<\/p>\n
The Stoop<\/p>\n
We lived across the street from the school,<\/p>\n
but I didn’t collect friends there. My collections<\/p>\n
were caterpillars, comic books, special pebbles,<\/p>\n
small crumbled shells from the unyielding shores<\/p>\n
of Lake Michigan. I had one friend, Ferrah, whose<\/p>\n
grandma lived with them in an apartment down the street.<\/p>\n
She was a huddling yet fierce lady, wrapped in shawls<\/p>\n
and scarves with thick black laced shoes. She taught us things<\/p>\n
we didn’t learn in school. A new day starts in the evening, she said,<\/p>\n
fierce with the truth, her eyes glinting with fire.<\/p>\n
So in three, four hours it will no longer be Monday but Tuesday.<\/p>\n
She told us about the devil and the gaping maw of hell.<\/p>\n
Maybe she said the gawking mama of hell. Either way,<\/p>\n
it was bad. The next year we drifted apart, like clouds<\/p>\n
breaking up and reforming. I started going to the Field House<\/p>\n
in the schoolyard, where Teach showed me how to weave potholders.<\/p>\n
The kids didn’t like me there either. A bunch of girls<\/p>\n
crowded up close like a small battalion and asked me<\/p>\n
what I got on my report card. All Es I said, because that was true.<\/p>\n
You’re lying they said, their battle cry.<\/p>\n
If she said she got all Excellents, she got all Excellents,<\/p>\n
Teach said. I loved her then. Later, when my mom and I<\/p>\n
walked down the street, one of the mothers,<\/p>\n
lounging and smoking on the stoop of her bungalow<\/p>\n
called out, your daughter is full of baloney.<\/p>\n
My mother (though not me) thought it was better<\/p>\n
not to reply. I didn’t know what dignity was then.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Stoop We lived across the street from the school, but I didn’t collect friends there. My collections were caterpillars, comic books, special pebbles, small crumbled shells from the unyielding shores of Lake Michigan. I had one friend, Ferrah, whose grandma lived with them…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1822,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1822"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89338"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89338\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89646,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89338\/revisions\/89646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}