[audioplayer file=”https://admin.rattle.com/audio/PierstorffGirls.mp3″]
my mother always managed to pick up the phone first.
She would ask, “Do you know my son is not supposed to talk to girls?”
Of course they didn’t know, even I didn’t know why,
except that my mom didn’t understand America yet
and I hated her until she did.
I can still hear my mother in her 4-foot olive frame
and Arabic accent embarrass me as she yells,
“Never call here again! My son does not want to talk to girls!”
By this time, I am cowering under the dining room table,
anticipating tomorrow’s blacktop gossip about a gay boy named Sam,
pretending that the phone never rang—that my mother
could not possibly be explaining the difference
between virgins and sluts to a young girl
who probably just wanted the math homework.
Then my mom shouts for me, wanting a reasonable explanation
for why girls had my number. I wanted to tell her
that it might have been my fuzzy brown hair,
my sensual bottom lip, or simply my 10-year-old impulse
to write my phone number down on the sweet-scented notes
of 5th grade girls who had friends who had friends
who had a friend who liked me,
though I was only able to hear my mom lecture me
about silly religion and temptation and how kisses
spread disease and French kissing made “the babies.”
But I was too young to care. All I wanted was
for Amy Ishmael to like me, because it tingled
and felt good when she said I was cute.