Their father fought in Viet Nam. He got sick. They met him
      once,
long ago. He seemed fine. They spent life with their mother.
The girl read a lot
of toothpaste labels; Clorox, Woolite, Ipecac, and Tampax
instructions. “My father likes to read, so I am
a great reader.” She enjoyed this logic every morning
she locked herself in the bathroom.
Her brother made himself
a dummy
out of clothes tucked under bedsheets so he could snake
visits with some too-young-tenement-twins. “My father is
a great joker, so I’m as funny as hell,” he thought
in a back-alley,
avoiding security and a rival tenement gang. They expected to
      bump
into their father, to see
him sick. After all, he lived in Hollywood. And, they lived
      sort of close
in Canoga Park. “Couldn’t he do us a favor
and walk around the corner?” they’d say. They’d see
their mom’s old boyfriends taxiing down the sidewalk, full
      throttle
from her old halfway house; drunk like their father, but not sick
in his war sick way. “He’ll see us
and scream, thinking we’re the bloody children
of Mei Lei,” the brother joked.
“He’ll choose to pretend
he doesn’t know us, then, at the last minute, turn
around with a knowing look,” said the sister trying
to be as philosophical as her father was in one legend. They sat
      alone
after school on a corner. “You’ll be a bum like him,” they told
      each other.
“He’s not a bum, he’s sick,” they retorted,
waiting for their mother to return, to turn the corner
in recognition, and bark orders before collapsing after a harsh
      split
shift. They navigated neighborhood side streets, shuffling,
lifting their chins to other teens, giving change
to the bums, giving all they could
hold out. The brother slipped off to shoot up with a tenement
      twin
and the sister read Harlequins under covers, avoiding
the lazy gaze of her mother’s newest monster
truck loving boyfriend. He’d come in and out
of her room like the others—always violently
philosophical. “Put that book down and let me
tell you what’s what.” But, she was full up
bursting with her father’s war. Still, those boyfriends insisted
she could take new forms (mother or lover or soldier?).
She told her brother. He laughed, “You’re such a joker.”