Blackbird

Whenever Dad left
Mom sang,
sometimes in the kitchen,
sometimes in the living room,
sometimes outside hanging clothes,
anywhere,
anytime,
only when
he was gone.

Me and Janie joined in,
her teaching us songs and rhythms,
teaching us how to sing in parts.

“You’re just like those kids
in ‘The Sound of Music,’” she said.
“And I’m like Julie Andrews.”

Clad in a frilled apron,
Mom conducted
with a wooden spoon.
She tapped the dinette table,
waiting for us
to stand up straight,
then held her arms
angled and high,
pointing from me to Janie,
telling us when
to come in.

“You then you.”
She whispered lyrics
that slid across our tongues,
strange, lilting, and messy,
making spit bubble
on Janie’s lips.

“Frer-a-shau-ka,
Frer-a-shau-ka,” she sang.
“Door-may-voo.
Door-may voo.”

We scampered in verse,
singing something about
“son-na-may-na TINA,”
Janie clapping her hands,
shouting “where’s Tina?”
looking around for the little girl
who jumped rope in the alley,
wanting to play.

“That’s a French song,” Mom said,
saying it was about church bells,
big pretty ones
that woke up little girls,
just like the bells
on the Catholic church
down the street,
the ones that rang Sundays
commanding us to
don eyelet dresses,
cover our hair with veils,
and clutch change purses
filled with dimes
to give to usher boys
passing baskets
at the end of mass.

“Go play now.”
Mom glanced at the clock
nearing 4 p.m.,
returning her makeshift wand
to the silverware drawer.
“Your Dad’ll be home soon.
He’ll want dinner.”

We dashed out the screen door
and into the backyard,
me still singing,
Janie looking for Tina
through the rusted
chain-link fence.

“Tina, Tina,” Janie cried.
“Son-na-may-na Tina.”

I bounced a red ball
then stopped,
seeing Mom through
the back window,
pouring an amber drink
as she absently sang.

“Pack up all my cares and woe,”
here I go,
winging low,
bye, bye, blackbird.”

Her voice floated then broke,
mixing with Janie’s.
Picking up a piece
of sidewalk chalk,
I redrew my picture
of sun, flowers, and trees
Dad had swept away.

*

Jaywalking

When Mike left
and didn’t come home all weekend,
I jaywalked across the highway
to a neighborhood
with wood-sided ranches
and chain-link fences
dividing the lawns.

Girls in flared jeans
and sheer paisley shirts
stepped out in platform shoes,
their long parted hair
washed with twilight.
Guys in vinyl jackets
idled in Novas or Cutlasses,
peeling from blacktop drives
as girls hopped in.

I lit a cigarette
and stood on a curb,
transfixed by the glow
of Tiffany lamps
and console TVs
through picture windows.
A few women saw me,
their lipsticked mouths
skewed tight,
waving for husbands
to rise from La-Z-Boys
and close the drapes.

I crossed back to the trailer park
stopping first at the party store
for a six-pack
and Marlboro Lights.
George, the owner,
looked over his glasses,
asking about my man,
saying a girl like me
shouldn’t be out alone.

“Did he leave you with that?”
He touched his papery cheek,
then pointed to my black eye.

“No, no.”
I pulled up my hood
and dug for bills.
“I got hit.
By the door, I mean.
Last night.
When he swung it open.”

George muttered and rang me up.
He broke a roll of quarters
on the register drawer.

“What door?” he said.
“Your man.
He’s useless.”

I cracked a Busch
in the parking lot,
stepping through shadows
to my single-wide.
The silhouette of
the next-door neighbor
floated behind yellowed curtains,
his window tossing light
on my dark trailer.

I caught the tail end
of “All in the Family,”
then changed the channel
to a TV Movie about a boxer
with an Italian name.
I drank and smoked,
watching him duck
and weave,
his face swollen,
getting knocked down
and getting back up,
the bell ringing
before the network cut
to a commercial break.

My cheek throbbed
so I closed my eyes,
holding a cool can
to the bruise.
I took cold medicine
to help me sleep,
setting an alarm for 8 a.m.,
just in time to call in sick
to my job.

Curling on the sofa,
I drifted,
soothed by the murmur of TV.
I thought of my mom
and wondered where she was,
if she was still with the man
who rubbed my leg
and said not to tell,
trying not to think
of how she left me
for booze and pills,
remembering instead
how she held me
when I was little,
stroking my hair,
saying to be good
and not to be bad,
saying maybe then
she could love me
like other mommies did
with their girls.

*

Burnouts

Mom didn’t look for a job
for a few months.
She said she was too busy
to pound the pavement,
that she needed time
to unpack,
to get used to a new place,
and to get Janie situated
mopping floors
and wiping down tables
at Wendy’s.

“It’s exhausting,” she said.
“For both me and her.”

She and my sister
had moved to Battle Creek
after leaving Dad,
renting an apartment
in old military housing
not far from where
she grew up.
Post and Kellogg
were a few miles north
and over a hill,
the smoke from the factories
leaving skinny plumes
that changed from
gray to pink to orange
at sunset.

Her friend’s daughter
and a few guys
had moved her things,
loading up a caravan
of rusted pickups and vans,
doing something, Mom said,
I would never do.

“Shelley,” she said.
“She’s like my daughter.
And I’m like the mom
she wished she could have.”

Mom never called me
but Janie did,
mostly to ask
about girls from high school.
We’d joke a bit
about Friday night dances,
how “burn-outs” and “jocks”
never mixed,
and how our friend Scotty
always wore a poncho
and passed out
from too much tequila,
his long blonde hair
a mess of knotted tinsel.

“Yeah. Scotty,” she said.
“Scotty.
Like yeah. Scotty.”

Janie said his name
over and over.
She giggled and whispered
the way she always did
when she didn’t want Mom
to hear.
She talked endlessly
about the burnout kids,
the ones who took her along
when they skipped class,
giving her cigarettes
and sips of beer,
sometimes a nose hit,
but not microdot,
never making fun
of her stiff crooked walk
or her slow speech
and semi-crossed eyes.
Scotty even called her pretty,
asking her to slow dance
to “Stairway to Heaven”
beneath the colored lights.

“Yeah. Scotty.” I’d say
We’d talk a bit more
before I asked about Mom,
if she had a job yet,
Janie saying she didn’t know.

“Maybe ask Shelley,” she said.
“She’d know.”
Janie went on then
about Cindy and Debbie
and Patty and Angie,
about girls
in gauzy shirts
and bell bottoms
that dragged along the ground.

“Yeah,” I said.
“I remember them.
They were fun.”

We talked about
their boyfriends, too,
the Marks and Gregs
and Steves and Dougs,
the guys in leather jackets
and headbands
and open-neck shirts,
beads dangling
on their hairless chests.

“Yeah, yeah,” she tittered,
me lighting a cigarette,
thinking about
my old boyfriend Tim,
the one who blasted Hendrix
and took me to cul-de-sacs,
saying life was just a joke
when his pupils swelled
from acid,
making me wish
I was with Dave,
a quiet guy in wire rims
who listened to
the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band,
gave me cut zinnias,
and liked laying in the grass
to look at clouds
while we passed a joint
between us.

*

But Beautiful

One stands,
one sits,
another close by,
catching the shade
of a half-dead tree.

“You’re beautiful,” the standing man says.
He claps his hands
and tips a greasy ball cap,
his face smeared
with Hershey’s chocolate.

“Be quiet,” the sitting man says.
“No one wants to hear you.”
Squaring his pork-pie hat,
he leans into his cane,
his tarnished cufflinks
illuminating the sleeves
of a pinstriped shirt.

“All you. Shut up.”
A woman peers
from sunspots,
her hair curled,
her face cracked porcelain.
“Let her decide.”
She lifts her hand,
a brittle wafer,
nearly toppling
as she slaps
the standing man’s rear.

“Thank you,” I say,
“but I don’t mind.”

“You will,” she says,
her voice a rasp,
her eyes wide,
as I squint
into the blaze.

*

Ann Kammerer lives in Oak Park, Illinois, having relocated from her home state of Michigan. Her work has appeared in The Thoughtful Dog, Open Arts Forum, The Ekphrastic Review, Fictive Dream, and anthologies by Crow Woods Publishing and Querencia Press. She has received top honors and made the short list in several writing contests. Her debut chapbook of narrative poetry was published in 2023 by Bottlecap Press, with a collection forthcoming in 2024 from Kelsay Books.