The
Ritual
The little dormer room was stuffy with two o’clock sunshine
And flies clustered on the window climbed up
And fell down as they searched for a way out,
Their constant buzzing a comfort as I sat, back
To the wall, holding my baby.
I went to that room to be alone
But every afternoon that summer Grandma
Would call me, her voice
Traveling up the unbroken line of the stairwell,
And I would have to go down to the kitchen
And take my place behind her chair.
The glass dish clinked as I dropped each black hook
Of bobby pin into its well, little by little the coil of her braid
Would loosen, then all of a sudden it would drop
To her shoulder like a black snake
Dropping out of a tree in front of you,
And I would have to unweave the plait,
Separating the three sections until they hung
Across her back, limp and oily as seaweed.
I brought the brush down the length of her hair
Over and over, boar-bristles sliding
Under my six-year-old fingernails,
The kitchen’s circular fluorescent light
Made a thin pale crown on top of her head.
Neither of us spoke. I knew she had found my doll’s
Only bottle in her sewing machine drawer
Where I’d laid it for safekeeping on top of the blue plaid
Patches and the scraps of red flannel. And I knew she knew
It was mine when she threw it away,
But I had developed a diplomacy that was beyond
My years, and I stood and she sat, the only sound
In that room the brush’s rasp
As deep summer shimmered outside the window,
The flies longing for that freedom
Expiring one by one on the sill.
Copyright © 2009 Sherry Beasley