Grace: First Date in Ruby
We met just once, and seventy years later I remember
his name. I was sixteen when I graduated high school,
free of the bells and nuns and rules, and Jimmy found me
in the café where my girlfriend and I ate lunch on workdays,
plates of green salad and cottage cheese between us, laughing
and clinking iced teas. All day we answered the jingling phones
at Ohio Bell, and when Jimmy smiled, I thought I heard
the same kind of silvery ringing. A bodybuilder at Gold’s
next door, his hair fell in soft curls and biceps bulged through
his polo when he bent toward me. I pushed my sliced beets aside,
said yes to a hamburger Friday night. At six, the trill
of the doorbell thrilled through my red silk dress and ruby smile
until I heard Papa’s voice jolt against the doorjamb and cut
Jimmy short: Get outta here, I no like-a your looks. I pleaded
but Papa just spat, He too big. I didn’t think so as I watched
him slink away, but that was it: my first date ended with Grace,
I say no. My brother was out every weekend, like all our neighbor-
hood men, and Dad never liked the looks of any boys but his own.
Meryl: First Date in Pink and Rose
I was sixteen when I graduated high school, still
too young to dance at the pool hall where liquor spilled,
so I had to climb out the window when the police showed up.
I slipped on the slick porcelain sink and scuffed
my elbows on the splintered wood sill and rusty spigot
before I finally heaved myself up and tumbled out,
somehow landing on my feet in the dew-pricked grass.
In my new hoop skirt it was hard to maneuver very fast—
I had sewn it myself, fingers aching from each rose and pink stitch
it took to embroider a little cat stretching up one hip. Harder still
was the man who tried to embrace me and laughed,
Can I pet your pussy? My date hit him so hard
he fell flat. I didn’t know why and I didn’t ask.
I just thought, Yes, it is a cute little cat.
–
Lake Angela is a poet, translator, and choreographer from Lake Erie and previous poet laureate of Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Her latest book is Scivias Choreomaniae (Spuyten Duyvil), or “Know the Ways of the Dancing Madness.” The poems in Grace and Meryl’s voices come from her Autobiography of My Grandmothers.