First Day of School
I remember a picture of me on the steps of
Delray Elementary, the first day of school.
I have on Buster Brown shoes and a pair of shorts
and a bush jacket. I look like a little explorer.
Banana Republic. Bill was there, since Mom
couldn’t go anywhere without him, and Grandma Nordhem.
Didn’t she have to work? Was she between jobs? Was she
being kept by a man? She was hard to get along with.
Independent. Her name was Inez. She was a manicurist.
She sold B-vitamins and alarm clocks to drunks in a drugstore.
They would lose their shoes, sleeping in doorways. In fact,
I took my shoes off at recess and put them under my desk
and didn’t wear shoes to school again until the 7th grade,
when we moved to
look like a hick.
Many of my schoolmates were Jewish, and their fathers
were department store executives. They went to the symphony.
They swam in indoor pools. Their mothers shopped and went to lunch.
The cook fixed them meatloaf sandwiches. I took peanut butter and jelly.
Mom made soup and cinnamon rolls once a week. She paid a dime
for a soup bone from the butcher at the grocery. We didn’t always have
a ham bone because we seldom bought a ham. My dad was in seminary
on the GI Bill. At
like a counselor to single students. My mom was like a housemother.
Between the first grade and the seventh nothing happened.
I was good at run-through tackle.
I was not good at pussy. Maybe I was too young.
I was scared of girls. I still am. They don’t play fair.
They have an advantage. I know they accuse me of that,
but start at the pointing finger and trace it back, I say.