Keeping Time with Blue Hyacinths: Poems

Lost in Trinidad

Lost in Trinidad Sexless and pale, Mother Superior and her side-kick, Sister Anne, watch me. They say, How do you do, in clench-mouthed British beat, then shepherd me into the school’s makeshift chapel, kneel me before a cross and a large framed poster of Madonna and Child. Immaculate Mary, Your praises we sing; You reign now in splendor with Jesus our King. Sister Anne bends over my small form, eyes big as the apocalypse, and whispers: This is where we eat the body of our Lord, drink his sacred blood. She makes me sit on a red-painted cement bench in the yard, hands me a list of English B verbs to memorize: Behaving, Blending, Belonging . . . My schoolmates gape at my legs, white as frosting on a bridal cake, trace their fingers along my collarbone, bumpy cheeks, and thick brown eyebrows. I feel like a Persian kebab stick in ugly uniform. The Indian girls won’t oil my hair—too curly, they say. The black girls refuse to braid them—not kinky enough. But the music teacher shows me his teeth, says he will teach me English through songs. In the deserted schoolyard, he sits beside me and sings. 37 Yellow bird, Up high in banana tree Yellow bird You sit all alone like me When he strums his guitar, his sixth finger wiggles like a fat dangling worm. 38 ...