Work
My mother’s diligent economies: mixing milk
from powder; sewing dresses for all of us each Easter; for me,
the dark shoes instead of the singing red—
and my father’s, who as a boy had jerked sodas
in the drugstore downtown, who fixed our Ford himself
and had no use for sports until the youngest of us
turned handsprings and round-offs over a vault:
how unfathomable it must have been to them,
to hear me say, of the Woolworth’s, “I wouldn’t
want to work there.” I got in the car, and my mother,
with some heat, said, “Who’d want you, with
an attitude like that!” It was a short ride home,
the application grubbier in my hand by the quarter-minute.
I thought I would be a pianist, so I set up shop
and weekly taught Milly Wu and her little daughter
X; Rachel Schneider, from down the street; and C,
boy of my dreams, surfer and demigod, who decided
in our senior year he’d learn to play. Each week
I’d ready myself for love disguised as music lessons.
He’d bring his books and for half an hour, I sat
just inches away from him, lightly correcting
wrong notes, infelicitous phrasing, the way
he held his hands. Once he brought a date, who waited
in the car. That half-hour I made the little dances
from Anna Magdalena’s notebook take longer.
I also tended people’s houses, dogs, and children,
sometimes for a week or more. Off they went to
France, Africa, La Costa. I raided their fancy cosmetics
and ate the treats they kept we never had. I kept dreaming
that I could be the girl who, with a word, could conjure a party
in one of the gorgeous houses behind a gate on Via del Mar—
something wild, with music and lots of other kids and sex.
Or, alternatively, just one boy, perhaps C, would come
to me while I lay in a strange bed, the rest of the house
blinking on red alert from the burglar alarm. I’d tiptoe
upstairs and disarm it, then slide the door open for him.
Lying there, making fifteen dollars a day,
I was working, writing my way into my own
teen sex film. First I tithed, then saved half
of everything I made. For rainy days. For the bike
I wanted, so I could ride to the cliffs and see him
emerge from the surf. For equipment I needed
to organize my ad hoc job made out of love,
of borrowed possessions, of music, and my belief
I’d never labor for anyone’s desire but my own.
draft summer 05
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