Bili’s one of my two best chums. She's exquisite, cagey and ferociously funny - compared to her I’m tomboyish.
Her hair is a straight corn-silk that shines like black-enamel. When we watch movies, I get to brush it. Her heritage is Japanese, she has perfect, warm-ivory skin, but she’s as American as sarcasm or gun-violence.
When she talks to me, sometimes she’ll be flirtatious or motherly, but always jocose. She bullies me, good-naturedly coaxing and chivvying me onto the trajectory she selects.
I’m jiggered - I enjoy being treated like a pet. I’ve been so harried lately that it’s somehow calming. I think I’m going to spend the rest of the summer, blithely letting her arrange me.
She stands there in knickers,
A cap on her head,
Looking tomboyish, truant and tough
And a cigarette dangles
From unsmiling lips
To warn all she’s not taking their guff.
It’s a sepia snapshot,
The 20’s, I’d guess,
The photographer long in his grave,
But the girl is my grandmother
Though I’ll admit
It’s an image she’d choose not to save.
All the years that I knew her,
So quiet and prim,
Don’t quite match with the face in the frame.
That’s the reason I treasure
This photo of old,
‘Cause both Jennys were one and the same.
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