Scuffing

I picture my mother at eleven years old —

bow-legged, pint-sized, confined in her uniform,
eyes weary even then, pulled in at the corners,
cast in hickory, flecked with gold,

the shame shade Diana Ross and the Supremes wore
on the cover of Cream of the Crop, shook those hips in.

Gappy teeth, freckled cheeks, walking home from school,
dragging new Clarks against salmagundi brick,

their leather-cracked cry trailing behind
like the music of a cabasa made from gourd,
like bay leaves laughing, rice and peas boiling.

I see her enjoying the scuffing, reveling in its wrongness —

the desecration of shoes so dismally British, so hideous,
mouth flung open to the sky, armed to the back teeth
with glee and remembering

that pot of Kiwi Black polish under the sink, that’ll slide over
the damage like shea butter.

I see her playing out the trouble she’d be in, hearing it
like an echo in an aluminium can,
Great-Nanny’s voice rearing up

over the ruins, the crime scene

then simmering down to a tiny puff of steam
because she’s eleven, grown, a God —