PotD #2: The Fake Tears of Shirley Temple

The Fake Tears of Shirley Temple

Patricia Lockwood, 2014

 

How many sets of her parents are dead. How

many times over is she an orphan. A plane, a

crosswalk, a Boer war. A childbirth, of course, her

childbirth. When she, Shirley Temple, came out

of her mother, plump even at her corners like a

bag of goldfish, and one pinhole just one pinhole

necessary. Shirley Temple, cry for us, and Shirley

Temple cried. The first word of no baby is

"Hello," how strange. The baby believes, "I was

here before you, learning to wave just

    like the Atlantic." Alone in the world just like

the Atlantic, and left on a doorstep just like the

Atlantic, wrapped in the grayest, roughest

blanket. Shirley Temple gurgled and her first

words were, "Your father is lost at sea." "Your

mother was thrown by a foam-colored horse."

"Your father's round face is a round set of

ripples." "Every gull has a chunk

    of your mom in its beak." Shirley Temple

what makes you cry. What do you think of to

make you cry. Mommies stand in a circle and

whisper to her. "Shirley Temple there will be war.

Shirley Temple you'll get no lunch." Dry, and dry,

and a perfect desert. Then:

    "Shirley Temple your goldfish are dead, they

are swimming toward the ocean even now,

    and her tears they fall in black

and white, and her tears they star in the movie.

She cries so wet her hairs uncurls, and then the rag

is in the ringlet and the curt is in the wave, she

thinks of dimples tearing out of her cheeks and

just running, out of cheeks knees and elbows

and running hard back to the little creamy waves

where they belong, and the ocean. Her first

    glimpse of the ocean was a fake tear for dad.

A completely filled eye for her unseen dead 

father,

who when he isn't dead he is gone across the

water.