O,
Susanna
Twelve and
my breasts begin their slow
swell, moon-bright
in
the seventh month of my slumber. This strange
sheen, as
within the begonia’s waxy heart,
my neck
a
spreading alpenglow when, in
front of the boy
from
Glasgow County, Norah Clond snaps my training bra. Small discs
of
turquoise hang from my ears like
fingerprints, the shape
pressed
into my chest like Ms. Smoots taught us
to find lumps
grain-thick in the paddy of some
temerarious
fright, that dim scepter, womanhood. Mornings
she
brushes the tops of
strawberry plants with her palms
to find
the dark pebbles of fruit. After P.E. girls
fold
their
bodies as a mantis its pious limbs into
clothes that exhale
what
perfume our mothers allow. And O for
shame the day
she
finds them, unmistakable knots, gristle, seedlings
in her
left breast. Mother cannot take me;
Father runs
the truck
to warm it, breath suspended like October fog over the soybean
field. We
descend Hanging Rock Hill. My father, who, says my mother,
clucked with
happiness at news of my period but
with whom
the
brutalities of puberty are not
spoken—save
a drive
from school the day I’d forgotten deodorant, his tender
broaching
my, as he called it, Tang, now asks, How dense
do the lumps feel and Does
any substance come out your nipple
if you squeeze? O
how like a garden snake my
tears
make their
way up, up from the fists under the thighs,
from the
chalky pit of gut, the mouth’s soft
gasket: some great
caterwaul pelts every corner of the truck’s cab: O ignominy—
a marble
in each breast, each throat
I cannot clear
and
why I will recall this moment as I
stand outside
a
courtroom, twenty years later,
giving myself back my name—
my tears trouble my father so, he, too, begins to
cry for me.
Susanna
Childress has published two collections of poetry and is now at work on a book
of creative nonfiction titled "Extremely Yours." Her work can be
found or is forthcoming from The Rumpus, Fourteen Hills, Crazyhorse,
Iron Horse Literary Press, Rhino, Relief, and Oakland
Review. She grew up in southern Indiana.