Читать книгу Dancing at Lake Montebello - Lynne Viti - Страница 19

We Called It Armistice Day

Until we didn’t—on parents’ day at school

our teacher asked Does anyone know

the new name of this day —

I turned around, looked at

my father seated on a folding chair

leaning against his cane —

cracked, speckled terrazzo floors

in the halls, dark wood in the classrooms.

Windows climbed up to the ceiling.

Playground, half-cement, the rest blacktop —

the farther from the school the rougher the boys played —

the girls sat on the brick wall by Christopher Avenue,

in sixth grade some got bras, the rest of us were

flat-chested under our white safety patrol belts —

My father always asked, was her father in the service?

Army? Navy, maybe? Only my uncle stayed out of the war

— he was too old, had kids had asthma —

My father got a scar on his forehead

and a smoking habit, lost forty pounds in China.

He claimed he studied the clouds in Manchuria,

ate rice and — he averred — dogs and cats,

flew over the Hump — then sailed to Oran,

took a troop ship home, limped off the gangplank.

My mother said he didn’t sleep well,

her Dalmatian growled at him.

My father didn’t like the house

she’d bought when he was away —

He bought the Legion’s paper poppies after church

or in the Food Fair parking lot.

I kept them on my dresser clear up till Christmas.