I. Edelweiss & My Mother’s Apron

My mother’s family speaks Hungarian, German, English all in one
sentence. We kiss on both cheeks, exclaiming Szervusz!,
hug & interrupt; yell to be heard; reek of garlic, onions;
crowd around a large table to eat goulash & paprikash,
cucumbers, plums, apple strudel & dobos torte
served on flamboyantly hand-painted pottery.
Omi plants blackberries to wind around a chain-link fence;
Wolfie, Chris & I pick to eat until our stomachs ache. We reach
for glass bottles of 7-Up corked with rubber & metal stoppers
we open then chug; each taking our turn.

Emi Tante picks up her guitar; Filli Baci turns to his piano;
their strains of Mozart, Haydn, Bach fill the room.
Ferns, palms, jades dance in the solarium Aunt Martha
carefully plants with exotic blooms. Music floats over the end
of the evening, Reverend Uncle Emil only a shadow in my memory.

I erase him from these snapshots to forget other weekends
at Emi Tante’s & Uncle Emil’s home, when he would hold me hostage
on his lap in the living room and jack himself off inside his pants
by grinding against my bottom while Emi Tante made crepes
with clotted crème, blackberries, and dark chocolate, in the kitchen.

II. Silver Spoons & Daddy’s Little Girl

I have a photograph of myself at age eleven,
thin, brown-eyed girl in a cotton nightgown,
sun bleached, long blonde hair cascading
over Grandma Helen’s mink jacket
she let me try on for just one moment
after Grandpa Harry finished nine holes
at the country club, where we ate roast beef,
shrimp cocktail, petit fours from buffets decorated
with carved ice sculptures — after too many Manhattans —
back when white-jacketed waiters used little sterling silver brushes
to sweep away crumbs & ashes because everyone smoked
in those days.

Hypocrisy is the worst form of cowardice
like my father’s ivy league education — his legacy as only son
of a doctor and a debutant. Raised in a world where manners floated
between the ice cubes in cut crystal glasses of Johnny Walker Red
and tea in bone china was served at weekly bridge games
on linen tablecloths in the living room, where white & ivory keys
polished by the maid could not wipe clean the shame, degradation,
and dark secrets that echoed through the hallways of his life, my father
carefully removed his seersucker suit, Brooks Brothers tie & penny loafers
before climbing under my Laura Ashley nightgown.

B. Elizabeth Beck is a writer, teacher, and artist. She is the author of two books of poetry: insignificant white girl (Evening Street Press, 2013) and Interiors (Finishing Line Press, 2013). In 2011, she founded the Teen Howl Poetry Series, the only under-twenty-one poetry series in Central Kentucky. The series was specifically designed to give teenagers the mic — for teens/about teens.

Beck: I wrote the poem as an introduction to my book insignificant white girl, which details the story of an American suburban girl in the 1970s who survived childhood sexual abuse, rape, and domestic violence. The purpose of the book is to raise awareness and to empower other incest survivors. It is a continuation of my lifelong devotion to social justice — first as a social worker, then as an inner-city school teacher, and now as a writer.

I teach high school students Catcher in the Rye. It is my own red hunting hat, my cry for the sanctity of innocence. Protect the children, Holden! Rail against authority & scream at the top of your lungs, “Sleep tight, you morons!” The prep-school boy who raped me in the ninth grade deserved more than that rant from me. Instead, I went on the pill.

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