roachboy

say we are walking through an interior
you and i
as we round a corner
there is the smell of ivory soap
where none is expected.

that often means that
you continue walking through the soap traces into one room
as i walk into my grandmother's kitchen
which i see from the viewpoint of my 5-year old self

i land in the same place every time
i can see the red and chrome shelves at the end of a counter
three shelves wth rounded edges
on the middle one a large radio with a circular dial

i am to the left of the dial

the floor is white linoleum with black streaks, maybe marbled

there is an island
the sink is at one end of it
i need to climb a footstool to reach it

i can see out the back window
the driveway, the garage, lilac bushes to either side of the garage
(i know they extend up the driveway on the side opposite the house)
the back yard that wraps around the garage
the back section where there is a brick fireplace
for some reason
marooned in the middle of a lawn

to the left, out this window
seen from atop a rickety metal footstool
is the far end of the liquor store
my granfather owned
the office in the back
the ship in a bottle that i could not figure out
an advertisement for cutty sark
the shortwave radio i would listen to for hours
to ship-to-shore radio
and beacons
it is black and has a rectangular piece attached to the top
that pivots
with two almost transparent piece of plastic
one at either end
that i thought you needed to look across
to aim the radio
and improve reception

as i sit here holding the sequence of memory in place
the sequence grows denser
there are no particular stories
just images

i heard my mother play piano one time only
and something about they way it made me feel
prompted me to hide in the stairway in the front of the house
i remember pushing my face against the white railings
and looking into the livingroom
at her back as she played
i cant remember much about what she was playing
it does not matter
except that her left hand was moving back and forth
tonic chord fifth chord probably

i remember looking down into the hallway from that spot
in other directions
at arrangements to either side of the livingroom
at the front door (left),
at some kind of reception area (the whole),
a table with a black dial telephone on it (right)
already quite old
heavy black plastic
the phone number was Walker 6 something something something.
it was written on a white circle
in the center of the dialer
WA6-9234 (is that right?)

i remember watching the televised aspects of the kennedy assasination in that living room.

the green stuffed chair opposite
an enormous television
my grandfather asleep in the chair
snoring
after dinner
next to him asleep a table
on which there is a portrait of his younger self

i have been walking a circle around the ground floor of that house
there is continuity in the space but not in time
so my viewpoint keeps shifting up and down as i move laterally across it

back into the kitchen
a series of windows through which you can see the lilac bushes that line the far edge of the driveway
which slopes down form the main road
bridge street beverly massachusetts sometime in the early-to-mid 1960s
these have to be from that period
because there is a sense of my grandmother being there

the house is warm

she died in 1967
i can almost see her
her hair in a kind of bouffant
her voice a kind of french lilt
but i cannot see her face
not any more
i have photographs somewhere
and i think i substitute the face from the photographs
at those points when
for some reason
i decide to pretend that memory does not corrode
and chip off
in arbitrary chunks
and fall away

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite