IRONING THEIR CLOTHES

With a hot glide up, then down, his shirts,
I ironed out my father's back, cramped
and worried with work. I stroked the yoke,
and breast pocket, collar and cuffs,
until the rumpled heap relaxed into the shape
of my father's broad chest, the shoulders shrugged off
the world, the collapsed arms spread for a hug.
And if there'd been a face above the buttondown neck,
I would have pressed the forehead out, I would
have made a boy again out of that tired man!

If I clung to her skirt as she sorted the wash
or put out a line, my mother frowned,
a crease down each side of her mouth.
This is no time for love! But here
I could linger over her wrinkled bedjacket,
kiss at the damp puckers of her wrists
with the hot tip. Here I caressed complications
of darts, scallops, ties, pleats which made
her outfits test of the patience of my passion.
Here I could lay my dreaming iron on her lap

The smell of baked cotton rose from the board
and blew with a breeze out the window
to a family wardrobe drying on the clothesline,
all needing a touch of my iron. Here I could tickle
the underarms of my big sister's petticoat
or secretly pat the backside of her pyjamas.
For she too would have warned me not to muss
her fresh blouses, starched jumpers, and smocks,
All that my careful hand had ironed out,
forced to express my excess love on cloth.

Julia Alvarez

JULIA ALVAREZ
 

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DUSTING

Each morning I wrote my name
on the dusty cabinet, then crossed
the dining table in script, scrawled
in capitals on the backs of chairs,
practicing signatures like scales
while Mother followed squirting
linseed from a burping can
into a crumpled-up flannel

She erased my fingerprints
from the bookshelf and rocker,
polished mirrors on the desk
scribbled with my alphabets.
My name was swallowed in the towel
with which she jeweled the table tops.
The grain surfaced in the oak
and the pine grew luminous.
But I refused with every mark
to be like her, anonymous.

Julia Alvarez
 

AUDITION

Porfirio drove Mami and me
to Cook's mountain village
to find a new pantry maid.
Cook had given Mami a tip
that her home town was girl-heavy,
the men lured away to the cities.
We drove to the interior,
climbing a steep, serpentine,
say-your-last-prayers road.
I leaned toward my mother
as if my weight could throw
the car's balance away
from the sheer drop below.
Late morning we entered
a dusty village of huts.
Mami rolled down her window
and queried an old woman,
Did she know of any girls
looking for work as maids?
Soon we were surrounded
by a dozen senoritas.
Under the thatched cantina
Mami conducted interviews--
a mix of personal questions
and Sphinx-like intelligence tests.
Do you have children, a novio?
Would you hit a child who hit you?
If I give you a quarter to buy
guineos at two for a nickel,
how many will you bring back?
As she interviewed I sat by,
looking the girls over;
one of them would soon
be telling me what to do,
reporting my misbehaviors.
Most seemed nice enough,
befriending me with smiles,
exclamations on my good hair,
my being such a darling.
Those were the ones I favored.
I'd fool them with sweet looks,
improve my bad reputation.
As we interviewed we heard
by the creek that flowed nearby
a high, clear voice singing
a plaintive lullaby...
as if the sunlight filling
the cups of the allamandas,
the turquoise sky dappled
with angel-feather clouds,
the creek trickling down
the emerald green of the mountain
had found a voice in her voice.
We listened. Mami's hard-line,
employer-to-be face
softened with quiet sweetness.
The voice came closer, louder--
a slender girl with a basket
of wrung rags on her head
passed by the cantina,
oblivious of our presence.
Who is she? my mother asked.
Gladys, the girls replied.
Gladys! my mother called
as she would for months to come.
Gladys, come clear the plates!
Gladys, answer the door!
Gladys! the young girl turned--
Abruptly, her singing stopped.

Julia Alvarez
 

NEW CLOTHES

I remember her on rainy days making my school clothes,
gathering the skirt, pinning the belt to the upside-down waist;
Always reverse, work on the blind: she lifted the lining,
pins in her mouth, words minced between tight lips, porcupine mother;
Flip it over and see, the work doesn't show, blind stitches.
She smiled: puckered sleeves, tucked yokes, lace binding on every seam:
her craft more perfect in invisibility,
her outfits successes when they looked as if she hadn't made them.

I remember the whirr and whine of her black Singer,
the gold traceries on the cast iron rod
by the wheel that lifted and lowered the needle.
Threading the levers, eyepieces, winding the turquoise string
through hooks, around minuscule wheels, up and down her
Ariadne hands clever in labyrinths,
the fabric rounding and flattening as it neared the flatbed,
the bulb dotting the cloth with a spot of light,
the needle racing through gingham, poplin, seersucker, cambric,
the pedal pressed heavily down with the weight of one woman,
eye intent, hands feeding and receiving the fabric.

Sometimes she let me stand on her left side,
taking the fabric in hand as it came through the portal.
Don't tug. Don't hurry it, she snapped. Thread'll snag.
Minute by minute, patient impatience, shifting from foot to foot,
I begged for the odd job:
taking a seam out, sewing a hem, snipping off thread ends.
Sometimes she let me stand on her right side,
turning the wheel slowly by hand till she pinched, Stop!
Handing her scissors by handle-ears, Never the sharp end, never!
threading her needles, winding her threads;
the spools sat in their rods in the sewing box,
ends tucked in the notch on the flat tops,
a palette of greens, laurel, mint, olive, aquamarine,
shorts, skirts, blouses, dresses, and nightgowns --
better than storebought.

Late in the night she worked, bent, peering at stitches.
I stayed up, dabbing her seams with a damp facecloth,
pressing the wet hiss out of my dresses.
Sometimes she stopped, turning back over a seam,
forward and back, reinforcement, then snip.
She held out the bell ofa skeletal skirt for me to try,
rubbed at the small of her back, glanced at the time.
Oh my! It's late. Tomorrow's a schoolday!
She rushed me upstairs, hurried a facewash,
turned my arms into the sleeves of the nightgown she'd made me,
tucked me between sheets that smelled of her handcream.

I waited in the dark she left me
for the creak of descent,
the scrape of the chair,
the furious whirr of the Singer.

Julia Alvarez
 

ORCHIDS

I

Oh, she would never marry,
my maiden aunt, Tia Chica!
They gave her run of the garden. . . .
She grew bougainvillea on a trellis;
her anthuriums by the driveway
had cups as big as my palms,
pistils aimed at the sky.
Her rock garden inclined
up towards a stone Saint Francis,
a birdbath in his arms,
rude droppings on his shoulders.
On his tonsure perched a sparrow,
preening his fussy feathers.
The guava trees and tamarinds
lined the cool path to the shack
I was not allowed to enter.
I'd climb for what seemed the blush
of pink on a ripe guava,
but the wormy ones I found
were never worth the bother.
Down I'd come to the shady,
forbidden edge of the garden.

They said she would never marry!
She had done well enough by her father.
(He gave her run of the garden.)
Besides, what man would put up
with a lady who was so bossy!
Her eye didn't miss a tendril!
She wore a dress with an apron
made of a flowered fabric,
her little garden gloves
flew in and out of the foliage,
a pearl button at the wrist--
she was always losing the button.
"Come help me with this," she chirped.
My hands cupped her hibiscus
as she gently dusted the stigma
with the pollen of the pistil.
Or she bent a blossom over
and asked me to smell the ginger.

I followed far behind her,
holding her handpicked flowers,
afraid that her giant ferns
would unravel their rolled-up fronds
and grab me when she wasn't looking.
Oh, but she punished the fresh ones
with a snip of her garden scissors!

But never was I allowed
to help her with her rare orchids
in that little slatted shack
at the edge of her father's garden.

The men of the Orchid Society
came with rulers, thermometers,
little notebooks scribbled with numbers.
She escorted them down the path,
behind the hedge of hibiscus,
half shaded by the guavas,
to the little slatted shack
I was not allowed to enter.
The men came back astonished,
wiping their creased foreheads:
"Twenty-two varieties!
The work of a single woman?"

Once I sneaked to the edge of the garden,
pushed back the wicker gate.
(Those hinges were tattletales.)
My mouth dropped at the vision:
her orchids, her orchids. . . .
An arching spray of tongues
hung from a swaying cradle,
scarlet and faint lavender,
pink mouths breathed at my ear,
slippers and little purses,
purple, spotted spiders . . .
their gooey lips, their stickiness,
the pouches slightly distended,
seemed intimate and forbidden.
I heard the trickle of water
from a hose outside in the garden
and swayed drunk with the scent
from a row of perfumed trumpets.
Shaken, I backed out
from the shack in her father's garden.

II

In her thirties she married well,
a lawyer in New York City.
They lived neighbors to the sky
in the penthouse of a high rise.
She grew geraniums and lilies
and a poinsettia in season.
Her little boy played Brahms
every summer by the window.
She invited me for late lunches
during my school vacations.
She remembered, she said, the orchids,
they were a good diversion,
though twenty-two varieties
were hard work for a single woman!

I asked her to name the orchids
in English or in Latin.
"Let's see," she said as she sipped
the expresso she had made us
from a tiny porcelain cup
that seemed borrowed from a child.

First there were the Brassias,
commonly known as Spiders;
the easiest were the Vandas;
the Epidendrums were show-offs.
Oncidiums and Mormodes,
just too many to remember . . .
Jewel Box and Queerie Deeries,
impudent little faces!
White Nuns and Lady Slippers,
and her prize, the very rare
fluttery white Diacrum
still feared by the orchid hunters,
who claimed the flowers had stingers.
(The secret was, she whispered,
fire ants lived in the pouches!)
They had bitten her here and there.
But the arm she held out to show me
was as smooth as her white Diacrum.

III

Oh, the children must be raised,
the piano cover lifted,
the metronome beat seconded
with the nods of a proud mother.

The husband too has his stories
and needs the "ah" of a listener
who has never heard such wonders.
The grandfather must be wiped
when he dribbles like a newborn . . . .
But I celebrate for a moment
the single-minded labors
of the single woman artist:
the widow squeezes the whey
through the cheesecloth that she bunches,
the shy nuns stitch their crosses
on the linens of the altar,
the silly lacemakers knot
a thousand complications
as they giggle and they gossip.
And Tia Chica bred twenty-two
varieties of orchids!

I name them in celebration:
Brassias and Dendrobiums,
Epidendrums and Vandas,
Oncidiums and Mormodes,
Jewel Box and Queerie Deeries,
White Nuns and Lady Slippers,
and her prize the very rare
fluttery white Diacrum. . . .
Twenty-two varieties
bred by a single woman!

Julia Alvarez