Poor-boy sweaters fit
way too tight all the way around
so they looked outgrown right
from the get-go, like the 1940's
turtle necks on news boys
who stood in the streets calling out
the latest war casualties; they cost
a whole twenty-four dollars even
in 1968 at Marianne's where
I got that credit card for free
simply by signing
my full name and smiling
all the way home, so excited
to show my father how much
I had grown, though I still shopped
with my mother and she was there
to co-sign. He said, Let me see,
and seemed to be examining it
for a long time, the card, that is, made of
plastic with royal-blue-block-letters
spelling my whole special name,
the first name after his murdered mother,
the middle after my mother's mother,
also, by the way, sent to the ovens, though
that makes it sound like she baked
sponge cakes; there is no way
to say these things.

My father started shaking
his big round shiny head at my new
plastic sign of maturity, scrawled
with my whole sorry anglicized name
that should have been Doba Leah,
then he chanted, Oy, beautiful
for special skies, and with scissors
he dissected the card before
my bug eyes, the card I coveted
as my proof of American citizenship.
I didn't dare try to take the scissors
out of his hands or even talk back.
It was a different sort of language
we spoke back then, silenced by
just a look from the father's sequined
or incendiary eyes, the Orthodox
patriarchy transported to this golden land,
though the laws of keeping kosher and
resting on the Sabbath got left behind
in cinders of the shtetl.

Slicing the plastic into four unequal parts,
he said, No kecky, no pecky, no ma'am!
Have I already told you my father was
smitten by American sayings of all kinds?
I usually heard this one in our station wagon
sorties when I went along to drop off
snowsuits with fat sky blue snowmen
embroidered on the bibs for the babies
and fur coats for the moms, the silky silver
linings showed off monograms
my father had sewn with his embroidery
machine. No cash, no package, no ma'am,
he'd practice his English on me.

Maybe I sat stunned
for a long time or maybe I sobbed
right away over the card cutting.
But you can be sure my mother
shamed my father for making me
sad, our house quite accustomed
to my father following close behind me
as I slurped up the stairs
to my cherry red room so as
not to let them see me cry because
my mother hated to see me cry
though my father didn't
seem to mind at all.
He was the one who had decorated
my room in that deep cherry red.
He was the one who looked
for closure of some sort,
who talked himself into believing
his father when he said they'd all
see each other again, so I figure
they never really said
the good-bye of good-byes.
So in my room
when my mother closed in
behind my father and they both sat
side by side on the edge
of my bed and started to argue
about whether he had caused
my tears or I was just too sensitive,
I disappeared while remaining
at the center of their attentions.
Oy, Al, you made the baby cry again!
I was seventeen and stood
almost as tall as my six foot father.

My classmates that year pinned
monogrammed Etienne gold
circle pins onto their heather
sweaters bought at the Villager shop.
The sweaters were also custom-
monogrammed in fancy script
just like the letters my father curly-cued
onto the linings of their mothers' furs,
stitched securely in the brightly
colored threads of America.
And the girls carried hard
leather handbags, also by Etienne.
The heather sweaters had jewel-
neck-lines and hung loosely around
budded breasts, while I stuck to
the poor boy sweaters
my father paid for with cash
after the card cutting incident,
though the sweaters made him
laugh in that needling way at
the price he paid for his daughter
to look like war's child.

It was never a question of lack
of generosity. It was just that my father
wanted me to learn to save
my own life if I needed,
to follow his lead as he took
half his weekly wage
every Friday before the sun
went down, to the savings bank,
though he always kept some cash
rolled up in his brown pair of socks
by the bed, right next to the bulky
batch of keys, just in case America
turned on us, on all our accumulated
proof of citizenship, survival, existence.

By Doris Ferleger