Yellow Mini Read online

  Lori Weber

  Dedication:

  For Fran, cherished friend, teacher, and mentor, who first taught me to believe all those years ago.

  Acknowledgements::

  A huge thank you to Cassandra Curtis, Ron Curtis, and Jane Barclay who read my tangled web of poems with great insight and gave me invaluable advice. Thanks to Fran Davis who listened to an early draft over tea and then never stopped asking. Thanks also to my editor, Christie Harkin, for falling for the book and then helping me take it to a higher level. Thanks also to the design team at Fitzhenry & Whiteside for their creativity. Thank you to the Canada Council for the financial support that enabled me to write this book. Finally, thanks to two special cats, Silver and Bogart, who keep me amused while writing, which is more important than I can say.

  Contents

  The Third Floor

  Crossed Over

  The Kind of Life I Want

  Doloroso ma sognado

  SOMEONE BIG

  Getting the Hang of it

  Why Stacey Dumped Us

  HOT

  Talent Show

  Con Forza

  Lucky

  Just Because

  Social Action Group

  These kids

  MY STEEL SHELL

  My Dad

  Ostinato

  Things She Doesn’t Want to Know

  Poem

  This New Guy

  Trying to Change the World

  The Truth

  Glad He Didn’t See It

  OMEN

  Ordinary

  Agitato

  Love Poem

  It’s a Good Thing

  Stacey’s Sister’s Diary

  HIS LAST THOUGHT OF ME

  You Don’t Know

  Sotto Voce

  Make-up

  In My Pocket

  Fleeting

  Touch me

  FOUND IT

  Pinch Pinch

  How do You Know

  SAILING

  How Could She?

  Crescendo

  What Stacey Thinks

  I Never did Know Mary

  Overture

  Christopher Is

  NEVER LONG ENOUGH

  Injustice

  NOW

  RULES OF THE ROAD

  On the Inside

  Modulation

  Pearl

  INSIDE THE MALL

  Opening Me Up

  I Know How It Happens

  Against Me

  WEIGHT

  Alien

  Crossing the Line

  All I Need to Know

  Telling Annabelle

  Appassionata

  Heresy

  As a Dad

  Stiracchiando

  Something She Doesn’t Know

  THE KEY

  Back Again

  Pregnant

  So Perfect

  LOST

  Deck The Halls

  BACK AGAIN

  WHO IS THIS

  False

  IT MUST HAVE BEEN

  Volante

  Adventure

  The Big

  GoingThrough the Motions

  ALL AROUND ME

  Cuddling Up

  RUST

  Gravity

  COURAGE

  Intrepidezza

  Mary’s Music

  Lights

  Empty

  Ideals

  First Time

  Super Charged

  BIG WHITE SMILE

  Control

  Eclipse

  Trionfale

  Fine

  Relief

  Syncopation

  Hope

  Empty

  Strepitoso

  EXPERIENCE

  Good Intentions

  Both Things

  THE SHAPE

  Counterpoint

  Smoking Weed

  Midnight

  Stacey

  Surrender

  THIS GIRL

  Magnetic

  LANDING

  What He Did

  Simplicita

  Simplicity

  Into the Adult World

  LIGHTENING UP

  First Step

  On the Bus

  MY YELLOW MINI

  The Third Floor

  Annabelle

  I hate to walk past the third floor lounge

  of my school, where

  the cool kids

  hang out.

  The cool kids talk loud and dress preppy,

  carry condoms in their pencil

  cases and smoke up at

  break, throwing

  their butts

  into the

  bushes.

  If I have to go to the library, I take the second floor

  as far as it will go, then climb

  the stairs and double

  back, just to avoid

  the third floor

  lounge.

  If I really can’t avoid it, I hold my head so high I get a kink

  in my neck, and I try not to look anyone straight

  in the eyes, because if they know you’re

  looking they flaunt it, their

  popularity, pull it out

  of tight tops like a

  magician’s scarf

  and fling it,

  laughing,

  in your

  face.

  My ex-best friend Stacey hangs out there with

  her boyfriend Mark, wrapping him

  around her like a shawl, the hair

  on his head spiked up

  with gel to make

  him look

  taller.

  If Stacey sees me, she’ll wave and holler, Hey Annabelle, how’s it going?

  and even though she doesn’t say it, I know she means

  down here, among the loser girls who haven’t done

  it yet, girls who think the purpose of school is

  getting good marks and not a boyfriend

  named Mark, who drives a yellow

  Mini, his girl of the month

  beaming beside him

  like a yellow car

  Princess.

  Crossed Over

  Stacey

  Sometimes, I want to pull

  her in and give her

  a makeover.

  It wouldn’t be hard—

  she’s not ugly.

  She’s got amazing green eyes,

  thick brown hair,

  and a decent shape,

  not that you’d know it because

  she hides herself under

  peasant skirts and baggy shirts.

  Sometimes, I think of the olden days

  when we’d sit on my bed, eat chips

  and talk about the third floor gang,

  wondering if we’d ever be one of them.

  Sometimes, I can’t believe I crossed over,

  all because I learned how to flirt with guys

  on holiday at a cottage my parents rented

  last summer by a lake.

  There, I met Paul, who could skip rocks

  ten bobs on the water. He said when he

  saw me his heart exploded.

  We kissed on the big rock, way out

  in t
he middle of the lake, our tongues

  sparking like flint. With each spark,

  a piece of my childhood chipped

  and fell into the lake, taking away

  the geeky girl I had been.

  My parents were tiny as paper dolls

  in their beach chairs, noses in their books,

  and by the time I was back on shore

  I knew I’d leave them

  and Annabelle behind.

  Now, in the third floor lounge, Mark and I

  entwine under the florescent lights

  and I shine—his girl, not loser girl

  with Annabelle and Mary anymore.

  Now, I’m the girl who gets to hang her arm

  out the yellow Mini and wave

  at suckers waiting for buses.

  I get to roll with Mark beside me,

  his left hand on the steering wheel,

  his right hand on my thigh.

  The way he speeds through stop signs

  makes my blood race and I want to keep

  driving forever, leaving school further

  and further behind because I can’t see

  how it’s going to give me what Mark

  gives me, which is the feeling that

  I’m someone who’s going somewhere

  fast.

  The Kind of Life I Want

  Annabelle

  My mom’s had to work hard

  because she’s a single mom.

  That term always makes me imagine

  that other people have double moms

  or triple moms—a string of moms

  stuck together like those paper cut-outs

  we used to make in kindergarten.

  My mom says she’s a woman surviving in a man’s world,

  which means she has to be careful about how she dresses

  and acts at work, where mostly men get promoted.

  She wears two-piece suits and pointy-toed shoes,

  and carries a leather briefcase full of stats

  on house sales, interest rates, and mortgages.

  She smiles at meetings while the men crack dirty jokes

  and loosen their ties because they can let their hair down,

  while hers has to be impeccably cut and streaked.

  My mom says it’s a disgrace that I don’t take care of my face.

  She buys me creams and lotions to clear my skin

  even though she knows I don’t play that game.

  I hate the way girls fool themselves

  by using eye liner and mascara, as if

  popularity comes in a tube.

  She says one day I’ll have to learn to play the game

  like she does every day, preparing for battle,

  putting on her armour, layer by layer.

  But I know I won’t because that’s

  not the kind of life I want:

  corporate.

  Doloroso ma sognado

  Sorrowful but dreamy

  Mary

  I like the way

  minor scales dip

  down, like

  a landing bird.

  Minor scales remind me

  of the deep pangs

  that strike me

  when I see

  something sad,

  like the kid

  who eats alone

  in the corner,

  tipped away

  from the crowd,

  his sandwich

  cut in four,

  in a way that says

  someone at home

  loves him.

  Minor scales suit the space

  where I practice—

  two hours every day

  that go by in a haze

  as if the music happens

  in other time,

  not world time

  but music time.

  When I play my piano,

  images whirl and twirl

  in my head, filling

  the room with colour.

  I’d love to take

  those colours

  with me to school,

  but they hide

  without the music.

  Sometimes, during the day,

  I’ll get a spark,

  quick and fleeting,

  but there’s too much

  people-noise

  for that colour

  to break through.

  SOMEONE BIG

  Mark

  My Mini gives me wheels

  to go

  wherever

  I want

  whenever

  I want.

  Nothing holds me back since I bought her

  with the insurance money

  from my dad’s accident,

  Second-hand, reconditioned

  by a Mini Man:

  two black stripes

  over the hood,

  cosmic wheels

  chrome fenders

  from the ’50s.

  My mom says my dad wouldn’t have wanted me

  to waste the money on a car. He would’ve wanted me

  to use it for school because that was his dream for me,

  to become someone big like a brain surgeon

  or lawyer or engineer, even though

  I was already a grade behind

  when he collided head-on with a truck,

  driving his cab: two weeks in Intensive Care

  draining into sacs, his insides leaking out,

  attached to so many tubes he looked like the back

  of our TV, hooked to the satellite, DVD, and Xbox.

  My Mini surrounds me

  like a second skin,

  hard and bright.

  My dad had no second skin.

  The truck crushed his cab so bad,

  he and the metal became one. Bits

  of it were buried with him, lodged

  deep in his limbs and chest.

  I picture those pieces shining

  in the grave when everything else

  has turned to dust.

  Getting the Hang of it

  Christopher

  I’m the guy

  who stands too straight,

  who can’t seem to get the hang

  of hanging loose.

  My body won’t let go,

  it wants to be rigid

  because so much anxiety

  is making it hard

  to lighten up

  and untighten up

  enough to stop

  looking

  like a jerk

  when Annabelle’s around.

  Just the sight of her

  clenches my jaw

  hardens my hands

  turns me to granite,

  even though inside

  my thoughts of her

  are soft

  and tender

  and warm.

  When she walks by,

  I’m a stone statue

  standing stiff

  as a guard

  at Buckingham Palace,

  While inside

  I’m reaching

  beseeching

  her to see

  Past this rock face

  to the funny guy

  I know I can be

  and would be

  if I could learn

  the key

  to feeling at ease

  when Annabelle sees me.

  Why Stacey Dumped Us

  Annabelle

  Because after ten years of being best friends


  with me and Mary, her ego

  exploded

  And now she sees herself as much bigger than us,

  like she is perched on some

  high peak,

  Queen of the World, while we

  are just lowly

  worms.

  All because some guy named Paul liked her

  and told her she was hot

  and tried

  To get into her bikini, the yellow one

  she always ties in a double

  knot,

  Like she’s the first girl in history who’s ever

  been seduced at a summer

  cottage.

  When she came back, she was bursting with

  superiority, rolling her eyes

  at us

  Like everything we said was childish and way

  too simple for her sophisticated

  ears.

  She tried to describe how it all happened, the kiss

  out on the rock and the rest, but stopped

  halfway

  Because nothing we could picture in our little brains

  could match the grandeur of the

  real thing.

  HOT

  Mark

  Stacey is short skirts and long legs

  in my peripheral vision

  when I steer.

  She is soft curves when I reach

  over into the glove

  compartment.

  She is loads of laughter in my ear

  when the sound of traffic

  gets me down.

  I never noticed her much before

  this year, but now

  here she is,

  Day after day, riding with me,

  stroking my hand

  on the shift,

  Making my heart race and my feet

  push the pedal

  even harder.

  Talent Show

  Annabelle

  Talent Show posters line the walls,

  auditions coming up.

  I want Mary to try out

  but she’s scared

  because Stacey is doing make-up

  and the rest of her crowd

  everything else, except for

  lights and sound, which the AV Club

  is eager to do.

  Mary will have to place her ego

  in their hands and trust

  it doesn’t get crushed,

  like a bird.

  Besides, says Mary,

  Chopin’s a nerd

  to that crowd.

  They’ll want rock bands

  or pop stars

  with bellies showing

  or hip-hop dancers

  in army fatigues.

  Mary plays so well it’s scary.