“Bearing Witness” by Sonia Greenfield

It rubs off on us like brushing up

against a dirty car or the way

a dusty window screen leaves

a crosshatch of black on our palms.

 

I remember my mother’s boyfriend­

not him, but her head against maybe

mirror, maybe sliding glass door? I see

a shatter held together, but I don’t

 

know where light came from to etch

splinters in what broke. I remember

hiding in my attic bedroom, kitchen

knife in hand, and the overwhelming

 

wood rot of that house when I

witnessed what made my mother

human in the way we say after all,

she’s only human. She made extravagant

 

mistakes in a town I can’t come back to.

Once, she was a barmaid in the shack

of the Shady Lake Tavern back when

they called them that, a place where men

 

nodded off at two in the afternoon.

I was just a girl who wore nightgowns

and was unable to sort out why I found

her in the kitchen with a wound

 

 

on her scalp like a bear clawing, some

ugly mugging, all for beery dollar bills

tucked into her apron. But maybe I’m

making this up-not the image of

 

her ruined scalp or her hair crusted

with the blood of an afternoon gone

to waste, but the reason for this image

branded on a childhood mile gone

 

and as faint as the delicate luminescence

of white Christmas lights on December

snow fallen on the Lutheran church

on Washington Street. I remember a girl

 

from high school who hid in my eaves.

We used to shoplift make-up in Rite Aid

though I thought it was wrong even if

it was the eyeliner I used for my careful

 

magic. She was beautiful like glossy crows

picking through trash, and we disguised

her from a mother who came looking for

that slut. I spent the night at her house once

 

when she wet her bed. She hated her

half-sister and stepfather, hated her mother­

a woman as hard and painted as graffitied

rocks along the rock-cut road leaving town

 

to the north. Tell me, what good was I

when I didn’t know what I was seeing?

Like this girl’s shame lost on me

who was lost in my own witnessing.

 

I want to say sorry for accusing her

of stealing a favorite shirt actually stolen

by my sister. Some of us make it through

untouched. Why was the night sky pink

 

when it snowed? Once, my mother’s

boyfriend spray-painted my name

on those rocks next to the highway,

but I don’t know why he did it or why

 

I cling to this memory although the paint

didn’t cling very long. Anyway, it was

a town of scant employment and women

who never wanted to be nurses and annual

 

carnivals and a downtown of defunct

Woolworth’s and antiquated streetlights

that may recall the lacquer of hairspray

wool coats and a bandstand happy

 

to host boys back from the Second

World War. A town now in the midst

of revival with fussy pubs and first world

coffee. But I can’t go home because

 

the houses still lean on their posts like

wounded veterans, and chestnuts fall

from the trees like a hard knock rain.

And I can’t carve FTW on my arm

 

with a hatpin or draw lightning bolts

from the corners of my eyes anymore.

I’m too tired to ward off spirits. I’m only

able to bear witness. My mother lived

 

with addicts her whole life in a town where

twelve-step programs filled church annexes

when winter shortened its days. They are

still in those annexes switching on percolators

 

and forming circles of smokers who double up

a cold fog exhaled from their mouths like

gutters shedding dirt-flecked icicles that fall

to pierce the skin of snow beneath. I blame

 

the dirty snow but not my mother,

who escaped finally to Florida’s sticky

heat and tract homes, to its cheap

T-shirt shops and its tepid ocean.

 

A mother who wears her story in

a smattering of hazy tattoos and who bears

her mistakes in the resigned set of a mouth,

its hard line striking through any of this.