The Diplomat's Daughter

 

The Diplomat's Daughter

The diplomat’s daughter
can recite the 23rd Psalm in Hindi,
once drank Coca Cola with Martin Luther King,
is 11 years old. I’m 14. The year is 1961.
Public school, we’re the same grade.
“I’m not brilliant,” she says. “I’m experienced.”
We ride the bus. She sits with me,
walks with me after I rescue her once from
certain ignorant assholes. In a white school
she’s skinny and shy and brown.

Her father sizes me up, says “You can be her big brother.”
I get the drift: Don’t you dare touch her. No worries.
She knows embassy protocols — when to shake hands,
when to curtsy, when to kiss both cheeks. I know
the secret map of where to sit safely in the cafeteria.
She says “We can’t save the world. But we can serve it.”

Somewhere between September and April
she grows less skinny, more female. One day
she takes my hand when we’re walking
and says “In June we’re moving to Singapore.”
Sudden pain like stomach gas. I guess it shows.
“I am not your little sister,” she says. “Do you love me?”
At that age I’m compulsively honest,
so I say “I don’t know what love is.”
“THIS,” she says. “What you feel right now is love.”

We hold hands, kiss a few times,
sweet stuff, both of us shy, she for once
as inexperienced as I. Last day she presses
my hand to her heart, her little breast and says
“I’ll miss you. I’m scared. Goodbye.”

A postcard, exotic stamp. Just kids,
we lose touch. So 40 years pass
until her photo, name in the news:
car-bombed fighting polio in Pakistan.
Served the world. Couldn’t save it.
In human culture there’s no secret map
of where to sit, where to not.
Only THIS, what we must feel. 

.....

From my book Random Saints

First published in MOON Magazine. Thank you Leslee Goodman, editor.