Myself
To
Their beauty, their promises
Their tantalizing lies
Their false joy
Their song
Is their
Trap
The sirens’ truth is so hard to look at
An ambulance is on the way now.
I hold Mom’s clammy hand
While Kayli cries
And Dad
Cries
Too
Mom threw up too much and fainted
And hit her head on the way
Down to the floor
Beside the
Toilet.
Where Christmas colors, green, white and red,
Are bile
Clean tile
And blood.
chapter ten
LIES
ALONE
And by the time the ambulance arrives Kayli
Is in a full-blown asthma attack so
They bundle her away too with
Dad riding shotgun
Call a cab he says to me
Urgently I call and call and
Call there is no answer I
Try Samir but no one is there either
David lives nearby but of course he
Is out of the question then
I remember a row of loopy letters and
Numbers scrawled on my math homework
Genie says one it rings and rings and my
Ears ring with it but no one’s home or they
Don’t answer on Christmas Day I try
The other Sarah trembling until I hear
Hello Puffy says It’s Ella I say I’m
Sorry to interrupt your
Christmas she’s not concerned we’re
Jewish we just ordered Chinese food
I tell her everything hardly
Caring I’m crying hysterically minutes
Later she’s at the front
Door with her mother
A round soft woman who
Folds me in her arms and lets
Me cry all over her cashmere before
