Photo by Cora Leach on Unsplash
our summerhouse in Feast, Wyoming
behind it had a headdress path
that led down to the lake and in time
our mother learned where to find us again
She wore her hair short after her stay
at the Bethel Treatment Refuge to dry out
I remember thinking even as a child
she’d never be as beautiful that way
our father, a Stanford-educated businessman
who resurrected a dwindling cantina outside
San Diego and transformed it into a chain
of family-friendly eateries across the Southwest
with Coors Banquet on tap, could rarely be bothered
we were only six and eight
my younger brother Donald and I
when a revolving door of Serbian women
with sloppy Pall Malls habits or
Austrian spinsters with cognac-scented vulvas
began posing as our caring and dutiful and
more than family live-in nannies until they were
caught stealing silverware or causing fires or
touching private things in our Bel-Air home.
It was a year before we saw the Medicine Bow
Mountains again and my brother cried twice
a week because of his rubber sheets and no one
ever thought his bed-wetting was psychological
so mom’s first summer back was a godsend
for Donald who took to her newfound worship
of good Christian values, the Lord’s forgiveness
of alkies, like an incontinent hooker
promised deliverance from leakage
promised a Sears motorized footbath
But for me, seeing mom was recognizing a hitchhiker
on a sinking skiff near Alcatraz. Up in Wyoming
after he asked too many times I promised
my brother I’d teach him to walk on water
(he’d been into her Bible again)
Over and over down by the lake that July
I scolded his technique until he wept some more
Malik Selle is a California-based writer. A recent graduate of Emerson College, he earned his B.A. in literary studies. His work has appeared in Stoneboat Literary Journal, Beyond Words Magazine, The West Trade Review, and others. He currently lives in Los Angeles, not far from the La Brea Tar Pits.