Instructions for My Mother’s Funeral

“A Woman Was Raped Here”

20 “A Woman Was Raped Here” was stamped in red paint on the sidewalk between Safeway and the school. But did they mean it happened right here, the sidewalk hard against her back, the tree roots pushing up while he pushed down? Or is this just where he grabbed her? Did he take her into those bushes behind the playground where Christa went to smoke cigarettes with Joe? She pulled her Peter Pan–collared shirt out of her pleated skirt and unbuttoned it up from the bottom, tied the tails together so you could see a line of skin, pink like the horizon. We needed to know when it happened. And where. Maybe during recess in the alley behind the bars where the pretty girls spun. You could see their underpants flashing like signs. I could never turn myself 21 so the trees were pointing down into the puddle’s wet eye, their tips green blades, their bodies made of needles. And how does it end—does she come back, tuck her clothes in, go home? Maybe she lives close, walks down this street, steps on the paint like the sidewalk cracks that she knew would never break her mother’s back even though she still stepped over them. ...