KIM WELLIVER
Apollo Easter
When I was six and Apollo,
like a tinfoil dragonfly
circled the circumference of our dreams,
Daddy bought me a new dress.
It was white as butcher's paper
all Easter frills and lace, purchased
with overtime at the rail-yard,
and Momma `doin'
for the white folk in the big house,
her knees leathery as Old Pap's face,
her hands, callused hard as pig-corn.
Daddy's smile as he held the box filled
with mounds of tissue paper,
as he smoothed the white pleats
with fingers dark as molasses,
lit him up,
like the sun glowed behind his eyes.
Momma worked her magic on my hair,
winding woolly nap
into tidy rows, tied up in bits of ribbon
cut from her best slip.
Daddy called me his princess
swinging me up onto his big shoulders,
my patent leathers riding easy
against his ribs as he walked.
The peppermint-tobacco-shirt-starch smell
of his Sunday best, filled me up and I ached
for the whole world to see us,
me sittin' so high and proud
on Daddy's big shoulders.
We stepped out to walk
the eight blocks to church,
all Eastered up, and looking fine.
My father was a giant
and with my head up there
against the blue sky,
so high up I could smell the stars.
Folks looked at us, smiling
seeing him the way
I did: A big man, with a big voice
laughing as he strode along:
A King.
The Grady's drove by
broad farmboy faces leering from the
truck's back, calling out.
'Lookit! It's niggers' on parade!'
They hit Daddy first, sent rotten eggs
Smashing in foul runnels
across his proud face, stinking yolk
splatted onto my skinny legs.
Daddy swung me down, quick,
pushing me behind him.
But the Grady's kept egging us,
throwing wet paper sacks
filled with horse dung, green and wet.
When those thick-faced beery boys finished,
their Easter duty discharged,
they roared off, cheering.
Daddy, bits of shell stuck in his eyebrows,
blood seeping a startling red near his nose,
looked at me; my white dress
smeared with dung and egg,
my hair crusted; rank.
Momma, behind us, began to cry,
not soft, like when Grandma died
but big ugly whooping sobs.
Daddy looked away.
An angry shame burned through me
to see him there, on his knees
egg and blood dripping off his face,
not wanting to look at me.
Not wanting to see.
Something in me died then.
I felt it go, swirling off like a ghost
to float with those astronauts
in some dim blue orbit we could not touch.
We walked home then, me, and Momma,
and Daddy
who suddenly looked so small.
So small.
