with her arms folded tightly over her chest, staring out the window to the yard beyond, knowing there were trees and clouds and sunshine, seeing nothing at all.
Her father cleared his throat. “Those wetbacks treat you okay down in Brazil?”
“Jesus, Dad, really?” she said in disgust, not turning.
Her father was many wonderful things, but tolerant wasn’t one of them. All “brown” people were wetbacks, Asians were zipper-heads, homosexuals were fags, Middle Easterners were a two-word combination so vile it went beyond the pale. His bigotry was an ugly flaw in a character she otherwise admired, and it pained her deeply to know that someone she loved, who had raised her and protected her and unfailingly cared for her, who had literally once saved her life, was so profoundly deficient.
It was a lesson Jack had learned young, the way good people could also be bad. Things were never black or white, right or wrong, true or false, up or down. There were a million shades of gray in between, a million ways your heart could be broken by not understanding that one essential fact. When you loved someone, you risked overlooking his myriad darker colors to only focus on the bright and shiny whites, until one day the basic black of his nature made a stunning, horrible appearance, and you were knocked on your ass, wondering how you could’ve been so blind.
Her father’s basic black took the form of intolerance for all things “other.”
Just another reason to stay away. She knew she couldn’t change him. So she simply avoided the toxicity as much as she could, and got on with her life.
After another long, uncomfortable silence, he asked, “You up for some cake?” Without waiting for a response, he rose and opened the refrigerator.
She listened to him move around the kitchen, getting plates and silverware, pouring liquid into glasses, then turned to find him standing at the table over two mugs of milk and a sheet cake large enough to feed a party of two dozen.
White frosting and sugar flowers and candles, and right smack in the middle a huge “Congrats!” scrawled in pink script. She looked up at him with a question in her eyes. For just a moment, his rugged face looked sheepish.
“It’s a combination birthday and congratulations cake.”
“Congratulations? For what?”
“The Pulitzer, Jackie. I haven’t seen you since before you were nominated, remember?”
The faintest hint of recrimination colored his voice. For a moment, she felt guilty that she could only bear being in this house, with all its lurking goblin memories, once a year. Flaws and all, he was still her father, but every time she saw his face all she saw was . . . him .
She couldn’t even think her brother’s name. Her mind flinched away from it like a battered dog expecting a kick.
“Right. Well, that’s really nice of you, Dad. Thanks.”
“Anything for my little girl.”
The layer of rage simmering beneath his light, conversational tone reminded her exactly of how her mother sometimes used to sound: brittle and bottled up, ready to blow.
Jack’s father lit the candles. She blew them out. Then they ate their pink and white squares of cake at the table in the cool, weighted silence of her dead mother’s kitchen, the air all around them thick with the presence of ghosts.
Sixty percent of the Amazon rainforest exists within the country of Brazil.
Vast, lush, and ancient, it’s a place where beauty and savagery exist in equal supply. Scarlet macaws perch preening on the boughs of moss-draped emerald branches while electric eels and green-and-black-banded anaconda slither silently through languid, piranha-rich waters below. There are vampire bats and squirrel monkeys and poison frogs that excrete toxins through their flesh; there are 150-pound rodents called capybara that are hunted by caiman, a reptile that can reach twelve feet in length. High up in the dense, leafy canopy, where the tropical sun filters through in brilliant
Her father cleared his throat. “Those wetbacks treat you okay down in Brazil?”
“Jesus, Dad, really?” she said in disgust, not turning.
Her father was many wonderful things, but tolerant wasn’t one of them. All “brown” people were wetbacks, Asians were zipper-heads, homosexuals were fags, Middle Easterners were a two-word combination so vile it went beyond the pale. His bigotry was an ugly flaw in a character she otherwise admired, and it pained her deeply to know that someone she loved, who had raised her and protected her and unfailingly cared for her, who had literally once saved her life, was so profoundly deficient.
It was a lesson Jack had learned young, the way good people could also be bad. Things were never black or white, right or wrong, true or false, up or down. There were a million shades of gray in between, a million ways your heart could be broken by not understanding that one essential fact. When you loved someone, you risked overlooking his myriad darker colors to only focus on the bright and shiny whites, until one day the basic black of his nature made a stunning, horrible appearance, and you were knocked on your ass, wondering how you could’ve been so blind.
Her father’s basic black took the form of intolerance for all things “other.”
Just another reason to stay away. She knew she couldn’t change him. So she simply avoided the toxicity as much as she could, and got on with her life.
After another long, uncomfortable silence, he asked, “You up for some cake?” Without waiting for a response, he rose and opened the refrigerator.
She listened to him move around the kitchen, getting plates and silverware, pouring liquid into glasses, then turned to find him standing at the table over two mugs of milk and a sheet cake large enough to feed a party of two dozen.
White frosting and sugar flowers and candles, and right smack in the middle a huge “Congrats!” scrawled in pink script. She looked up at him with a question in her eyes. For just a moment, his rugged face looked sheepish.
“It’s a combination birthday and congratulations cake.”
“Congratulations? For what?”
“The Pulitzer, Jackie. I haven’t seen you since before you were nominated, remember?”
The faintest hint of recrimination colored his voice. For a moment, she felt guilty that she could only bear being in this house, with all its lurking goblin memories, once a year. Flaws and all, he was still her father, but every time she saw his face all she saw was . . . him .
She couldn’t even think her brother’s name. Her mind flinched away from it like a battered dog expecting a kick.
“Right. Well, that’s really nice of you, Dad. Thanks.”
“Anything for my little girl.”
The layer of rage simmering beneath his light, conversational tone reminded her exactly of how her mother sometimes used to sound: brittle and bottled up, ready to blow.
Jack’s father lit the candles. She blew them out. Then they ate their pink and white squares of cake at the table in the cool, weighted silence of her dead mother’s kitchen, the air all around them thick with the presence of ghosts.
Sixty percent of the Amazon rainforest exists within the country of Brazil.
Vast, lush, and ancient, it’s a place where beauty and savagery exist in equal supply. Scarlet macaws perch preening on the boughs of moss-draped emerald branches while electric eels and green-and-black-banded anaconda slither silently through languid, piranha-rich waters below. There are vampire bats and squirrel monkeys and poison frogs that excrete toxins through their flesh; there are 150-pound rodents called capybara that are hunted by caiman, a reptile that can reach twelve feet in length. High up in the dense, leafy canopy, where the tropical sun filters through in brilliant
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