vegetables, now rule. The thin gray carpet in the living room
is replaced by thick pile, the color of an Idaho potato. If my father were to enter
their bedroom, only the bed remains unchanged. Cherry. Four-poster. The carpeting
shag now, pistachio green. If he walks in the back door, into the kitchen, slipping
in like he always did—the walls, once white, now papered over in a print of avocado
and lemon. Carpet—something my mother tells me is “indoor-outdoor”—covers the linoleum.
Everything reskinned. Only the clock, built in to the wall above the sink, goes untouched.
Slim black hands circling a tin face.
After the repairs are made, I cannot sleep. I ask my mother to put the kitchen back
the way it was. I am convinced he will return and, opening a door on a home he no
longer recognizes, he will believe he is in the wrong house and he will leave us,
to go on searching for his home.
# # #
I walk with my grandfather on a summer night, the summer my father is dead. We walk
through the alley of the Kroger grocery store. In the setting sun, the bricks turn
a deep, warm orange, like the color of that powder you mix with milk to make the “cheese”
of macaroni and cheese.
My grandfather is a quiet man. He holds my hand. We walk in silence. It will be this
way, always.
For the rest of my childhood, I want from him what I want from any man in my life.
A voice. Someone to talk to. Someone who will tell me the knowledge I should know,
tell me of the ways of the world, guide me. An arm around my shoulder.
At the end of the alley, I stop at a manhole. Years to come, this will be home plate
for baseball games back here with boys.
The manhole cover is not solid but a grate, metal bars maybe an inch apart. I am on
the edge, not wanting to stand on it, afraid I will fall through the spaces.
My grandfather holds my hand. Somewhere at the bottom, in the darkness, I can see
myself. I let go of my grandfather’s hand, kneel down on the edge of the grate. I
find pebbles on the pavement. I drop one into the dark hole, then another, and a third.
My reflection, shattered. Ripples on the black water.
My grandfather presses more stones into my palm, says to me, “Maybe your father will
catch one.”
# # #
In junior high, I see a story in Newsweek about the USSR. This is around the time Brezhnev is fading. 1979. The story has two
photos: One shows a wall of grim, stiff men standing shoulder to shoulder on a reviewing
stand. It’s a May Day parade in Red Square. They are cloaked in heavy woolen coats
and homburgs. Some dress like military men. On the far end of the stage, a man salutes
an unseen crowd.
Next to this photo is its duplicate, except: The Saluting Man is gone. Where he was,
now there is nothing. A red circle around the spot where he stood: placed by the magazine—a
red circle to highlight his void. The caption informs readers that party officials
have removed him. “Purged,” they call it. The man never lived.
Everyone in the USSR knows his nonexistence is a lie, but no one will say anything.
What is a purge but a collective agreement not to speak of the dead? Complicit silence.
The mind, however, still remembers.
I marvel at the brazenness of Brezhnev: Did he believe he could force an entire people
to agree that this person didn’t exist? Surely everyone knows that the photograph
has been doctored. That a man with a name and a past and a family is now deleted.
And yet it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter what the Soviet people thought, it didn’t
matter what the world thought, and it certainly didn’t matter what a boy in Chicago
thought. Life, I learned then, belongs not to the just but to those who do whatever
they must do in order to maintain their vision of reality. I had more in common with
those Soviet citizens than I knew. I learned never to mention the name of the nonperson.
I worked to crush my desire to know
is replaced by thick pile, the color of an Idaho potato. If my father were to enter
their bedroom, only the bed remains unchanged. Cherry. Four-poster. The carpeting
shag now, pistachio green. If he walks in the back door, into the kitchen, slipping
in like he always did—the walls, once white, now papered over in a print of avocado
and lemon. Carpet—something my mother tells me is “indoor-outdoor”—covers the linoleum.
Everything reskinned. Only the clock, built in to the wall above the sink, goes untouched.
Slim black hands circling a tin face.
After the repairs are made, I cannot sleep. I ask my mother to put the kitchen back
the way it was. I am convinced he will return and, opening a door on a home he no
longer recognizes, he will believe he is in the wrong house and he will leave us,
to go on searching for his home.
# # #
I walk with my grandfather on a summer night, the summer my father is dead. We walk
through the alley of the Kroger grocery store. In the setting sun, the bricks turn
a deep, warm orange, like the color of that powder you mix with milk to make the “cheese”
of macaroni and cheese.
My grandfather is a quiet man. He holds my hand. We walk in silence. It will be this
way, always.
For the rest of my childhood, I want from him what I want from any man in my life.
A voice. Someone to talk to. Someone who will tell me the knowledge I should know,
tell me of the ways of the world, guide me. An arm around my shoulder.
At the end of the alley, I stop at a manhole. Years to come, this will be home plate
for baseball games back here with boys.
The manhole cover is not solid but a grate, metal bars maybe an inch apart. I am on
the edge, not wanting to stand on it, afraid I will fall through the spaces.
My grandfather holds my hand. Somewhere at the bottom, in the darkness, I can see
myself. I let go of my grandfather’s hand, kneel down on the edge of the grate. I
find pebbles on the pavement. I drop one into the dark hole, then another, and a third.
My reflection, shattered. Ripples on the black water.
My grandfather presses more stones into my palm, says to me, “Maybe your father will
catch one.”
# # #
In junior high, I see a story in Newsweek about the USSR. This is around the time Brezhnev is fading. 1979. The story has two
photos: One shows a wall of grim, stiff men standing shoulder to shoulder on a reviewing
stand. It’s a May Day parade in Red Square. They are cloaked in heavy woolen coats
and homburgs. Some dress like military men. On the far end of the stage, a man salutes
an unseen crowd.
Next to this photo is its duplicate, except: The Saluting Man is gone. Where he was,
now there is nothing. A red circle around the spot where he stood: placed by the magazine—a
red circle to highlight his void. The caption informs readers that party officials
have removed him. “Purged,” they call it. The man never lived.
Everyone in the USSR knows his nonexistence is a lie, but no one will say anything.
What is a purge but a collective agreement not to speak of the dead? Complicit silence.
The mind, however, still remembers.
I marvel at the brazenness of Brezhnev: Did he believe he could force an entire people
to agree that this person didn’t exist? Surely everyone knows that the photograph
has been doctored. That a man with a name and a past and a family is now deleted.
And yet it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter what the Soviet people thought, it didn’t
matter what the world thought, and it certainly didn’t matter what a boy in Chicago
thought. Life, I learned then, belongs not to the just but to those who do whatever
they must do in order to maintain their vision of reality. I had more in common with
those Soviet citizens than I knew. I learned never to mention the name of the nonperson.
I worked to crush my desire to know
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