fingertips.
The flags of all nations, said my grandfather, nudging me.
They were up his sleeve.
Since he was a young man
(I could not imagine him as a child),
my grandfather had been, by his own admission,
one of the people who knew how things worked.
He had built his own television,
my grandmother told me, when they were first married;
it was enormous, though the screen was small.
This was in the days before television programs;
they watched it, though,
unsure whether it was people or ghosts they were seeing.
He had a patent, too, for something he invented,
but it was never manufactured.
Stood for the local council, but he came in third.
He could repair a shaver or a wireless,
develop your film, or build a house for dolls.
(The doll’s house was my mother’s. We still had it at my house;
shabby and old, it sat out in the grass, all rained-on and forgot.)
The glitter lady wheeled on a box.
The box was tall: grown-up-person-sized and black.
She opened up the front.
They turned it round and banged upon the back.
The lady stepped inside, still smiling.
The magician closed the door on her.
When it was opened, she had gone.
He bowed.
Mirrors, explained my grandfather. She’s really still inside.
At a gesture, the box collapsed to matchwood.
A trapdoor, assured my grandfather;
Grandma hissed him silent.
The magician smiled, his teeth were small and crowded;
he walked, slowly, out into the audience.
He pointed to my grandmother, he bowed.
a Middle European bow,
and invited her to join him on the stage.
The other people clapped and cheered.
My grandmother demurred. I was so close
to the magician that I could smell his aftershave
and whispered “Me, oh, me . . .” But still,
he reached his long fingers for my grandmother.
Pearl, go on up, said my grandfather. Go with the man.
My grandmother must have been, what? Sixty, then?
She had just stopped smoking,
was trying to lose some weight. She was proudest
of her teeth, which, though tobacco-stained, were all her own.
My grandfather had lost his, as a youth,
riding his bicycle; he had the bright idea
to hold on to a bus to pick up speed.
The bus had turned,
and Grandpa kissed the road.
She chewed hard licorice, watching TV at night,
or sucked hard caramels, perhaps to make him wrong.
She stood up, then, a little slowly.
Put down the paper tub half-full of ice cream,
the little wooden spoon—
went down the aisle, and up the steps.
And on the stage.
The conjurer applauded her once more—
A good sport. That was what she was. A sport.
Another glittering woman came from the wings,
bringing another box—
This one was red.
That’s her, nodded my grandfather, the one
who vanished off before. You see? That’s her.
Perhaps it was. All I could see
was a woman who sparkled, standing next to my grandmother
(who fiddled with her pearls and looked embarrassed).
The lady smiled and faced us, then she froze,
a statue, or a window mannequin.
The magician pulled the box,
with ease,
down to the front of stage, where my grandmother waited.
A moment or so of chitchat:
where she was from, her name, that kind of thing.
They’d never met before? She shook her head.
The magician opened the door,
my grandmother stepped in.
Perhaps it’s not the same one, admitted my grandfather,
on reflection,
I think she had darker hair, the other girl.
I didn’t know.
I was proud of my grandmother, but also embarrassed,
hoping she’d do nothing to make me squirm,
that she wouldn’t sing one of her songs.
She walked into the box. They shut the door.
he opened a compartment at the top, a little door. We saw
my grandmother’s face. Pearl? Are you all right, Pearl?
My grandmother smiled and nodded.
The magician closed the door.
The lady gave him a long thin case,
so he opened it. Took out a sword
and rammed it through the box.
And then another, and another,
and my grandfather chuckled and explained,
The blade slides in the hilt,
and then a fake slides out the other side.
Then he produced a sheet of metal, which
he slid into the box half the way up.
It cut the thing in half. The two of them,
the woman and the man, lifted the top
half of the box up and off, and put it on the stage,
with half my grandma in.
The top half.
He opened up the little door again, for a moment,
My grandmother’s face beamed at us, trustingly.
When he closed the door before,
she went down a trapdoor,
and now she’s standing halfway up, my grandfather confided.
She’ll tell us how it’s done when it’s all over.
I wanted him to stop talking: I needed the magic.
Two knives now, through the half-a-box,
at neck height.
Are you there, Pearl? asked the magician. Let us know
—do you know any songs?
My grandmother sang Daisy, Daisy.
He picked up the part of the box,
with the little door in it—the head part—
and he walked