Requiem of a Spy

At my grandmother’s wake my mother told me not to look into the casket.

She told me not to look into the casket because when she was ten years old her brother died

and no one told her not to. 

People didn’t think about stuff like that in those days. They didn’t have to.

I was nine then and it’s beginning to be the case that I remember the day more than I do her. 

Maybe that’s not true. Maybe it only seems that way because I can see the day. I can see the pews rising to the sky,

and the heaving chests attached to heads hidden in the next shoulder over, 

I can see the black loafers on the feet I still have yet to grow into, and the chicken on my styrofoam plate at the reception three months before I became a vegetarian.

I can see the concoction of somber nostalgia fizzling like vinegar soaked baking soda, filling the room with foam, and then quickly dying out in a huge puddle on the floor.

I can see it. But I cannot feel it. I cannot feel the day. I never could, not even while it was happening.

Her, her I can feel 

I can feel her in the fabrics I’ve inherited like baby powder in your hand.

I can feel her fingers between mine traveling down 7th avenue, glancing at the scratch offs hanging in the window of the newstand—a closet of a store, drooling at the butter seeping from thinly wrapped bagels from the La Bagel delight across the way from the Methodist hospital where she first began to see ghosts.

I can feel the broken vibrations of her voice singing the few good songs they still play on 106.7 lite fm despite their being throwbacks since before I was even conceived.

I can feel her playful remarks at my mother: “give my baby what she wants” with every serving of sticky rice or Haagen Daz chocolate ice cream. 

I can feel her in the Christmas signs hung along street lights which welcome you to Flatbush Avenue or 86th street or Eastern Parkway.

I can feel her in 99 cent stores and soap and bleach and anything having to do with cleaning.

And when I’ve run out of lotion and I cover myself head to toe in vaseline and I feel sticky and I think this must be what it feels like to be in the womb, in some amniotic sac, warm and protected,

I can feel her.

I can feel her smile when I stand before a crowd to speak or when I feel proud.

I can feel her in my mother’s droopy upper lip and her complete disregard for start times, in my army aunt’s paranoia, and in my own anxiety always like gravel climbing up my esophagus.  

I can feel her. But I cannot see her, at least not anymore. 

Except in one moment 

Sometimes I can focus hard on some point in space and see her

in front of the vanity. I in cotton, always in cotton with her, wanting not to be noticed lest she expedite the process, remain snug in the bed with eyes just barely ajar 

watching her remove the layers of fabric which always keep her head warm: a tam, a loosely crocheted cap, a silk scarf all slide off revealing a deep gray colored bun 

secured with a ring of bobby pins which she carefully removes one by one to release a body of kinks and waves that sit about her back. I have never seen them before.  

She retrieves one of many chunky bristle brushes from a drawer and brushes in some jarred oil from root to tip root to tip 

There is nothing in this world like the smooth crunching sound of boar bristles against 

Black hair. 

Braided and tucked away once again,

the scarf, the cap, the tam,

I feel I have been granted special access to some clandestine treasure.

She looks at her reflection, I watch her in the mirror.

Watch her fingers move softly across 

olive skin. 

I see in the mirror the suppleness of her cheeks teeming with the rosiness of life. And when her eyes finally meet mine through the looking glass, I see in her grin that I am the sweet fruit of a journey well-traveled. 

I see her. And when I see her she is beautiful and alive.