Postcard Memoirs

Liz Robbins

I’m six, in rust-colored cords and a green jean-jacket. On one hand, a wash-off tattoo of Mickey Mouse. I’m holding my security blanket and a plastic gun. It’s 1977. I’ve just come in from playing in the woods behind our house, tiny strawberries from the undergrowth still tart on my tongue. The woods go back for miles, so far back, I can’t hear voices.

My mother mows the yard in short-shorts and pigtails. She makes playdough from scratch. Makes brownies from scratch. Drives me to John Lahey’s house to play, sips coffee with his mother, with whom she has little in common. Mom makes up stories about a dinosaur who gets lost in the woods, even has a special voice for him. The dinosaur regrets losing his temper and scaring people, and is lonely until he meets a brave girl in the woods who says, I’ll be your friend. Each day, each week, Mom makes sloppy joe’s, grilled cheese. Does the dishes, the laundry, the beds, the raking, the dusting, the sweeping, the mopping, makes birthday cakes from scratch. All while wearing sleeveless dresses that show off her chest.

My father works and pays the bills. Reads newpapers, news magazines, books of every historical stripe. He watches the nightly news, my jumble of questions followed by, Just a minute. Wears gray flannel pants, ties with a college stripe. Most of the time, he’s gone. When he speaks, how to compete? My mother and I agree silently.  Dad’s a tease. Reads fairy tales I already know, changes them as we go, testing. Hansel and Gretel, leaving a trail of daisy stems to mark their way. He laughs when I howl in protest. Later I’ll recall the tease, the protest, edit out the warmth behind it.

When it’s dark outside, I play a recording of Jack and the Beanstalk to help me sleep. Dad comes in to lie on my bed, listening, sometimes doing the giant’s fee-fi-fo-fum. He falls asleep before I do, then wakes up, stumbles down the hall to their room.  I want him to stay.

Thirty years later, I walk around with an imaginary gun, shooting slugs of praise or sarcasm. I secure myself within a circle of books. Twice a year, I bake cookies, always from a mix. My nephews ask to play board games: In a minute. I pay a woman to clean my house. I wear pants, cover my arms in sleeves, where underneath, I dream a carnival freak’s burst of tattoos: Ten quotes from my favorite tales. A trio of wild strawberries. Across my back, a forest, for the trees.

Liz Robbins’ poems have appeared in Barrow Street, Cimarron Review, Greensboro Review, Harpur Palate, Margie, New Ohio Review, Puerto del Sol, and Rattle, among others. Poems from her first book, Hope, As the World Is a Scorpion Fish (Backwaters P), have been featured on Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac and Verse Daily; other poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best New Poets. She’s the recipient of an Intellectual Life grant and a Schultz Foundation grant, as well as the First Coast Poetry Award, judged by Robert Bly. She’s an assistant professor of English and creative writing at Flagler College in St. Augustine, FL.