figleavesandrye

[figleavesandrye]

sugar water

It's a Georgia summer. The air is thick and the plates are big. Gas is cheap.

It's my first time outside of California in a long time. 

i’m here to see a baby.firstborn to the firstborn of a firstborn. to me, this has to mean something. to meet at this juncture, our generational chance at reconcile. at undoing. forgiving. forgiven. forgave. circles full circling. fullstop. she doesn’t cry.she looks like a womanshe will only know by her likenessand carries like a symbolof turnover and seasonschanging the way most quiet babies do. we buy diapers and onesies from a store that also sells ammoand spend the next four daysin georgia. on the third day,i hold a gun for the first time. it’s heavier than i’d expectedand carries like a symboleven heavier still, somethinglike staring into the sun. my first shot fires like making eye contact with a god i don’t believein. eventually, i get over it and spray another ninety nine rounds through a paper manand then it’s just good old southern fun after that. adrenaline wells up in my core and feels both warm and sinful. the men working the gun range make simple funwhen they return my californiadriver’s license because they believe they possessa higher understanding of the essence of freedom. they believe it to be a deafening and sulfuricforce, proxyfor the violent. definedby state lines, having anything atall to do with guns. this is not that beacon i knowshines in my understanding the essence of my burden in guilt and shame andsin and grief. i know the way my fingertips stain with the funk of wet newspapermixed with garlic. howi’ll then forget andrub my eyes. how i’ll cry. how i’ll weep, actually. oh, the way i weep! how i keepcoming back to this. in my language,free is something of a silentexorcism. it’s howbabies keep being born. beingsorry and true. it’s tuckedsomewhere in betweenthe paper petals ofa lifetime of healing. it’s whyi’m here in georgia, workingat the arduous task ofseparating wheat and chaff and loving unconditionally.

right before the gift shop of the world of coca-cola, one of atlanta’s more popular tourist attractions, there is a room littered with clear plastic cups and fountains upon fountains of all of coca-cola’s international flavors for visitors to sample. the floor is coated with a tacky syrupy layer of soda and fills the place with the smacks and squeaks of the rush toward drink. this is where it happens. my mom calls me from los angeles to tell me grandma is not okay. she’s unconscious, on a ventilator, and apparently there’s a tooth in her lung. she had inhaled it in the thick of her artificial breathing. we’re pretty sure it’s for real this time. her voice is still and so is mine. we know. there have been false alarms before. once, my grandma had the whole family racing to her bedside. she even called her pastor. we all crowded around in her bedroom while my grandpa sat in his chair just outside. we sang hymns and people prayed and wept over her. it would have been a most gorgeous ritual of departure and the opportune moment to die. then she lived five more years or something like that and we laughed about it a couple times, too. i can’t really remember when she wasn’t so fragile. she had a heart surgery a long time ago and i think after that is when she became like a leaf. when i would visit, i would quickly bow to my grandpa and then head over to her room. most times, she would be sleeping or playing games on her phone and somehow she would summon the strength to swat at me for not hanging out with her more. i would crawl into her bed gingerly so as not to rattle her and then i would teach her how to text or listen to her complain about her husband sitting in the other room. 

after isaac died, my parents struggled to tell my grandparents the truth. i don’t blame them for that and never will. i don’t need to know their reasons. after that, i couldn’t bring myself to visit anymore and my parents didn’t blame me either. i couldn’t step into that stuffy one bedroom apartment in reseda where isaac was still here alive in this world with me, where he was just busy with school and being a teenage boy. i couldn’t do that kind of multidimensional time travel and manage to come out of its fictions unscathed.  so i’m flying back to la, these thoughts floating around me. the deathbed as a beacon. a homing signal. moths to a flame. the truth drawn out. the truth in showing up. we land and don’t rush to the hospital. it’s different from the gravitational force that flung me toward my brother on the night of his death. we get there when we there. the hospital’s policy is two family members at a time. we wait our turn. there’s a jesus statue in the waiting room, pointing up with a broken finger. it’s our turn now, we get into the elevator, go up to the second floor, get out the elevator, follow the nurse to the room, look at all the other people in the room, open the curtain, close the curtain, try to feel alone with her. i don't know what i’m supposed to say or if i even have to say it out loud. i don't know if i'm supposed to tell her about isaac. 

할머니 has been dead for three months. i go visit 할아버지. he's different now. the chair i sit in smells like cigarettes. her bedroom door is closed. the trash can is filled with empty yogurt cups and ash. there are fruit flies. he sprays raid bug spray and doesn't open the window.  someone tells me that restaurant orange slices are dunked in sugar water and ice and then served to guarantee sweetness. you can’t just pay someone to taste all the oranges. that wouldn’t be very efficient. they don’t understand how i would taste all the oranges for free.

[figleavesandrye]

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[figleavesandrye]

window is to cliff

in first grade, all it takes is a bean, a wet paper towel, dixie cup, soil, and time to learn how plants drink water and eat light. it's a very exciting day at school because dirt is involved. you just discovered lying, so you make up crazy stories to your friends all day and when school ends, you take your dixie cup home and put it by your window and grow beans. you're really good at it and everyone believes you.

you're a natural, actually, and you think it's because your mom gardens. she has a modest plot in a community garden somewhere in smalltown california. she pays the annual fifty dollars for it in cash and on a good day, it reminds her of home. airplanes fly over factories nearby. trains pass. it's a town of sunshine and exhaust. you're better at english than her and this matters more than you can know.

it's a good garden for a good many years. there are fruit trees and air shows and cocker spaniel birthday parties. you feed chickens and get used to the smell of manure. you pick berries and catch ladybugs and dirty your church clothes. you don't get in trouble - this is important.

your family has the big, black, boxy kind of tv at home. it's the kind that whistles awake like mosquitos when the screen lights up. you watch cartoons on cable until one day you don't anymore. then you watch them on video tapes from the local library, but there are only so many rugrats and spongebob tapes at mid-valley regional and you've already seen them all - more than once. you want the good stuff. you want cable. 

the apartment building has ten units in a row and no back patio partitions. it's all just one long backyard. you go outside to the neighbor boy's bedroom window and watch new episodes of your favorite shows. you push a pile of dirt up against the wall with your sandals to see better and he opens the window so you can hear. it's summer and the two of you let out the fresh air conditioning his parents work hard to pay for.

there are more summers. more wasting ac and watching tv through bedroom windows. all childhood, still. the neighbor boy buries his dog in the dirt pile. your dixie cup beans die. he gets a playstation and a chunky desktop computer and then it's more grand theft auto and less cartoon network after that. one day, his friends take turns playing sex games on the computer and that's the last time you're there at his window again. 

then you go to middle school and it doesn't bother you anymore. you have bigger problems now. you want a boyfriend and you hate the way your face looks. your clothes suck and it's not even your fault. the neighbor boy moves away and you barely notice.