They Will Ask

 
  
What was it like,  
They will ask.  
Your childhood, we mean.  
The doctors, therapists,  
Ministers with store-bought  
Counseling degrees wearing  
Interchangeable masks  
Of concern.  
   
We only wish to help,  
They will say.  
   
The police who only want to help,  
The mother who once danced  
And who now wrings  
The dainty little hanky  
In her hands as if  
Twisting the head  
Off a chicken  
Or the finger of a recalcitrant child.  
   
What can I do,  
She will say.  
   
I only want to help.  
   
Tell us, they will say,  
In the jails, detention centers,  
Mental hospitals, Principal’s offices,  
Rehab centers,  
Halfway Houses,  
Prisons.  
   
It says here you have  
An I.Q. of 144.  
What can you tell us?  
How can this be?  
   
Before an audience of two,  
My younger sister and me.  
The baby gone,  
Removed from the home  
After Jehovah commanded Mother  
To kill her but said nothing of us.  
   
This is the first time  
She has danced nude  
And it is obvious Herod  
Whispers in her ear.  
She is Salome without the silver platter.  
There is no John the Baptist  
But I am Jean the Bastard,  
Child understudy,  
And will do.  
   
She kicks one leg  
Clumsily up  
As if wearing brick clogs for shoes  
And bends over  
Her ass in my face  
As white as my astonishment  
And thumbs it at me.  
   
Thumbs nose  
Thumbs ass  
Brick-kicks the can-can  
Down Crazy Lane.  
But she is only trying to help.  
   
Tomorrow it will happen again  
And my 9 yo sister will join in  
The two of them trying  
To synchronize those  
Laughable, terrorizing kicks  
The welfare money will be  
Hidden in the tiny 1950s  
Freezer—cold cash  
And all things sharp  
Hidden away by me  
Who was only trying to help.  
   
I will not tell you  
Of what happened when    
She was Jesus,  
The Salomian scripts when Herod called  
Bouncing off the rubber walls of  
That lipstick smeared mouth.  
   
This, this alone  I will tell:  
I told someone.  
I told someone  
Who told someone  
Who only wanted to help.  
   
And they took her away  
And put electrodes to her head  
And turned a knob  
And fried her brain  
And when she came home  
She never danced again.  
   
And never asked who told.  
   
O Daughter of Babylon,  
I was only trying to help!  
Can you forgive me  
After all this time?  
   
I have adorned myself  
In sackcloth and ashes  
And tried to atone  
In the only way I knew.  
My body is covered  
With scars, my mother,  
My final gift to you.