A Glimpse Is All I Can Stand

New Smyrna Beach, Florida
1972
(Based on a True Story)
 

1.

Mama she say shh.
She say shhh.
She say, quiet baby.
 

2.

In the beginning
it was just me
and Liz
with Momma
on the edges
sometimes peering in
at us.

 
3.

And Lizzie was my job.

It is your job,
Momma said
to me
years ago
when Liz and me
came home from school,
It is your job,
Hope,
to take care of your
little sister.
You hear me?

I nodded.

I can’t be expected,
Momma said,
to do it all by
myself, now can I?
You hear me?
You have to help.

I heard her.

 
4.

It is my job,
I know it,
to make Lizzie
happy

5.

I remember

Me and Lizzie
sitting
in the dark.
We are quiet.

All I can hear is
our breathing,
and outside,
the frogs and crickets
singing nighttime songs.

I can see the dark shape of
trees. A
light wind moves the leaves.

I talk soft at the
back of Lizzie’s head.
My sister is so small
for almost fourteen.
Just a tiny thing.

Right now I
think of her like the tiny baby she was,
drinking that green Kool-Aid
from a bottle,
biting the nipple so
it hung from her teeth,
and slapped her
baby chest.
I have pictures to prove
this
is so.

I say to Liz,
‘Member that one time
I was upset at you
‘cause you couldn’t sleep?

Liz nods.
I smell Prell shampoo
in her hair.
 
‘Member I told you,
I say,
to get on out of our room
if you wouldn’t be quiet?

She cried long into the night.
Had been
(has been)
screaming
for months now.
Crying when the sun
settles to rest itself
past the lip of the world.

I was just tired then,
I say,
feeling sorry.

I take a breath,
a guilty
breath.

‘Member afterwards I snuggled
you up,
I say,
and then we went to sleep?

Again Liz nods.

Good,
I say,
I just want you
to remember.
 

6.

And then
this morning—
all bright for a minute—
turns dark on me
when
I walk into
the bathroom and
see my sister
fingering the
trigger
of a
gun.

 
7.

Did I do this wrong?

8.

She
is almost fourteen
and
has tried to kill herself
three times
in three months.

3.

I cannot see it.
I cannot see the why.

Why?
Momma says,
loud in Liz’s face
Why again?

And Liz

she does not answer.
She does not look
at Momma.

Or at
me.

 
9.

And I can hardly
look at her.

10.

I am old with living.
So much older than fifteen.

And things aren’t right.
Not at all.

Is she nuts?
Is Momma?
Is it me who is crazy,
twisted tight with all of this?
So tight
I am not sure I can
breathe?

Oh Liz.
Stop and
come back.

Come back to me.