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The Conspiracy
The Cambodian kids speak English faster, better than any other kids on the block and all three bang my door the third hopeful time since noon: Seth home now? Not yet, not yet, no. Away they sprint, barefoot on the flagstone walk though it's November: wild geese last week, this week the B-52's homing in on Chicopee on dry-runs so low I see shark-teeth painted under their black clown-noses. It's touch-and-go all day, those bombers, regular as these kids: who bang, now, to ask can they attack my big leaf-pile? Up they fling maple shrapnel-then I hear mother-noise, Cambodian. Ordering her kids out of my leaves and home, probably. On her porch she ducks the roar of the B-52: a bow to old terror domesticated to what? a polite fear that I'll call welfare cops for Cambodian leaf-pile vandalism? Two kids already she's renamed for saint and martyr-Paul, Christina-, already bought them baseball jackets and drills them in English, manners, quickness as though to head off the schoolyard hate we both know their gold faces will attract. She's let me teach them to bunt and steal second, turn them into ghosts full of trick or treat, but her folk-dance of immigrant dread -wince and bow to neighbor-with-leafpile, welfare officer, bomber that bombed her youth to moon-mud-makes me wince and bow on my small porch, and wave to show I know how that dance goes. One hand on the door, one foot inside the house where each night America surrenders to Cambodia, she gives a wave so underhanded I almost miss the small quick smile. The smile that translates all-clear, truce, OK, hello. That says the kids can stay.