Read Online That Said by Jane Shore - Free Book Online

stuffing
my gym suit back into its mildewed bag.
But first I’d examine my underpants
for the red smear of “the curse.”
The last of my friends, the last of the last.
No luck. I’d swathe myself again
in my neutral clothing.
    Â 
When one morning I woke up,
two black ink blots staining my pajamas,
I dragged my mother out of bed to tell her.
We squeezed into the bathroom
as if into our clubhouse
and she was going to show me the secret handshake.
    Â 
Blushing, leaking, I sat on the tub’s rim,
as if poised over the mikveh, the ritual bath.
Stuffed inside my underpants,
the bulky Kotex, safety pins, and elastic sanitary belt
I’d stored in my closet for over a year.
My mother took a seat on the toilet lid.
“Ma,” I shyly said, “I got my period,”
then leaned over to receive her kiss,
her blessing.
    Â 
She looked as though she were going to cry.
In her blue nylon nightgown, her hairnet
a cobweb stretched over her bristling curlers,
my mother laughed, tears in her eyes,
and yelled, “Mazel tov! Now you are a woman!
Welcome to the club!”
and slapped me across the face—
for the first and last time ever—
    Â 
“
This
should be the worst pain you ever know.”

The House of Silver Blondes
Side by side in matching plastic capes,
my mother and I were two from a set
of Russian dolls wearing the family brand
of hair—dark, wavy brown.
    Â 
A graduate of beauty school
was frosting my mother’s hair today.
Only a few years older than I,
she had a honey-blonde beehive,
teased and glazed,
and a married boyfriend twice her age.
    Â 
She stuffed my mother’s hair
under a punctured bathing cap.
Her crochet hook pulled dark strands
one by one through the holes.
At first my mother looked bald.
And then like one of those dolls
with rooted hair you can really comb,
clumps of hair plugged into the holes
drilled in rows around their skulls.
    Â 
Pulling on her rubber gloves,
the girl painted my mother’s head
with bleach, a greasy paste,
then kneaded and sculpted the hair on top
into a kewpie doll’s one enormous curl.
She set the timer, as if boiling an egg.
If she left it on too long, the hair
would turn auburn, red, blonde, silver,
and my grandmother’s snowy white.
    Â 
I paged through the latest
Seventeen
.
April’s Breck Girl gazed coolly back.
With her blonde pageboy
and pink cashmere sweater,
she looked as if she belonged
in the white Cadillac double-parked out front.
She
hated my babyish ponytail too!
    Â 
A semester short of his degree,
the boss’s son practiced on me,
bending my neck backward
onto the cold pink lip of the basin.
His every touch gave me a shock.
Even while he trimmed my hair,
I couldn’t take my eyes off my mother’s
bumpy rubber scalp stained with dyes
like bruises healing yellow-brown and plum.
    Â 
If my mother had one life to live,
why not live it as a blonde?
Gone was her beautiful dark brown hair.
I had lost her
among the bottles of peroxide and shampoo,
rollers, bobby pins, rat-tailed combs,
and dryers’ swollen silver domes.
    Â 
We walked the block back to the store,
one dark and one fair,
passing the grocer, the butcher, the baker,
every window on the street a mirror.

Music Minus One
Music minus the solo melody part—with the tapes or records providing the background music, you can play an instrument or sing along with the band, try your hand at Grand Opera, or even perform a concerto, surrounded by a full symphony orchestra.
—From the Music Minus One catalogue
    Â 
Sunday afternoons, my father practiced
flute in the family room.
He warmed up, playing scales,
while my mother worked the crossword puzzle
in her wing chair, like a throne.
Three o’clock and she was still
wearing her nightgown and slippers.
Our store downstairs was closed.
She was sick of looking at dresses all week.
Sunday was her day of rest.
    Â 
I sprawled on the floor with my homework.
Each in our little