92 The Meadow Frigate Joanne Mallari –After James Davis May Even on the day my mom tells me to call 911, after praying behind the bedroom door for half an hour—the banging stops then starts like a washer on rinse cycle— even on that day, the missionaries, the ones dressed in white, dismounting bikes, ring the doorbell on repeat. Even on that day, they look for someone who might listen to the Truth and maybe fully convert. And I, standing in the closet (cordless phone to my ear), call on God like a tourist hailing a cab. At sixteen I believe in Dickinson. I believe there is no frigate like a book to take me lands away, much like my mother at the same age, reading Little Women behind her bedroom door. I read the classics, because this is what it means to assimilate. I read Austen, then Poe, to know what it’s like to have your heart broken in English. When my mother mourns, she says, ang lungkot, which is what her mother says, mourning the loss of her husband. Now this: fists replace words— another kind of death. Is the Good Book a frigate to take her away from the broken necks of guitars, shards of hand-painted bowls on the floor? Green slivers remind me of peridot, her birthstone.
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