Bud’s elbows are first through the lilacs. “What’s happening here?”
“The frying pan hit Billy Coleman.” Billy Coleman lies face down in the sand box; a small dump truck cups his chin.
Bud kneels over Billy, who is beginning to wake up and cry. He touches his head, but there is no blood.
“Who did this?”
“The frying pan,” I say. The iron skillet is not two inches from Billy’s hand, like a ping pong paddle freed.
“You’re not saying he hit himself?” Snickers from Sis and Jim. Bud glares at them; Billy glares at me; I alone am bathed in righteous calm.
“She hit me,” Billy points at me.
“Why?” is all I say. Bud looks at Billy now. “Why?”
Billy’s up now, shuffling his feet, touching the lump on his skull. He’s about to run. “Flee” is written all over him; even Bud reads it and grabs a fistful of shirt in his hand.
“Hold on.” Billy dangles over the sandbox like a piñata. Bud needs proof.
“Show him the doll.” Sis has almost forgotten in the excitement of the frying pan’s disobedience that her doll was ruined, it’s hair chemically altered into a solid helmet, and a stick stuck up her pee hole.
“They hurt her.” Big tears descend her cheeks. He is pained with her pain.
“He said he was going to do the same thing to her,” I said. Bud’s ears are flushing red. “He was heading toward her and I didn’t know what to do but the frying pan jumped into his head.”
Billy Coleman’s face is a white flag at the end of Bud’s arm. Bud waves it until some freckles fly off then tosses it back in the sand box. “I don’t want to see you here again. Understand me?”
His lips’ “Yes, sir” is coated with sand; he splits the hedge.
‘‘Jim,” says Bud, ‘‘ tell your mother we’re going out to dinner.’’
Jim hums and forces himself through the hedge past the victim pond where the boys raise the subjects of their experiments.
Bud pulls the stick out of Baby Dear. He pats her hair sadly, “I think she needs a hat.”
Sis almost smiles and Bud scoops her up in his arms. “C’mon,” he says to me. I am almost to his waist now. He puts his hand on my shoulder and gives it a squeeze, “Once upon a time there was a girl who loved her sister so much she enchanted a frying pan to protect the little sister when the girl was not around. The frying pan batted flies and moths into Kingdom Come when they annoyed the little sister. It provided shade for her in the sun, and the day the dragon came to call, it stood up like it knew what it was doing and smote it on the head. The dragon never came back. The King took the girl and her family to Bill Knapp’s for dinner, where the girl ate au gratin potatoes, her favorite. The End.” He squeezes my shoulder again.
Sis says, “That’s what just happened only with Billy Coleman.”
Gentle laughter; Bud’s eyes brim with tears.
“It’s okay, D—Bud.” My mouth has a spell on it; it has forgotten the shape of Dad.
ISBN 1-59661-030-1
66 pages/$15
From the Kalamazoo Gazette:
While most people scan the Father's Day sectoin at Hallmark for a card that paraphrases their memories of dad, local poet Elizabeth Kerlikowske invested a bit more time in summing up her sentiments.
Kerlikowske published an entire collection of prose poems titled, "The Shape of Dad."
She also was one of the many readers who sent letters to the Gazette to be included in today's "Dear Dad" Father's Day feature, to say what they appreciate about what their fathers did for them. Kerlikowske's book offers glimpses of her life from the age of 4 on, as she and her younger sister, Sissy, were raised by their maternal grandmother and were visited most weeks by their father, Charles Kerlikowske, who goes by the name Bud Kerley. Upon the death of the girls' mother, women descended upon the new widower, and the family decided it would be better for the girls to be raised by their grandparents. To see the girls, Kerly traveled to Grand Rapids from St. Joseph, trying to visit once a week. He went on to two more marriages and raised four boys, two from each marriage.
"I had my (second) stepmother read the book first," Kerlikowske said over coffee recently at Full City Cafe. "She liked it, actually. I talked about it first on a trip we took. I said, 'There's lots of stuff in here that you've never heard.' things about my first stepmother, and thing Bud had done that he would never own up to that were news to her. That's why I wanted her to read it first."
The title poem recalls the first time Kerlikowske called her father "D-Bud," as though her mouth had a "spell on it" and forever more forgot "the shape of dad."
While the collection makes note of Kerly's foibles--his propensity for tall tales is legendary, his dayghter said--the book also pays homage to him in a way that makes greeting cards pale in comparison.
"It's not all positive, but I knew he'd love it because he was the star of it," Kerlikowske said. "He was just happy to be No. 1."
Kerly, contacted by phone this week, said he "didn't even know she was writing a book" while she was at work on it, but he was happy to see it when it came out. "At 81, I've forgotten a lot of things," he said. "But when I read them, I remembered them. It made me feel good that she would write about what we did when she was growing up. We used to have fun."
Today, Kerly describes himself as "kind of an older guy, kind of happy in my retirement. I play gin rummy every day at the Elks in St. Joe, and today I was the big winner. I brought home $4.20."
He said he is happy about the way the girls' grandmother raised his daughters and then he told one of his legendary tales. "She stepped right in after the girls' mother died. I had brought them down to St. Joe, but I couldn't find a good housekeeper. I hired one, then I called the chief of police to see if he had anything on her. The chief said, yeah he did. She had just gotten out of jail for killing two kids in a bathtub. So I guess (their grandmother) was right when she said she would be the best mother for the girls."
Kerlikowske's book gives glimpses of the struggles she went through with her grandmother and the pain she felt in not being the favored child. But her father doesn't dwell on the difficulties. "Beth (Elizabeth) knew that Sissy was her grandmother's favorite, but she took it well," he said.
In any event, Kerly said he looked forward to seeing his daughters each week. "It was great for me. I belonged to the Rotary. After the meeting, I would drive up to Grand Rapids. I picked them up from school, and we would spend the rest of the day together."
He specifically recalled how much Elizabeth liked his driving lessons. In one of the poems in her book, she writes about how her father taught her to "drive psychically" with the lights turned off.
It was that poem that piqued interest in the book from a Hollywood screenwriter who called Kerlikowske recently.
"He thought that would make a great scene in a movie," Kerlikowske said. "That would be really interesting to see something like that happen with it."
The book now goes on "to pitchville," she said. "They're going to pitch it to, I believe, Patricia Heaton, who played the wife on 'Everybody Loves Raymond.' It would be cool. I could retire and just write." And play Scrabble with Bud, of course. "Over the Scrabble board is the perfect place to say things because men are so hard to communicate with sometimes," she said. "I learned to communicate with him over the Scrabble board. I could talk about anything as long as we were playing Scrabble. He never let us win. I always liked that. I knew that if I won, I really won."
On June 18, the day dads skyrocket to number one status, Kerly wants to lie low and try for some juicy triple word scores.
"He hates Father's Day," Kerlikowske said. "He says it's a day that was just made up by card companies. So we all get together and we just don't talk about it. We just happen to show up."
As for Father's Day gifts, at age 82, Kerly has everything he needs, Kerlikowske said.
"It's better if we just go there and play. He still holds his own at Scrabble."
—Elizabeth Clark with Kathy Jennings.
Kerlikowske conceived of the idea for the book at the Juniper Writers' Conference in Massachusetts two summers ago. "We were supposed to make a list of possible topics to write about, and, about midway through my list, I put something about going to a carnival with my dad. I went on to write three sketches during the conference and was on such a roll that I finished the whole book in three months."
Looking back, Kerlikowske realized just how much she appreciated her dad, even though she never lived in the same home with him after her mother died when Kerlikowske was just 3. "My father is getting on in years; I needed to understand how, through all the ups and downs of my early life, I could still love him so much," she said.
She begins with her earliest memories of "toe dancing" with her father, whom she refers to throughout the book as "Bud." "I love Perry Como," she wrote in her book. "When his big head comes on the screen, Bud knows to get up off the couch and fit my little arches in their swirling socks over his wing tips." Kerlikowske remembers those early dancing days with her father with great fondness, for in those days she had Bud all to herself.
Soon "sis" was born, and on that same day, Kerlikowske's mother died. In her book, she wrote:
"Such a natural exchange
so simple and balanced
the balance is the same:
death by childbirth."
Kerlikowske said that she and her sister were whisked off to their grandparents' house in Grand Rapids. And for 15 years, were tossed between their grandparents and Bud. She said they never quite knew where they belonged—or even where they wanted to be.
"Saturdays, Bud is a rainbow arching out of the afternoon for 15 minutes crossing the sky with flamboyant generosity, a splashy palette. Sometimes there's a double rainbow, one for each of us that everyone can see but no one touch. The moment we search him for the pot of gold, he evaporates. Gone. Mist."
There were the inevitable feelings of jealousy between the two girls, as well. Sis was Bud's favorite, Kerlikowske felt. For example, on a night after a dance recital, over hot fudge sundaes, Elizabeth saved her cherry for last. Sis eats hers first because we all know Bud has saved his for her at the end." Bud, now 82, has read the book and liked it, except for a couple of discrepancies. "I somehow didn't want to ask him what they were," said Kerlikowske with a laugh.
Fellow writer and KCC adjunct professor Mike Love admires Kerlikowske's ability to share her life's journey. "Elizabeth understands the magic of writing," Love said. "She is able to place words in fresh contexts and give them new, and unexpected, meaning and relevance. Moreover, her poems are very honest and I believe this is why her students are so loyal to her. She is committed to the truth; and they see it in her poetry."
Kerlikowske is hard at work on another volume, her doctoral dissertation for Western Michigan University, which will consist of a collection of her poems. Her tentative title is "The Laying on of Maples," and the poems center on both plants and human relationships. Human relationships is certainly the theme of The Shape of Dad, as well, and Kerlikowske admits that through writing it, she learned a great deal about a central relationship in her life. Kerlikowske feels that perhaps she has developed such a keen interest in poetry partially because of her dad's love of storytelling.
"Dad would tell us a story every week when he came to visit. As I look back, I realize that through those stories, often about me, he gave me the feeling that I was leading people." And, perhaps her gift for poetry also comes from the tumultuous nature of her childhood. "Trauma creates hyper vigilance," she said. "And that's a great quality for a poet."
Linda Jo Scott is a freelance reporter.