Audacious Read Free Page B

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THE PROCESS
    So I start with photographs
    Mom, in her robe, with coffee and newspaper
    Unemployed
    Kayli, in the nebulizer mask
    And pajamas
    She woke up wheezing
    Asthmatic
    I ask Ms. Sagal
    She loves the concept
    And poses
    Proud to be single
    Her daughter poses too
    Lopsided smile
    Disabled
    I ask Mom if I
    Can come with her to the shelter.
    The Phantom
    It turns out
    Loves to pose for pictures
    With her gnarled face
    Gaping hole where her eye used to be
    She is ugly
    Yet
    Now I begin to understand
    What audacious means.
    Because behind that ugliness
    Is beauty, as old and deep as the ocean.

CORN: PART TWO
    After school, I take the bus
    Across the tracks
    Hoping I will remember the house.
    There it is
    Still sagging
    Now under the weight of
    Wet snow.
    The truck, half submerged in the driveway
    Empty and abandoned-looking.
    It’s an awkward moment
    When she comes to the door
    A tiny baby asleep on her shoulder
    But she invites me in.
    I’m sixteen, she says when I ask
    My name is Nina, and yes, I’m an Indian
    I didn’t use that word
    I said “indigenous.”
    I tell her the name of my school
    Nina laughs
    I went there. We would be in the same grade
    Except for…
    She pats her sleeping baby with a smile.
    When she hears of my project for Ms. Sagal
    She poses willingly
    I was good in art, she says
    And lets me hold her son
    While she braids her hair.

DEATH AND TEARS
    Ms. Sagal checks my progress
    (Samir paints in the corner,
    His canvas turned away from us.
    It’s a secret, he says.)
    Do you think I can include
    A photograph
    Of someone who is dead?
    I clarify: taken when they were alive of course!
    (Here she smiles with relief I can see.
    I wonder what does she think of me
    I mean I would have to be sick in the head
    To include a photo of someone actually dead.)
    Who ? she says, recovering her poise.
    My grandmother
    She was old
    Eighty
    When she died two years ago
    Exactly five years after Gabriel…
    Suddenly without warning
    I’m crying.
    Ms. Sagal steers me to a seat
    I tell her everything
    Poor little Gabriel
    Mom’s grief
    The vomiting.
    Then Samir appears beside me
    With a clean white handkerchief.

NOMENCLATURE: PART ONE
    Nana loved angels
    She stitched them into quilts
    And named my mother Angela.
    Mom
    Dreamed of at least three kids
    Named for the archangels
    Raphael
    Michael
    And of course
    Gabriel
    But only got
    Two-thirds of the way
    There.
    The weight of that name
    Is sometimes a mountain
    With a cave of secrets
    And sometimes a feather
    Floating on a puff of air.

chapter seven
    JUXTAPOSITION
    OLD
    Nana
    Wouldn’t have
    Liked it maybe
    Being called
    Old
    It’s like
    A prize that
    Nobody thinks they want
    And when they have it
    They pretend they don’t
    Until they die.
    Not me
    I
    Long to
    Get “old” because
    Being young
    Sucks.

NOMENCLATURE: PART TWO
    So that leaves me with “Arab”
    Which despite everything
    I have to look up.
    And it doesn’t help:
    Arab (ã r’∂b ) n.
    1. A member of a Semitic people inhabiting
Arabia, whose language and Islamic religion
spread widely throughout the Middle East and
northern Africa from the seventh century.
    2. A member of an Arabic-speaking people.
    3. An Arabian horse.
    4. Offensive Slang. A waif.
    (That last one makes me think WTF?)
    Samir tells me
    Yes, we are Arabs
    Sometimes people call us
    â€œIsraeli Arabs”
    Like Palestine is just a myth
    Or a half-remembered dream.
    So you prefer to be called Palestinian? I ask.
    Samir thinks for a long time
    He gets that smoky brooding look in his eyes
    The one that dissects my heart
    Lays it out on the table
    Like a pithed frog.
    We would be called anything, he says
    To have our country.
    I let that swirl around us, like mist
    Then dissipate
    Before I ask:
    Would your sister pose for me?
    Samir whips out a phone
    Speed-dials
    And speaks in Arabic.
    (God, I love the way the
    vowels make his lips move.)
    He hangs up
    And without irony