Roads on Her Face

Pussy On Fire

D’Avina was feeing Doritos to the kitten. The kitten looked at her like she was batshit, but she daintily picked them up and crunch, crunch, crunch. The kitten’s face was orange but she was supposed to be grey.

“I always just feed her chips, ya know, like, cuz she like likes them,” D’Avina was twirling her greasy blonde hair vacuously round and round her hot pink manicure. She popped her gum like a champ. I was 9 years old and I knew this one would always be one shat short of a full pantsload. She must have been about 20, which seemed pretty old to me to be feeding chips to cats. I mean, I’d never had a cat but I was pretty sure I’d seen cat food at the store and it wasn’t in the same aisle as the chips.

Kitty Kitty finished her dinner and came to sit in my lap. She was a pretty smart kitty. I petted her and she purred and went to sleep. She had a tiny perfect face like a stuffed cat I’d had a few years back. That was before my brother had used it in the reenactment of a fiery car crash he’d seen on Dukes of Hazzard. (Not the General Lee, it never burned).

“You like Kitty don’t you sweetie? Well maybe when you’re big like me and you have a big strong man like Darrel he might buy you one for your birthday like Darrel did me. He’s just so sweet.” D’Avina popped her gum and got that faraway look in her eye. Wait, that was already there. Never mind.

Darrel was a big, ugly thug of a truck driver. He wore a belt buckle the size of Texas and had hair like a black fir tree. He wore a plaid shirt most of the time, and he had a mean look in his eye that made me avoid him the way I did my aunt that smelled like throw-up, but only when she was drinking sherry. Her name was Sherry.

“Uh huh,” I said because I’d been taught not to backtalk grown-ups unless I wanted a swift kick. Who wants one of those? All I knew was I hoped I never had a Darrel.

“Oh, there he is now!” D’Avina smiled her sticky lipgloss smile and showed her missing tooth. I always wondered what happened to it. Maybe a cavity.

I took Darrel’s big roaring truck noise outside as my cue to skedaddle. I’d be back that night to see if I could coax Kitty Kitty into coming outside to play with me. I had a ball of hair she might be interested in. My brother wasn’t anymore after I’d tied it to his shoe and told him to run because a spider was chasing him. I had about 3 good days of belly laughs out of that particular game. I still giggle every now and then when I remember the sheer terror in his round bulging eyes as that hair spider stayed exactly 5 inches away from him no matter how fast he ran. Man, I guess I was an asshole at 9.

About 10 pm when it was dark I snuck out of our Airstream trailer and slid through the dark like a ninja in pajamas. Darrel and D’Avina had a fire outside, and before I even got close enough to see them I heard Darrel yelling. He always sounded like a bullhorn, especially after he’d pounded enough Schlitz.

“You fuckin’ lil bitch!” He said, and tossed a beer can into the dark almost on my head. It was close enough to smell the piss-smell of the cheap brew. D’Avina wasn’t smiling now. She was turned mostly away from him and was staring out into the night. She did a lot of staring with those big blue cow-eyes. Kitty Kitty wasn’t into the yelling, I could tell. She cowered under D’Avina’s camp chair. She glared at Darrel like she wanted to kill him. I got to know her well over the next 18 years so I can safely say if she’d had a knife she’d have slit him dickhair to armpit in a second. If that cat had thumbs she would have ruled the world.”You listen to me you little CUNT!” Darrel spit, stumbling toward D’Avina. I didn’t move a muscle. I was good at ninja-ing and the nighttime never scared me. As long as it was dark I was safe.

Kitty Kitty hissed from under the chair, and D’Avina just cowered into a little ball like she knew what was coming. I don’t think she did this time, though, and Darrel snatched Kitty Kitty from under the chair and just chucked her right into the fire. I was already frozen but my breath stopped as she shrieked. She jumped so high she might have been a bird flying off into the night. D’Avina started sobbing and ran into their trailer, slamming the screen door after her, and Darrel took off after her like a drunk raging bull.Kitty Kitty found me in the dark, because cats can see better even than me. She had a couple of burns and no whiskers, but she was mostly ok. She was pissed off, though, and she growled her little growl the whole time as I cradled her in my arms and took her home with me. She slept with me that night, and next day Darrel and D’Avina were goners. They’d packed up and taken off in the night, and nothing could have made me happier. Me and Kitty Kitty always growled at dudes like that, from that point on.

Fifty Shades of Grey- if you read those books, read this

Excellent commentary by writer Roxanne Gay on the big “Twilight for adults” kink erotica Fifty Shades of Grey series- THIS is why I didn’t like them, THIS is the problem with these control-centered heroes of “romantic fantasy” genre books:

http://therumpus.net/2012/05/the-trouble-with-prince-charming-or-he-who-trespassed-against-us/comment-page-1/#comment-323477

Have you read any of the three books in this series? What did you think of the way BDSM was portrayed? How did you feel about the male lead, Christian Grey? What does this say about our current views on sexuality, if anything?

Roads on Her Face #5: The Cah, 800, and Whut?

We were living in a station wagon again, all six of us. I must have been around 9 or ten. We’d rolled into Quartzsite, Arizona late the night before after a few weeks out in the desert. Quartzsite is like a yard sale on crack, crammed with what seems like miles of old snowbirds selling shit, and tables creaking under the weight of rocks. They sell a lot of rocks out there, also whirly-gig wind-catchers, plastic Chinese toys, and badly-painted southwestern ceramics. People with 1/18 Navajo blood from an ancestor in the 1800s who raped an Indian sell jewelry as “authentic Native American” for ten times what it’s worth. The place has a pall over it, a dust-colored veil that smells of desperation. Casual visitors can’t see it, instead seeing a place full of great deals and gems, but we were hardly casual visitors. It was a winter deal-making place for Dad, a place to rest and make some money selling guns, working for a month for someone, or wheeling and dealing the way he did. He wasn’t particularly outgoing, but he had a quiet powerful way of making people do what he wanted them to do. It wasn’t the smooth salesman gig, something darker like maybe he’d rough you up if you didn’t pay him what he wanted. We went to school in Quartzsite, once. The school had just opened and was full of desert rats like us, and maybe some of the grandkids of snowbirds. We weren’t the only ones getting the free lunch, this time, or the only ones with worn clothing and messy hair. They fed us that vile peanut butter pre-mixed with grape jam on limp white bread every day, until we finally couldn’t choke it down any longer and just went hungry at lunchtime.

We were all sitting and waiting for Dad, as usual, in the dirt parking lot of some junk salesman. He had a lot of cars parked around a trailer with clapboard wings added on. Us kids cracked the door to the station wagon and tried not to move, sweating and sticking to the seats anyway. The sun beat down already, though it was early in spring. The heat would soon drive the snowbirds north, scattering them toward the coast or back to whatever cool hole they burrowed into up north. I stared up into the pale blue sky, powdered with the heat and the reflection of the barren dirt below. The only escape from the forced closeness of our little nuclear family (nuclear, because we as electrons were always rubbing too close, too close and explosions were so near the surface) was to mentally distance oneself. I almost always put a book between myself and our too-real reality. Thousands of books later, I would sometimes confuse what I had been reading with what had actually occurred at certain times in the past. When we were stranded on the side of the road because our latest rust-heap had broken down, I was actually riding a dragon over some far misty mountain, or was deep in the drama playing out between Nancy Drew and her totally hetero female friend George.

I was daydreaming, projecting far out into the hemisphere as near to cold space as I dared, so I missed the actual final transaction. I saw instead, Dad coming back to the car with a grin beneath his beard and jangling keys in his hand.

“Load up, kids. Let’s get everything out of this piece and put it in our new van,” he said, waving over his shoulder to the stocky bald guy behind him who was sighting down the barrel of a big handgun, one Dad had recently had tucked into his waistband. Behind the guy was a blue and white-striped Dodge van, the kind with the big white fiberglass bubble on top circa maybe 1970. It didn’t look like much, but it looked like it had a hell of a lot more room than the station wagon. And it looked like it could pull a trailer, so we could only hope that the next wheeling-dealing result would be a trailer with a stove, beds, and maybe even room to haul some bikes.

Dad was almost gleeful, coming off his deal high. “You should have heard that fucker,” he was telling Mom. He mimicked the guy’s heavy Boston accent, which we had heard snippets of as the two men had talked. “I offered him the car and 600 bucks for the van, which is worth twice that. He was like, ‘whut, the cah, 800, and whut? You ain’t foolin’ me.’ So I threw in the Smith and Wesson.” He grinned because that had been his plan all along.

As soon as my brothers heard this, they collapsed into giggles, gleeful too as they pulled all of our belongings out of the car and began piling them together. The van was something new, and maybe it meant something good. Plus, none of us had ever heard a Boston accent that we could remember. “The cah, 800, and whut?” Rowdy laughed as he poked Reno, who took up the refrain. “And whut? And whut?” Dad cuffed his boys on the back of their tow-heads. “That’s right, boys, who’s the man huh? Your dad knows what he’s doing.”

Off near the chain-link fence, the Boston guy scratched his head and watched us move. Transferring our belongings took 20 minutes, at the most, because we were good. He stood and watched us as we rolled away, never looking back.

Vacate

And the first glimpse of Caribbean blue, the glassy-walled world of brilliant fishes,

She trailed tiny pink paper umbrellas, spewed grey clouds of exhaust above notice

From careless piña coladas, from carnival-bright aorta-painted smokestacks.

And the music blared over the quizzical sighs of dolphins as they tried to leap high enough

To peer through portholes at strange pink whales beached beside buffets of beef and beer.

In Mo’ Bay the natives glared from windowless shacks and broken porches

White faces pressed against sweaty taxi windows stared back shameless.

The jungle pressed close, the vines twisted up toward opportunity, and

Why-can’t-they-just-get-a-real-job. Why-can’t-they-just-go-away.

Time Travel

Art, Burning Man 2007
Photo by P. Alanna Roethle

This time-traveling, it tires me. I am never quite sure when I am, or whether I am moving forward or backward. The lines are drawn most darkly when I have lost something or someone that I tried to anchor to, though I was most aware in this process that it was fruitless and had gone about fastening myself temporarily anyway. We are not allowed anchors in this torrent of time. I am saddened when I am in the middle of joy or pleasure, knowing that it will be only the blink of an eye when I am looking back on this joy from somewhere far away. Standing in five-year-old shoes, I can recall quite clearly fast-forwarding in my head to age 30, and thinking – hmm, so this is it. Yes, this is just as I thought it would be. Yes, it is almost as if I have been here before. In my barefoot 30s, I look ahead to 60 and the losses and the pain I will have seen by then. I look backward, from my future self, and wish for these years that today I might call “now.” I am never stable, never living as much in the now as I would like. It is impossible, because I am never sure where I am.

I have been visited recently, by disconcerting dreams, presences, whatever you feel safe calling them. The medical profession calls it sleep paralysis, hallucinations, night terrors. I like to think I know better. I know that I don’t know everything, and that we can’t explain scientifically everything that occurs. I know that I see things, sometimes, and that I feel very specifically about these things without having a rational explanation. I have dreamed of future places, and later visited them. I have watched from afar, from above and from below.

This thing, lately. It is a buzzing presence that calls my name, off to the right of my vision. I see it in the gap between asleep and awake, the place that I always recognize and that I can use to control my dreams if I so choose. Often in that place I am distracted by things that are not of me, nor of my imagination. There are other THINGS there that I do not recognize. This one, it has called my name. The other afternoon, when I was drifting in that in-between place (though oddly I could still see everything in the room) it began dragging me out of myself, rocking me, and I felt myself start to disconnect and release. I did not feel pain or fear, and was calm. I also knew instantly that this is not what I wanted, and I pulled myself back. I can’t explain or talk to anyone about this. I am too practical, I understand that it is not believable if you have not experienced it yourself. I marvel at these astral projectors, lucid dreamers, OBE seekers – why would you want to leave this body? We leave so quickly anyway. I do not want to test that silver thread that anchors us to reality.

Tophet

The air with its heavy fog of dirt

Trees with billowing trash-bag blossoms

They make me sleep, and sleep

No hurry to awake.

Silence, and then more of it.

I wander aimlessly on streets that turn back on themselves

Names like Alameda, and Amador

The As have it, I think. The better to pair with rolling Rs.

The dry river runs in its memories, while the bed cracks

A man fishes from a burning lake, his pole broken and mislaid

Black things twisting beneath the surface, hoping to be caught.

They are the only things with hope.

Always the wind, forcing you to eat the sand

Here I am, and you are nothing.

Goodbye, Pup

I know this isn’t good writing. This is stream of consciousness, my thoughts this morning as I say goodbye to my much-loved dog. I usually despise posting such personal things. Today this is the only way I can send him this letter.

The day I picked you up, I couldn’t help but be disappointed. You seemed lethargic, unhappy. You were overweight, and your hair was dull. The Petfinder ad had said “young male.” You were not that young. Your eyes stared into space, looking for something, or more likely you had stopped looking for anyone. The woman who had you hurried you over to me, handed me your twine leash, hurried away. You went with me without complaint, with no backward glance.

“He smiles,” she said. “Don’t be frightened when you see it.”

You didn’t smile, for the first day. You spent the long ride to Mom’s with your head on Sophie’s lap, content to just lie there. She scratched your head the whole way.

When we got to mom’s, she worried for her other dogs when she saw this hulking deer-colored dog with his head down and his Mohawk-like ridge of hair. It didn’t take long to win her over, as you were always the consummate gentleman. You brought your ears down, and you wagged your nub. You rubbed your face on the carpet in the house and you started to relax. We went hiking, the day after I got you, and you were joyous. You ran up and down the steepest hills you could find in the mountains above Mogollon. You wore yourself ragged, being free. I wondered if you would run off, get lost. You made sure to keep me in view. You weren’t a dummy, ever. The next morning you were so stiff from all that exercise I had to help you out of your bed. Then you smiled at me, all crooked. Your lips curled back and you showed me all your teeth in a lopsided Elvis grin. You wagged and wagged that damn nub. There was no way I could have been frightened of that smile. You were mine, now, so that was that. I would take you and love you no matter how you turned out. That’s what I do with things that are mine. I felt a fierce protectiveness for you already. For a while I heard whispers in the park, “Man that’s a fat Doberman.” Not for long, I thought, and we went out walking in the Tucson heat every day. No more “free feeding” in a bowl in a field in northern New Mexico. No more lack of attention from an owner with too many foster dogs. You slept there, by my bed, from then on.

I got you home, and you loved the kitty right away. You were excited to meet all these girls, in this big old house. You liked the yard, but you wouldn’t stay out there if I wasn’t out there with you. You wanted to be with me, all the time. I wanted to be with you, too. I wish I could have quit my job and spent all of my time with you. I wish I could have taken you everywhere with me, because I know nothing would have made you happier.

With our daily walks and a good diet, you started to shine. Your hair grew back over the patchy bald spots when you started getting fish oil every day. You muscled up, grew sleek. You looked so beautiful people would stop in the street and ask what kind of dog you were, or to tell me what a good-looking boy you were. We went hiking in the mountains often, and you would run far ahead on the trail scaring people you burst upon. What is this monstrous beast crashing through the underbrush? Sometimes they would shriek. You would come tearing back to me, worried about that shrieking person. You would wait for me, and then would tear off again.

Once on the trail along the arroyo, we were running and you didn’t have your leash on. This guy ran up beside us and you didn’t notice that he wasn’t me. He ran much faster, and you followed him loping along. I was sure you were gone, and too embarrassed to call out for you. I was out of breath, and slowed, then stopped. I listened for you, I whistled and called. Nothing. I didn’t know you well enough at that point, we’d only had a few weeks together. I was afraid someone would take you to the pound. Suddenly, far away, I heard thundering feet. You must have realized he wasn’t me. I imagine the sniff, the freaked out look in your eyes, and the realization hitting you that you had left me behind. You came into view far up the trail, and you were running back to me as fast as you had ever run. Slobber was flying, your eyes were wild, and you skidded into me with the most profound look of relief. I was happy too, you silly dog.

“Don’t ever run away from me again,” I told you. And you never did. The whole way back to my car, you sniffed my leg every few steps to make sure it was me. My sock was drenched with drool by the time we reached the car. You did that regularly, for the rest of your life. You never forgot that feeling of being lost from me.

Everyone you met loved you. You were so good. You were patient with kids, you sniffed everyone’s crotch equally to see what they were all about. I never saw you dislike a person. Sometimes you were mean to dogs, but mostly they deserved it. I never had to tell you something more than a few times, and you learned it because you lived to make me happy. You knew when to cross the road, you knew how to wait, and stay, and lay down. You already knew how to shake. You let me know that by offering me your paw. Nothing made you more excited or dance harder than when I said the WORD. W-A-L-K. I had to spell it, because you learned it right away. I loved your happy puppy dance. I’ve never seen any dog bow down and hop in quite the same way. You attached yourself to my leg in true Velcro-dog fashion. Your eyes followed me anywhere I moved. If I was sad, you knew it, and you came close to comfort me. You were polite, and didn’t lick, unless I really needed a kiss. If I went to the bathroom, you waited outside the door for me. You would come in if I didn’t close the door.

Watching you hurt has left a gaping wound in my heart. Saying goodbye, choosing your time, was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I want to vomit, I want to scream, I want to turn back the clock and spend every moment of your life with you. I feel cheated that I only knew you for…was it almost 7 years? August 2005, my email says. The vet guessed you were about 5 years old then. All I know is how lucky I was to know you. I know if I have a soul, that means you do too. I would never believe we are that different, that I have something you did not. Only the ability to talk to people. You talked to me with your eyes, all the time. Your expressive golden-brown eyes with their funny little eyebrows.

You showed me that your back hurt, you pointed it out to me. You woke up howling in the night. It must have been bad enough, back then. Over a year has gone by since you first started doing that, and I didn’t notice. I noticed your leg shaking, you being less stable on your feet. I wish I had asked a vet sooner, but I am afraid it might not have mattered.

We took a hike in the Gila yesterday, to help us say goodbye. I knew it would hurt you, but you didn’t care. You didn’t want to stop and rest, even though you stumbled and your muscles shook. This was where you were happiest. After the walk, at home, I saw your eyes go perfectly round when you saw the cheeseburger I was about to give you. You vacuumed the whole thing up piece by piece. Last night, because of the walk, the pain was really bad. You woke me with your panting, but you didn’t say a word. I held you in my arms and finally felt acceptance for what I had to do. I haven’t realized you are gone yet, it hasn’t sunk in for me though I watched you take your last breath and I held you and petted you as you passed over, to wherever it is we go. That was the one place I couldn’t be with you. I am glad I could be there as you went. You have blessed me with your gentle presence and by sharing your life with me. I will hold you always, close to my heart. I hope we meet again, out there. No matter what you look like I think I will know you. That soul would be hard to miss. There’s no such thing as “just a dog.” You were THE dog, you were my love, and I am not ashamed of that.

Roads on Her Face #4 Blowtorch

A photo made the email rounds at work today, and in a place where we have weekly safety meetings people laugh, shake their heads. “It was a different time!” they said. Not so long ago, I think, but then again maybe it’s just me. The photo is a grainy one, and it depicts a tiny pigtailed girl perched atop a 100-gallon propane tank. Next to her, her dad leans in with a big grin on his face and a lit cigarette in his mouth.

I thought for a second about why it looked so familiar. Later that night, almost dozing, an image came to me out of the dark of the past. We are living out in the desert somewhere, most likely Arizona because it often was. It was dark, and Ed was drunk. He’d been tying one on for hours already, and he was at the loud stage accompanied by a slight lack of coordination and a hair trigger. I sat in the dark, watching him, in his chair by the flickering fire. Everyone was quiet, except for him. At his feet was a hunk of twisted metal, rusted by age. He liked to go on walks during the day, accompanied by a handgun of some kind and sometimes one of the kids. The desert we frequented had been used as training grounds for “Old Blood and Guts,” General Patton in the World War II era. We often found rusted spent shells or even live rounds, we found the old milky glass Coke bottles the soldiers had tossed aside, and the tank tracks from their play-wars still scarred the desert. You could see them if you climbed a rise and looked out across the desert. This time, Dad had found a large artillery round of some kind. The kind with fins and a payload, really more a missile than an artillery round.

He crushed the empty beer can and tossed it behind him. He picked the missile up, turning it over in his hands.

“Let’s see if we can light this baby up,” he said. I moved farther back into the darkness, to what I hoped was a safe distance. Mom did her best to ignore him, and the boys huddled close behind Dad’s chair. This was something they wanted front seats for. The pipe-bomb burnt-eyelashes gene runs strong in the male side of the family. In the female side, a little, but mostly our common sense will overrule the need for explosions.

Ed dug around in his crate of tools for a hammer. I must have been 10 or 11, I remember being incredulous but not surprised. I knew my father well. This wouldn’t be the craziest, or stupidest, thing I’d ever seen him do. I wondered if he’d kill himself, and the detached part of me that always seemed to float just above and behind my head tried to find an emotion related to that possibility. Nope, none there. Just a sense of expectancy.

The boys were giggling, shoving each other, eyes big and round and faces shining. Dad being a 10-year-old boy was their favorite kind of dad. This was exactly what they would do with a missile if one ever fell into their grimy little hands.

“Watch out kids, this thing could blow!” Dad tapped the missile lightly below its head. Nothing. A harder swing, and the metal bent. He jumped back, nervous, then shook it off and laughed and smacked it good. The body of the thing detached from its payload, and black powder poured out on the ground.

“All right!” That was what he was hoping for. I let out the breath I hadn’t known I was holding. The boys huddled over the mass. Behind them the flames flickered bright.

“OK boys,” Dad said to his captive audience. “Back up now, I’m going to see if this thing will light.”

His shining eyes matched his sons’. He pulled a burning stick from the fire, dropped it on the powder, and took off like a shot behind the tree. His head and my brothers’ two towheads popped out on opposite sides of the tree, like something from a cartoon. The stick fizzled, and burnt out. “Awwwww!” The men ventured back out to the disappointing missile.

“I know,” Dad said. “Watch this.”

“Ed, be careful.” Mom finally made an appearance. She twisted her hands in front of her, her mouth tight as she looked at her boys. She didn’t dare say too much, not when he had made up his mind already.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m an expert. Don’t worry about it,” he said. He gave her a kiss in passing, and came back from a box under the trailer with a blowtorch. “This is how it’s gonna work.” He directed the boys to pour a line of black powder a little out from the tree, then to pile the rest of it at the end of the powder “fuse.” Eagerly they scooped the powder up in their hands, setting the explosion up exactly as dictated.

I huddled closer to the trailer, hoping its metal shell would protect me from shrapnel if the shit hit the fan. The next thing I saw was the unearthly green of the palo verde tree lit from below by a bright flash of light. There was a brief shhhing sound like tearing fabric or a bottle rocket just before it launched. I saw my dad dancing, dancing near the fire as he swatted the flames from his clothing, maybe from his hair, did I smell the acrid smell of burnt beard? Then, laughter.

The Howling Wind

Knock, knock, knock on the windowpane

Insistent fingers, tapping and clawing shhhhhh don’t wake the baby

The oak beside the window creaks, moans and the moon

Peers down haughtily from behind veils of sand

Tendrils of dust below the doorjamb you can’t see me

Voices babbling among the trees, crying, clamorous

Sermonizing in some unknown and angry tongue

Dark is deepening, shadows creeping you’re not alone

Thoughts’ edges fray, scatter night-howling away

Fingers becoming wrathful fists, raining pounding fists

You can’t stop me, you can’t breathe, I’m not leaving.

Roads on Her Face #3 – The Unwriteable Dad Part #1

I wouldn’t call him a bad guy. He’d describe himself as mysterious, the cocky little bastard. He’s that kind of guy. Black Ray-Bans, rockstar hair. Too cool to care. It would make him happy if you said, “Now that Ed, he’s an enigma. Can’t figure him out.” But it doesn’t take that long to figure him out, though his motives might never be clear. He loves Clint Eastwood, DeNiro, all the paragons of cool. He likes big guns, and loud trucks, and women. He’s smooth, like the rest of his brothers. When a bunch of Roethles get together, the panties drop. Panties just can’t withstand the onslaught of so much testosterone in those little rooster-like men, the swaggering, hard-partying German/Irish with a taste for action and those sharp cheekbones and thick dark wavy hair. They’re all either criminals or cops. Grandpa had 15 kids with his tiny Irish bride, one after the other falling out like clowns from a two-seater car. Grandpa taught his boys well, with his quick temper and hard-line rules. I never saw him then, only knew him as a benevolent patriarch who would preside at family gatherings with a glass of vodka and the propensity to pop out his teeth in an attempt to scare little me. It didn’t work, teeth don’t scare me even if they’re not in their proper mouth.

I heard stories of the brothers terrorizing the nuns in Catholic school, something about peanut butter pressed into organ keys, and imagine those boys running roughshod over old ladies armed only with rulers and sharp tongues. From what I understand they had it tough at home, poor enough to consider bread and gravy dinner and never to be quite warm enough in the Minnesota winters. I’ve seen a few old sepia-toned photos of the family then; tall, handsome, angular Grandpa next to his tiny wife, the twinkle in his eyes reflected in the mischief shining from three little boys’ faces, their mother’s look of calm detachment mirrored by one sister. Behind them you can make out a small farmhouse, and then the background fades. The boys all wear hats with fuzzy flaps, my aunt who was the lone girl in the photo noting that they all had terrible earaches when they were young. Hmm, me too.

I wish I knew more about all of them. Most of what I’ve gleaned has been second-hand, through stories circulated among relatives, passed to me in the few instances I’ve gotten to spend time with my extended family. When you grow up place-less you’re always looking for roots, I think. It’s hard to know where you come from when you’ve never seen it. Neither of my parents know much about their own families, beyond two generations. Something in both of them seemed to want to detach, to start fresh on their own. You can’t ever escape family, though, whether it be the earaches passed down through blood or the specter of alcoholism.

I avoided the alcoholism, so far. Lucky, I guess. I vaguely remember my dad before he was drinking, straight white teeth and the little prickly hairs on his chest where I would take naps, the sweat melding my cheek with his skin. I don’t remember him yelling, or angry, though the earliest dream I remember featured a soft feminine face with soothing words, on a black background, over me as if I was in a crib, then suddenly a howling evil man face would appear. It is the most terrifying dream I’ve ever had. I wonder if there was more strife than I remember consciously.