APRIL 1997
The Girl Who
Always Thought It Was Summer
Garden Without Figures
China 1936
The Girl Who Always Thought It Was Summer
by Annie Hansen
It is winter.
I am five.
There is snow on the ground
and the white-washed
concrete garden wall where I sit
under bare branches of the oak tree,
in the low sun of this cold day,
legs crossed, young movie queen,
Miss America
wave, palm out, fan-like,
an already practiced gesture.
My mother's best friend, Mary, drives by,
zooming down the narrow tree-lined 57th Street,
going home in a shiny, new '55 Chev wagon
filled with groceries, an ancient cocker spaniel,
a young collie, and more boys than I can count.
Home, she calls my mother, because
this is what she sees as she passes
our small white house:
A little girl in the snow
in a swim suit and a bathing cap,
small bare feet,
and from that winter on, it became story,
following me in my growing up like a title on my spine:
The Girl Who Always Thought It Was Summer.
But what the story did not tell,
and what only I knew,
was the magic I slipped into when I found the pink
ruffled flowers of summer folded far in the back corner
of the smallest drawer of my painted chest,
behind lace slips and white cotton panties, under wool sweaters,
in that secret place between memory and promise
that is always ripe with summer.
Yet, separated by days was another story,
told in other tongues,
a theatre piece, a performance:
It is still winter. I am still five,
but moving through the season so close now
to six. I am dancing
before the full-length hall mirror.
Same costume, but now in anklets, embroidered
with tiny rose buds, shuffle stepping
on the smooth, slippery surface
of the polished wood floor,
my eyes holding only myself in my reflection
as I dance, twirling too quickly into summer,
tumbling into the cold edge of black
wrought iron telephone table,
splitting lip, spilling blood, shedding tears.
And all these seasons later,
your lips find mine,
and they touch the numbed,
thin, jagged line
of the scar
and tiny stitch
marks that show only
in the clear light of summer.
© The Raven Chronicles 1997