Brown Packages

My mom rips open

the brown package and

inside are smaller

blue boxes with black

Chinese characters that I can’t read

boxes and boxes of

them from Taiwan

she opens them

and pours the dark brown

powder into plastic bags

she labels the bags with

more Chinese characters that

I can’t read

I draw pictures of

the boxes in my notebook

try to look up the characters in

my Chinese-English dictionary

Clara eats

the powder one spoonful at

a time

her hair is

supposed to grow back

I watch her eat it every day

her face scrunches up like a

rotten apricot

the hair ignores

the powder

the powder ignores

the hair

no hair

grows

back

more empty

notebook pages

Maybe

Maybe if I joined

the tennis team

just maybe

I can think about

something else besides

the hair

the hair

the hair

the

HAIR

maybe if I joined the

tennis team

the bubble would cover

me up

take me into a new

world where

people would watch me

hit the ball

stroke by stroke

where people would

look at how my feet move

where I could run back

and forth and get into

shape again

where my calves could be all

muscle

where I would no longer

have an

empty

face

4:

face

Bubble

On our way home

after playing tennis

Annie’s cylinder of balls

falls out of her

bike basket

wait she yells

and I tighten my hands on

my brakes

before I can turn around

I hear the familiar sound of

rackets slapping balls

the sounds draw me in

I lay my bike on its

side and tiptoe into

the bubble

I love the smell of

the courts

the tennis balls

the sounds of

shoes squeaking

Frances!

it’s Coach Meredith

my cheeks burn as

she waves me

over to her court

she hands me a nicer racket

and tells me to go

to the baseline before

I can say no

bouncy yellow balls

are speeding in my

direction with topspin

faster than

I’ve ever seen

before

I quickly start

hitting anything that

comes my way

balls fly by me and

smack against the plastic wall

behind me with loud thwacks

once in a while

I return a ball but

the balls keep

hitting the net

Coach Meredith tells

me to do this and

to do that and

to move my feet

and to bend my knees

and to follow through

and to turn my body

and to keep my eyes on

the ball and to point

to the ball

and I hear her and try

hard to do what she says

and suddenly my balls

start going over the net again

and again

we do this for what seems

like hours

she finally stops and

calls me over

to the net

she tells me when practice is

and to come three times

a week

I nod and she pats me

on the back with her racket