My maman used to work
in Hershey, Pennsylvania,
as a resident in sneakers and scrubs,
wondering what she abandoned to arrive
with such hopefulness on this shore.
The winds here are chocolate-
smelling, the sweetness of chocolate
comes in from the factory, sickens her work.
But maman must shore
herself up. Tonight she leaves Pennsylvania
for Baltimore, where papa will arrive
soon, so Lebanese in his scrubs,
and they will hold each other, happy. So she scrubs
the floors and, when the bath is hot, her body and chocolate
hair. Soon the time will arrive
to know she is too female to work
in medicine, too foreign to be alone in Pennsylvania
with her family on another shore.
But now Maman is entangled, one foot on shore
the other in water, her scrubs
a heap of Pennsylvania
on the bathroom floor. Still chocolate-
scented, she welcomes papa home from work
and wishes for deliverance to arrive.
And now, at twenty-one, I arrive
at the end of girlhood, unsure of the shore
to which I belong. The day I was born, maman stopped her work.
Seeing me held, kindly, against my papa’s scrubs
proved sweet enough; the chocolate
wind in Hershey, Pennsylvania
would never trouble her again. And all I knew from Pennsylvania
was that maman worked at “Hershey”. I’d arrive
at her bedside some nights, asking why she’d quit chocolate-
making so soon after coming here, to American shore.
How could I have known the scrubs
in the closet were hers? That years of work
can arrive at this? Lives can work
their way apart. Even now, in Pennsylvania, a woman scrubs
at chocolate-stains, gently, floating further and further from shore.
