Ordinary Hazards Read online

  ACKNOWLEDGMENT

  “Evening Train” (three-line excerpt on this page) by Denise Levertov, from Evening Train, copyright © 1992 by Denise Levertov.

  Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.

  Copyright © 2019 by Nikki Grimes

  All rights reserved. Copying or digitizing this book for storage, display, or distribution in any other medium is strictly prohibited.

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, please contact [email protected].

  Wordsong

  An Imprint of Boyds Mills & Kane

  wordsongpoetry.com

  ISBN 9781629798813

  Ebook ISBN 9781635923476

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2019902537

  First edition

  Book design by Barbara Grzeslo, adapted for ebook

  a_prh_5.5.0_c0_r0

  For my sister, Carol,

  who shared part of the journey

  and knows the God of Grace,

  who brought us safely through

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Acknowledgment

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Memoir

  Prologue

  Book One

  The Naming

  Cards on the Table

  Born

  Home

  Wildlife

  Witnesses

  Size Doesn’t Matter

  Mommy

  Imaginary Friends

  War

  Drowning

  Nightmare

  On Our Own

  Missing Daddy

  Family

  A Proper Introduction

  Binge

  Aftermath

  Jersey

  Long Distance

  March Kidnap

  Train Ride

  The Mystery of Memory #1

  Book Two

  The Family Buchanan

  The Room

  Lassie’s Twin

  The House on Hill Street

  Sign Language

  Petition

  Another Country

  Manners

  Statistics

  Dear Carol

  Waiting

  The Scent of Purple

  Fragile

  Isolation Station

  Secret

  Journey

  Baptist Beginnings

  Change of Season

  First Love

  First Light

  Grape Escapade

  No Picnic

  October Surprise

  Playground

  One Year Gone

  Word Play

  Train Trip

  Home

  Pizza

  Nine-to-Five

  Funny

  Word Garden

  Camouflage

  Housebound

  Rough Ride

  Album

  The Call

  City-Bound

  Goodbye

  Book Three

  Last Stop

  Ding, Ding, Ding

  Sister

  Inhale

  Tag

  Midterm Hustle

  Bff

  Absentee

  Otherwise Occupied

  A Day Like This

  Happy New Year

  Souvenir

  Initiation

  Library Card

  Contagion

  Deliverance

  Nuts

  Details

  Committed

  The Visit

  Reunion

  Gone

  Grandma Sally

  Six O’Clock News

  Clandestine Christmas

  Intruder

  Gin Rummy

  Escape

  Report Card

  Broken

  Afterward

  Prospect Park Showdown

  Just

  What Time Forgot

  Thank God for Chubby Checker

  Record Keeping

  Friend Ship Sails Away

  Birthday Assessment

  Criminal Intent

  Revelation

  Disoriented

  Comfort

  Shots Fired

  Turkey Trot

  Rest

  A Good Goodbye

  Book Four

  The Heights

  Materialized

  Sharing the Load

  New Digs

  DC-Bound

  You Don’t Say

  Pineapple Surprise

  New School

  The Landscape

  Road Trip

  Applesauce

  In the Background

  English Class

  Sideswiped

  Carol’s Mantra

  Kindred Spirit

  Bully on Patrol

  Solved

  June 1964

  Countee Cullen

  Graduation

  Convent Avenue Baptist Church

  A Breeze

  Redirected

  The Solid Rock

  Let Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot?

  Math Madness

  Terra Firma

  Smalls Paradise

  The Copa

  Garment District

  Trio

  Course Correction

  Coif

  Black Magic

  Grease Paint

  Les Ballets Africains

  Hold Everything

  Black Orpheus

  Michaux’s

  My Black Me

  Roommates

  Easter Eve, 1966

  Marking Time

  Finding Fault

  News Round-Up

  Candle in the Dark

  Words to Live By

  Mixed Grief

  Ice Queen in Summer

  Sunday Mourning

  Felony on Fallow Ground

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Photographs

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  MEMOIR:

  a work of imperfect memory

  in which you meticulously

  capture all that you can recall,

  and use informed imagination

  to fill in what remains.

  PROLOGUE

  I can’t deal with crazy.

  Yeah, I know that’s not politically correct,

  but when you’re inches away from someone’s

  mental and emotional avalanche, trust me,

  the word crazy is what comes to mind.

  I used to have a friend who stepped

  off and on the bipolar train

  once too often for me to handle.

  Had to cut her loose. Had to.

  I’d already taken that rough ride

  with my schizophrenic mother,

  and that’s one ticket

  I will not buy again.

  It’s a long story, but I’m a poet.

  I can cut it short.

  BOOK ONE


  1950–1955

  “a Self to be identified

  clarified

  outlined, free form

  so there is room to breathe”

  —Mari Evans

  THE NAMING

  I read somewhere that names

  penetrate the core of our being,

  and I suppose, this is

  as good a time as any to confess

  my name is not the only lie

  I’ve ever lived with, but Nikki is

  the first invention for which

  I accept full responsibility.

  Nickname is the word

  I plucked it from when I was six.

  I immediately liked

  the hard k of it, which sounded

  firm and looked like a sturdily braced wall,

  whether I wrote block letters

  or loopy cursive script.

  I fiddled with the spelling for years,

  eventually dropping c

  and adding another k

  as if it were a second layer

  of brick.

  Toughness is what I was after,

  although I couldn’t have

  articulated as much.

  My real name huddled

  behind that wall,

  along with its memories.

  The girl with that name wasn’t

  worth a lot, at least not so you’d notice,

  which I suppose was why I chose

  to keep my distance. I mean, if she

  was worth the space she occupied,

  why’d someone lock her away?

  Why’d she take unearned beatings

  from strangers?

  Why’d her own mother—never mind.

  For now, let’s just say the girl with that

  old name suffered things I wanted to forget.

  Besides, few people managed to

  pronounce my birth name as intended,

  and life is too short to spend

  correcting everyone I meet.

  I won’t be revealing that name now,

  but thanks kindly for your interest.

  Just call me Nikki.

  CARDS ON THE TABLE

  1.

  Cards on the table:

  I have a PhD in avoidance,

  which kept me running from

  the past for years.

  I was particularly fond of

  parroting Scarlett O’Hara:

  “I’ll think about it tomorrow.”

  But now my need

  for light and truth is greater than

  my fear of murky memories.

  Time to grab my flashlight

  and step into the tunnel.

  2.

  I peer into the past,

  pretending bravado,

  but still I shiver,

  as the ghosts of yesterday

  come screaming into the present

  without apology,

  dragging more baggage

  than I recall.

  We’re masters

  of selective memory,

  aren’t we? Let’s face it,

  we’re all allergic to pain.

  3.

  Pain can sully your soul,

  if you let it,

  and rage held in reserve

  will turn to sludge,

  will obstruct the passageway

  to your heart.

  You won’t even

  be aware of it,

  but over time,

  the river of your joy

  slows to a trickle.

  Your laughter loses

  its hardy echo.

  Before you know it,

  rage has you so clogged up inside,

  that precious little love or joy

  or laughter can squeeze through.

  If you’re not careful,

  your heart…just…stops.

  Emergency surgery is required.

  If you’re going to survive,

  those passageways

  have got to be cleared.

  “Doctor? Get in here, stat.”

  BORN

  I could tell you a thing or two

  about Harlem Hospital,

  not because I was born there,

  but because severe bouts

  of asthma made me

  an emergency-room regular.

  The muscles in my mother’s arms

  must have burned from the ache

  of carrying me there

  night after night,

  which I’m fairly certain

  she resented.

  What’s important

  about this detail of my birth?

  Place, I suppose.

  Harlem is in me,

  which is odd in a way.

  One of the few pictures I have

  of my ebony self back then

  shows skinny me

  peering out at the world

  through heavy bifocals,

  standing on the streets of Harlem,

  looking lost.

  HOME

  The first home that

  comes to mind

  had a hall running

  the length of it,

  rooms flagging off

  from either side like

  train compartments.

  Eat-in kitchen,

  living room, bathroom,

  bedrooms in the back.

  They called it a railroad flat,

  perfect preparation

  for the hours I would

  soon spend riding

  the rails.

  WILDLIFE

  Home was never a safe place,

  as my sister, Carol, tells it.

  Forget the Wild West

  of inner-city streets,

  bullets buzzing by

  on the occasional Friday night,

  propelled by a deadly combo

  of alcohol and apathy.

  I’m talking about inside,

  any day of the week.

  Sis paints the picture:

  I’d be tucked into

  a dresser drawer,

  higher off the floor

  than my crib, supposedly

  out of reach of the rats

  that roamed the rooms

  after dark.

  I can’t quite remember

  the hardness of the dresser drawer,

  only the softness of my blanket.

  I don’t recall coming

  nose-to-nose with any rat,

  but there were mornings

  I did see

  an empty plastic bag

  on the kitchen table

  where a loaf of bread

  used to be,

  and the trail of breadcrumbs

  across the linoleum,

  a broken line

  of evidence.

  WITNESSES

  I’ve cracked the past

  like a door.

  Things long forgotten

  keep slipping through,

  like the angels who

  appeared at night to visit me

  when I was two or three,

  bright lights sent

  as silent proof

  that God

  was always

  near.

  SIZE DOESN’T MATTER

  Four-foot-nine.

  Such a tiny person

  to have her initials

  carved so deeply into

  the meat of my soul.

  No matter how you spell it,

&
nbsp; the word Mother

  is too small

  to suffice.

  MOMMY

  She was quite the beauty,

  all brown doe-eyes

  the size of quarters,

  dimples deep enough

  to dive in,

  and a thick mass of

  shining black curls

  on which her veil rested

  like a crown.

  Her wedding photo with my father

  smiled sweetly from

  the photographer’s studio window

  for years,

  silently selling the world

  one tantalizing tale:

  You, too, can enjoy

  a moment of bliss

  like this.

  IMAGINARY FRIENDS

  Mommy had a secret life,

  a kind of play that was

  more serious than I knew.

  Sometimes I’d catch her

  talking to people

  who weren’t there.

  Finger to her lips,

  she’d shush me

  whenever I asked,

  “Mommy, who are you

  talking to?”

  It would be years before

  paranoid schizophrenia

  grew roots

  in the soil of my own

  vocabulary.

  WAR

  Daddy was a ghost

  in those early years,

  moving in and out of our lives,

  barely visible, like smoke.

  Yelling punctuated the air

  when he was there.

  Mom’s sharp tongue

  made his ears bleed

  every time he’d

  gamble away

  the rent money.

  He nursed complaints

  of his own,

  like Mom draping

  wet diapers

  on his music stand,

  a sniper attack on a man

  who composed

  chamber music

  and played

  the violin.

  Cease-fires

  never lasted long.

  DROWNING

  I wasn’t the only one

  in need of angels.

  Dad’s absences

  multiplied a sadness

  Mom was incapable of hiding,

  though she tried by

  diving into countless

  glasses of something

  clear as water,

  with a smell that

  wrinkled the nose.

  I sipped it once

  when she wasn’t looking,