Street Love Read Free Page B

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    And if there is a danger, then it must be seen
    Put aside, taken care of, duly filed
    With each detail revealed, all secrets seen
    With the clear aim that what is intended
    Is not some vague desire, no “if I could”
    No debate, pointless and open-ended,
    But that clear truth we call “the greater good.”
    There is no room for maybes when babies
    Are involved and they are so young, these two
    To be brought into family court
    The younger girl crying, the older glares
    But I only write the Final Report
    I am not the cause of their despair
    What they don’t understand
    Is that the precise list of regulations
    Properly numbered and indented
    Is family. They still long for blood and
    Flesh although blood and flesh has failed
    Them. The mother, Leslie, is my age.
    The report says that she has a tattoo on
    The side of her neck that says “Kitty.”
    I could never imagine myself with a
    Tattoo, or selling drugs, or having
    Children without a father at least listed
    As Divorced.
    At sentencing she pleaded that her
    Children needed her, would be desperate
    Without her. The judge asked her
    Where were her children when she was
    Out selling drugs? She had no answer.
    Now she has given her family to the
    State.
    The girl is sixteen, and much like the mother
    Her hair uncombed, her face looking older
    Than it should, her eyes darting back and
    Forth as she talks. She is a thinker,
    But what does she think? Her mother
    Is the kind who doesn’t think, who pushes
    Her way through a crowd of days
    As if she were in a hurry to get somewhere
    And yet turns at every obstacle to start in
    A new direction.
    My report will be straightforward, to the point.
    Should the state intervene, wrap its arms
    Around the girl and the sister? The sister
    Is almost ten, and shy. I almost caught myself
    Reaching out to her. Almost felt myself being
    Stirred by her youth, the eyes that looked
    Through me as if they could see
    The cool marrow of my being.
    Once she smiled for no clear
    Reason and I felt that she had seen
    The little girl in me that once was as
    Pretty and hopeful as she is now.
    And when she smiled I smiled back
    But then…but then I knew I must
    Move on and find that
    Greater good.
    The Final Report will depend on the
    Grandmother. Can she care for these
    Children? There is already a file on
    Her, it is thick with yellowed papers
    And the accumulation of forty years
    Of dampness. Her Report, 1076-A,
    Individual Court Record lists her
    As Stokes, Ruby, aka Ambers, Ruby—
    Black, two felony convictions.
    Assaults, one with a knife, one with a
    Bat against a man.
    What kind of life
    Is defined by felonies, by street
    Fights? What can she give these
    Girls? What can she contribute
    To the greater good?

JUNICE in the EARLY MORNING
    Miss Ruby has probably always been
    Bigger than she needed to be
    Square shouldered, skin dark and dry
    As the black field dirt she came from
    Wide hipped, wide lipped
    Dried hard in the bitter Georgia sun
    Somewhere along the hardscrabble road
    Somewhere between the Left Alone
    Blues and the One Room
    Bathroom down the hall
    The almost saved daughter
    Of Sunrise Baptist Tabernacle
    Hardened. One day the music
    Was loud enough and the
    Rhythm strong enough to
    Push her too far into the Night
    To ever turn back.
    She is my flesh and blood,
    Big boned as I am big boned
    Uncomfortable in
    Her skin.
    Now she lives in shadow and memory
    Her mind a cluttered shelf
    In a narrow hallway closet
    Her life is a tattered volume of fading
    Photos, brown edged and crumbling
    Some hopelessly stuck together
    In her quiet times, between the pain
    Of her newfound wilderness and the
    Rage of not knowing who she is
    She sorts the pictures, putting faces
    With times, times with places
    Sometimes, away from the girls who
    People her life, she cries in the darkness
    Thin shoulders, no longer straining
    Against the twisted bra straps
    Hunch forward. Dark hands twist
    Her half-empty cup
    Nervously as she waits for the silence
    To stop