My Pronunciation Was Wrong

She said, Forget the dishes and He hit me with a wooden spoon 
                         until I bled. Passed from one family
to another in the camp, she wore tin cans like stilts, drew circles
                         in the dirt. She wasn’t my mother
at first. Terrible at Blackjack, Texas Hold ’em, her stepfather
                         sent letters frantic for cash. Each written
in a different hand. Penticton. Kelowna. No Japs from the Rockies to the sea.
                         Baskets of Braeburns. Serene, the orchard’s
auburn waves of leaves and branches. School all day, worked until
                         she slept. Ironed and swept. Fried
kippers and eggs. Put someone else’s kids to bed. The smell of dried fish.
                         Everyone fights sometimes. It’s fine;
they fed me every day. Her husband shouted in his sleep about sawmills,
                         houses built from dust. She
tended theirs, pruned the garden’s rising swathes of summer.
                         There was too much left unsaid.
To me: Shikata ga nai and Leave your sister alone. She liked
                         pickled shiso, Sir Roger Moore,
and Hallmark Christmas ornaments. Disliked: flying and talking about
                         the past. Once, I watched her feed sugar water
to a honeybee with a spoon. Silver coins she couldn’t afford slipped from
                         her palm to mine. She said, Don’t tell
your mother and Sharted is an excellent word. A man lost all her money,
                         twice. Saltwater. Slatted blinds.
Sallow moon that spawns along the Fraser. Riverside apartments
                         in diminishing square footage.
Coquitlam to Richmond, Richmond to Surrey. That undistinguished
                         block of Hastings, where her
stepmother’s shop once stood. In front of us, she never said her given name.