These Are Not the Words

Amanda West Lewis

• Publisher: Groundwood Books
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN: 9781773067933

New York City in the 1960s is the humming backdrop for this poignant, gritty story about a girl who sees her parents as flawed human beings for the first time, and finds the courage to make a fresh start.

Missy's mother has gone back to school to pursue her dream of becoming an artist. Missy's father works in advertising and takes Missy on secret midnight excursions to Harlem and the Village so she can share his love of jazz. The two write poems for each other — poems that gradually become an exchange of apologies as Missy's father's alcohol and drug addiction begins to take over their lives. 

When Missy's mother finally decides that she and her daughter must make a fresh start, Missy has to leave her old apartment, her school, her best friend and her cats and become a latchkey kid while her mother gets a job. But she won't give up on trying to save her family, even though this will involve a hard journey from innocence to action, and finally acceptance. 

Based on the events and people of her own childhood, Amanda Lewis's gorgeous novel is driven by Missy's irresistible, optimistic voice, buoyed by the undercurrents of poetry and music.

Key Text Features

poems

dialogue

literary references

epigraph

vignettes

Copyright © 2022 by Amanda West Lewis

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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a license from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright license, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.

Published in 2022 by Groundwood Books / House of Anansi Press

groundwoodbooks.com

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Groundwood Books respectfully acknowledges that the land on which we operate is the Traditional Territory of many Nations, including the Anishinabeg, the Wendat and the Haudenosaunee. It is also the Treaty Lands of the Mississaugas of the Credit.

We gratefully acknowledge for their financial support of our publishing program the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council and the Government of Canada.

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Poems on pages 25, 76, 93 and 121 were written by Gary Allen Lewis sometime in the 1960s. Excerpts on pages vii, 35, 76, 108, 160, 161, 162, 171–72, 182, 204 and 205 from The Tempest by William Shakespeare, The Riverside Shakespeare, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1974; 82 and 118–19 from The Tale of Genji by Lady Murasaki, translated by Arthur Waley, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1935; 56 and 57 from A Coney Island of the Mind by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, New Directions, 1958; 73 from “Snow-White and the Seven Dwarfs,” Grimms’ Fairy Tales by the Brothers Grimm, translated by Mrs. E.V. Lucas, Lucy Crane and Marian Edwardes, Grosset & Dunlap, undated; 11 and 12 from “Tell Me More” by Billie Holiday, 1940, copyright 1978 by Edward B. Marks Music Company; 103 from “Side by Side” by Harry Woods, 1927; 73 from “Miss Brown to You” by Richard A. Whiting and Ralph Rainger, with lyrics by Leo Robin, 1935.

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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: These are not the words / Amanda West Lewis.

Names: Lewis, Amanda West, author.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 2021023539X | Canadiana (ebook) 20210235470 | ISBN 9781773067926 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781773067933 (EPUB)

Classification: LCC PS8623.E96448 T54 2022 | DDC jC813/.6—dc23

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Design by Michael Solomon

Taxi photo by Tim Hüfner, Unsplash. All other photos courtesy of the author.

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Groundwood Books is a Global Certified Accessible™ (GCA by Benetech) publisher. An ebook version of this book that meets stringent accessibility standards is available to students and readers with print disabilities.

For my mother
who taught me to choose

Were you thinking that those were the words,
those upright lines? those curves, angles, dots?

No, those are not the words, the substantial
words are in the ground and sea,

They are in the air,
they are in you.

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Walt Whitman, “A Song of the Rolling Earth,”
Leaves of Grass

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I have done nothing, but in care of thee

(Of thee my dear one, thee my daughter)

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William Shakespeare, The Tempest

One

525 East 14^th Street

New York

January, 1963

Strangers in the Night

The living room is a foreign country at night.

I’m in my nightgown, at the edge of the dark. My feet are bare, still warm from bed.

Pops is at his desk. His office lamp, the one with the green shade, makes a small pool of light. He’s staring at a contact sheet of photos. His brass cube magnifier is in his right hand, gliding over the pictures. A drum brush in his left hand swish-slaps on the edge of the table. Ollie the cat is draped over his shoulders.

Deep quiet, except for a voice from the record player.

Tell me more, and more, and then some . . .

Deep dark, except for flickering light from the TV, a movie with no sound.

Deep corners, past the light. Slivers of movements. Murmurs. Strangers.

Sweet smoke curls around a candle flame.

I am a ghost crossing this midnight territory, the foreign country between the world of my bedroom and the familiar shore of the kitchen.

“Hey, Miss Missy.”

Ira hovers like a dancer in the doorframe, balancing on the balls of his boxer feet. His gold tooth gleams in his dark face like sunshine.

Pops says Ira is my guardian angel. Mom says Ira keeps an eye on things. Ira says we’re his family.

I reach for a glass, fill it with water from the tap. “Thirsty. Can’t sleep.”

Ira opens the fridge and gets a bottle of milk. He pours some into a pot and turns on the stove. He reaches to get my favorite mug out of the cupboard, the one with the chocolate-brown horse head on the side.

“Your momma’s at her night class. There’s a few folks over for the music.”

Ira answers questions I haven’t asked.

He spoons sugar into the milk and stirs it slowly.

Sweet steam rises in the mug as he pours. His delicate fingers curl around the face of the horse. For a moment our hands hold the cup together — brown and strong, white and small, the warmth shared between us.

Slow sounds drift from the living room into the kitchen.

“. . . pass it . . . the coast next week . . . I’ll bring it tomorrow . . .” But I never will hear enough.

Words I can’t put together. “Does Mom know there are people here?”

“Ira’s here. Nothing for you to worry ’bout. Now you take that milk and skibb...

Table of contents

• TheseAreNotTheWords_INT