Upstairs apartment   creaky floors tilted

toward the church across the back-alley  

scent of pipe smoke and lavender.  

The four of us girl cousins pack up

dishes   two weeks after Mémère’s

death and one week after the president

was shot   everyone else

downstairs at Aunt Dot’s   our mothers

making soup from the Thanksgiving turkey  

boy cousins and uncles in the front room

with TV and checkerboard   too many of us

all together and yet we always fit

around this table   filled now

with the dishes we are wrapping in newspaper

and handing to Jane who nests them

into boxes   her lips fire engine red   

her heels kicked off as she sits on the throw rug   

skirt billowing   a queen on her little island  

Bea and I in our school jumpers and knee

socks   Tee in flats and a blue sweater

I love though it will be

years before I learn the word cashmere.

Rain rattles the windows   voices rise from below

and we are   all of us here   in this house  

as though everything is the same   

but I don’t even know where these embroidered

towels will go or the sampler full of tulips

or the tea cozy crocheted

with little red hearts   as the church bells ring

for Friday Mass and Jane gives us Bazooka gum

and Tee lets us try on her pink lip gloss.

Mêmère’s plates won’t turn up again

until forty years from now when Bea and I

empty our mother’s trailer to find them

wrapped in news of assassination.