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Little Girl in Tights
a poem by David Jordan I am at Kienow’s Market, standing in line to buy a loaf of bread, when I see a little girl in red tights. She wears them under a brown felt skirt, sticking up from high-topped sneakers made of daisy-painted canvas. All this and a denim jacket of faded blue, slightly too large. It makes me think of Dawn. Little girls, this one is about four, I’d say, don’t often wear skirts over tights any more. They just wear pants. But Dawn wore tights, from the time she was a toddler -- small pink and blue and white ones, in those days, with lacy frills across her bottom. As she grew older, pushing on through kindergarten and elementary school, she wore more somber ones with darker colors. Green and brown and black and, yes, even red. No-nonsense tights, without the lacy frills. I can see her now, standing with her back to me, gazing out the window at the falling snow, waiting for the early-morning school bus, her green tights sticking up from scuffed white, low-cut gym shoes and disappearing beneath a gray skirt topped by a maroon ski parka that wraps her upper body in a cocoon of stitched padding. A small girl with slim legs and hair hanging loosely over her collar to the middle of her back -- brown hair fanned across maroon shoulders. The little girl in Kienow’s Market stands with her back toward me for a long time, studying the trashy tabloid newspapers arrayed in metal racks by the checkout stand. Then she squirms past her mother, who occupies the aisle next to the counter, and reappears peeking from beyond the stand’s back wall. She is a serious little girl, unsmiling. She watches the clerk toss the groceries about and poke the electronic cash register. She is not pretty, but I suppose you could call her cute. Face like a plump triangle. Thin, straight hair squared away in a Dutch boy bob. Button nose. Hazel eyes and dark, heavy brows. Standing there in brown skirt, flowery shoes, too-big jacket. And red tights. Yes, red tights. I consider the mother. She looks bored. A bit old for raising a pre-schooler. Maybe forty-five, wrinkles around her mouth, thick salt-and-pepper hair cropped short in the female professor style, thin shoulders, broad hips. The little girl must be an afterthought, the last kid of -- how many? Three? Four? They’ve come to Kienow’s to score some Shake and Bake and a cut-up chicken to feed dad and the bigger kids tonight. Mom isn’t much concerned with her daughter right now, if she ever is. She has dinner in mind. At least one of the bigger kids hates chicken and she’s thinking about the gripes she’ll hear across the table. I gaze at her and think: Lady, pay attention to this girl child. Watch that small somber face taking in the world, inspecting the trashy tabloids, studying the burly clerk. Look at the dowdy outfit and remember it, how endearing it is, in its own way. Because some day she will be gone. And perhaps all too soon. Like my daughter, Dawn, killed by a drunk in a pickup truck, dead at seventeen. |
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