By Meg Pokrass

Keds

I had a strange awake-dream during labor. It started with Barney, checking out holes in my Keds. Suggesting they were a sign of poverty. My mom was singing, trying to distract me. She never wanted to say the words “we are poor.” But then it was clear that this was not Barney, it was my father. He had a hawkish nose, thin blond hair. Looked nothing like Barney and was not sweet. He yelled at mom to stop singing. We were all crying, in this dream. He said the holes in my shoes would never get better.

I told Dennis about the dream while holding Lucy, trying to nurse her. Why won’t she latch? Lucy did not seem to know what to do with nipples, as though survival instincts were missing. I was doing everything right, by the book, following the diagrams. Singing. Humming.

Filmore Street, 2008

She strides through the city with her Labradoodle, hair in a retro sixties cut, cell phone plugged in her ears, ergonomic leather backpack.

She smiles when people notice the sound of her special ring tone, chosen for her by the adolescent kids, (they’ve gone mad!) later, licking shotfuls of espresso with foam, sitting with a friend (talking about men like rivulets going nowhere or hair in soup.) She says it softly: that cancer arrived like jellyfish on the beach overnight, invisible but real, though hard to believe.

“Here’s the number for my Intuitive Healer,” the friend says breathlessly, “because honey, let’s face it there is nothing
more boring than death.”