You were just twenty-four when you decided to give in
to my grandmothers, who urged you to trick dad
and stop taking birth control, and told you
you shouldn't go cross-country skiing or on
long bike rides through Wisconsin because you risked
possible conception
This year in your life, already married
newly world traveler from what you were
a Cicero girl who'd dated life-time bowlers
who drank Millers and wore chartreuse
rayon pants to the bar, now living in Spain
you convinced my father to have a child
with you
He never wanted a boy you say often enough
he wanted a little girl because he was afraid
a boy would want to play sports with him
and he was afraid of boys who played sports
because he has always been a clutz
You became pregnant in the yolk of
summer, sick in the mornings before
following dad to the archives where
you were watched both disapprovingly
and tenderly by the archival librarians
who gave you a box of marzipan at
Christmas
The same year Maria Pilar was pregnant
with Guiomar, even as she held a letter
from her husband's latest lover she blamed
herself for betraying him, for jeopardizing
his career with her politics
She kept both child and letter in her
purse for twenty years before she
let them go, bruised by her fingers
and she stopped protesting in the streets
after Franco left her dictatorless, with nothing
of her own to sustain her
This slide, the one you laid out for me
to show me how similar I am to you
reveals something indefinable about our
blood relationship and still nothing becomes
clear, how did you arrive at these conclusions
I know that Ginny and Allison both dropped out of school, the first
for a man, the second for the Colorado ski slopes
Spring break her senior year, with six credits to
complete
Now you seem to have everything that anyone else
would dream of
