I don’t believe in girlhood. I don’t believe
we are ever small, or ever don’t know what it is
we shouldn’t know. I don’t believe thick minutes in July
crept any closer to the ground than on the tennis court
at Hidden Creek Country Club, where sky-browned Tony
with eyebrows bleached bright from the sun, strapped me
at the end of our lesson into an elastic harness
anchored by the chain link fence, net running across the court
like a hard spine, my sisters on the other side, and
Eyebrows on his knees, adult arms around me, taking as long as he wanted
to snap the clasps in place. He’d back up, yell
Serve! to Meggie or Neena and I ran to them,
slapped backward by its quick yank
at my waist and home later, Meggie, four years younger
so I guess she was seven, says Courtney, Tony has a cwush on you—said it
in that lisp of hers we laughed about
two days ago watching home footage, our mother behind the camera
laughing too, our mother like a shapely soda bottle
with lipstick at the rim, our mother who played Patsy Cline so often
that there Meggie was, singing Cway-thee, eyes nuclear
and luminous, never breaking contact with the camera. We do nothing now
but sing it like she did then. Play it in the morning
on our way to summer jobs at the Club, where she flips burgers
by the pool and I bring beer around to golfers
wearing left-handed gloves that hide their wedding rings.
Every time I pass the cabana, Meggie’s bent over the counter texting
her boyfriend in a boxy uniform she calls unsexy
as hell, thank God, and every time I leave her it’s to bend into
the cart to find a Modelo for Mr. Richards who likes
my little shorts, he says, who likes sunflower seeds, spitting
them diagonally between sentences, who calls me best
in the business, says, we were all talkin ‘bout you today, ‘bout how
you know the rules so well, meaning I’m quiet, unlike
Barbara, who wears khaki pants and drives her cart
like a demon banshee in heat, plowin’ right up there when we’re teein’ off,
and between the 12th and 13th hole I drive the path
along that tennis court where even at eleven I was barely
there, my ribcage the circumference of a Folgers coffee tin
and Tony was lifting my shirt to put his hand
on the harness’ angry red marks, asking if it hurt, and no,
I’d say, it feels like nothing, it felt like nothing at all.
pa is from Virginia and holds an MFA from Columbia University. Her poetry has received awards and distinctions from Best New Poets, Poets & Writers Magazine, Rattle, The Atlantic, North American Review, and elsewhere.