Hospitality might die with my mother. That’s what my father says.
Mom will bring a sandwich and a glass of water to the man who repairs the boiler: whether or not he eats or drinks doesn’t matter. Rain or shine, summer or winter, she invites the door-to-door canvasser inside for a rest and a glass of something. She buys the next-door neighbors, both sides, Christmas gifts. Maybe that’s generosity, neighborliness, not exactly hospitality, but it’s related. It’s about stretching your care past your own walls.
“Martha,” my father says, “you’re the last of your kind.”
“I hope not,” my mother says.
Hospitality might die with my mother if my mother outlives me. But I want to carry it forward. If I live, if I keep my mind, I want to be hospitable.
Make a note to self, Q. For our future.
Always have a bed made. Keep extra bananas, milk, and brown sugar. Bread and meat. And maybe a pie.
What’s worse for a mother than outliving a child?
If you die before your mother, Q—? It won’t matter what kills you, will it?
It might matter, since the intolerable at least seems tolerable if what happens couldn’t be avoided. I mean, if you die from an inoperable brain tumor or get struck by lightning, that brings out one kind of grief. But if a cop crushes your throat, and all you had in your pockets added up to cigarettes and a lighter; and your house keys; and a couple quarters, six dimes, two pennies, and your lucky rabbit’s foot; and. That’s different, right?
That grief is different.
Absolutely, but. Whether it’s cancer or a chokehold, train wreck or suicide, sense or nonsense, doesn’t change the one, true fact: a mother wants to die before her child. That’s what they call the natural order of things, unless.
Unless you live to a hundred, like I will—then you might bury your children. If you live long enough, you’ll bury everyone and everything: your parents; your friends; all your pets, except your last, tiny Chihuahua that barks night and day over your dead body; your children, your favorite and your least favorite; your husband or wife, and all the other half-loves, all the quarter-loves, all of them; and your full enemies. You can bury the truth about your life, whatever stories you choose, the most embarrassing stories, the worst stories, when you did this terrible thing, or gossiped, or drove someone else to their death; you can bury your teeth and hair and happiness. You’ll bury everything except yourself.
If I die before my mom and dad, I hope my Chimaera kills me, roasts me dead. It might be a comfort for my parents to say to themselves, “It couldn’t be helped. Beasts like that kill—.”
Wow.
How did I get there from bananas and milk?
All I know is my mother has had reasons, I guess, to comfort me my whole life. I’ve always had things going on in me, always ideas and upset, always dreams.
When I was ten, fifth grade, I pretended hard enough to believe I had different-colored eyes. One amber, one violet. I could see Good through the amber eye and Evil through the violet. When both were open, I saw the real world, normal shadow, normal light, color, but I had no real idea of what to fear or trust. Only when I looked at the world one eye at a time, amber and purple, could I find Good and Evil.
I would close one eye, then the other, back and forth, to gauge the world. The good people, the good animals, the good spirits would shine, wrapped in gold, painted in gold. The evil: horizon-purple, night-purple; the heads of the wicked faced backward.
The shining Minotaur. My homeroom teacher dark, though, and frowning at the wall behind him. Our puppy, Julius, a golden Rottweiler; but our neighbor’s toy poodle, deep purple, and her head turned one hundred eighty degrees. Crows purple, and their beaks the wrong way; the gold swallows. Gold trees, purple trees, depending on the spirits and gods under the bark, among the branches.
Amber moon, violet sun, and vice versa, depending. Dr. M like noon. And my parents? A thousand candles, the gold light too much, too painful.
I don’t know. Maybe I went like this a year, until I met Akira with her violet eye and her amber eye. I couldn’t believe it, and I asked her, “What do you see with your yellow eye? And what do you see with your purple?”
“I can see ghosts with the yellow eye,” she said.
“Really?” I said.
“All the time,” she said. “They’re everywhere.”
“Ghosts? I never see ghosts with my yellow eye. I only see what’s good.”
“You don’t have a yellow eye,” she said. “Both your eyes are—”
“I have eyes like yours. I can see Good and Evil.”
“No one has eyes like mine.”
She was right. No one has eyes like hers, and I felt afraid, defenseless.
“Ghosts?” I said. “For real?”
Akira nodded: “Everywhere.”
Did you see Akira’s selfies from her grandmother’s funeral? She posted them. All nine. At first, I thought, This isn’t right. Pretty tasteless.
But Akira’s too smart to—.
The pictures tell a never-ending story. The ninth almost duplicates the first and starts the story all over again, an endless circle. Beauty and sadness and.
Number one: Big smile, black dress, amber eye, violet eye, gorgeous; altar and pews; and you can see her grandmother’s coffin over her shoulder, small, distant, almost out of range.
Number two: Flower arrangements, and Akira’s standing over the lilies; the edge of the casket behind her, maybe the handle? A brass handle? You’re not really sure.
Number three: Cross-eyed, and her mother in profile—black gloves, pillbox hat and veil—holding a tissue up to her nose. She has no idea what Akira’s up to.
Number four: Open casket, milky satin and walnut; her grandmother’s folded hands, cross and rosary, chin, nostrils, lace at her throat; Akira’s right eye, the violet eye, and her forehead.
Number five: Akira crying.
Number six: Akira and her big brother. You can only see James’s blue shirt collar and the start of his charcoal suit, the nap of his hair, his earlobe; Akira’s eyes shut, and the rest of her face hidden in her brother’s shoulder.
Number seven: Akira crying harder. Makeup sliding.
Number eight: Akira and the floating casket; pall- bearers.
Number nine: Big smile, black dress, Akira’s face all stained with makeup. Purple eye, amber eye. You realize she’s in the exact same position as number one: the church aisle, the pews and faraway altar. One big difference: no casket. Grandma’s gone.
I texted Akira after I saw the nine pictures: Did you see any ghosts with your yellow eye?
Akira: ?
Me: Remember? You told me when we met you could see ghosts with your yellow eye.
Akira: I forgot. Let me look.
Me: Where are you?
Akira: Home. Hold on.
Me: Holding.
Akira: My grandmother’s sitting at the end of the dining room table.
Me: How does she look?
Akira: Like herself. Happy. But now I’m crying.
Akira brought the nine selfies printed on one sheet to class. We’re in that weird philosophy elective: Birth, Death, and Recurrence. We were talking about Jung and alchemy, and I don’t know what. The ouroboros: the symbol of the serpent eating its tail. Endless birth, death, and rebirth; the balance between life and death.
Intense.
The amazing thing about picture nine is that Akira looks old. Ancient and dying. Not really, but. You could see what she might look like in sixty years. Akira will grow old and lie in a coffin. We will all lie in a coffin. You. Me. Some sooner than others.
In picture one, the casket was tiny and far away: as far from us as death. We never want to think about dying. But in picture nine, death seems close. Death has started to take over Akira’s face. It only looks that way, though. How exh
austing to cry over someone.
Do you see what I’m saying?
—?—
The selfies weren’t stupid and obnoxious. They were about grief.
It might be a little late to ask, but do I talk too much? In general. I know I’ve been talking this whole time, but do I ever stop talking? Ever?
What if—?
What if you could only ever say one word, what would you choose? What would I choose? Yes? No?
I’d rather be more positive than negative.
But is yes the best I could do? How about love? If I could only ever say one word, it should be love.
Love would always stand for itself. It would never mean cat or mat or bat or any word other than itself. When I must sleep, I would not say, “Love love love.” Love for every word, repeated over and over—? Worse than stupid, it would make love, the idea of love, meaningless.
No, love would always mean love.
What if love’s the only word I could say, and I could only say it a certain number of times? A hundred times or less. I would have to be careful with it. We are never careful with the number of words we use, are we? I would have to be careful with love.
For instance, you, because you’re nice, ask, “May I buy you lunch at the Astro?” I would have to say, “Love.”
Wait—: lunch? That’s not important enough, is it, if I can only say love fifty times in my life?
Six loves, three each, when my parents die. Two loves for Julius. One now and then for nature, and maybe even one for this city—at night, the skyline and all the lights, while we’re standing on the bridge. One occasionally for music or a play, but I can’t imagine ever wasting a love on a movie or a television show, or on food, no matter how delicious.
You would get most of them, I think. If I ever find you crumpled up on the floor bleeding or crumpled up and crying, I’ll say, “Love.” Maybe I’ll have to say love five or six times, close together, to bring you back.
When you’re very old, and we’ve had a life together, and I never went completely and forever insane, just a few times for a week or two, and we raised a daughter, and I knew you were about to give everything up and die, I would stand next to you, and—even if it were my last one, and I knew I could never speak again, my only last word—I would say, “Love.”
You know I would.
But what if, right now, while talking about this, on this walk, I use up the rest of my loves without knowing it—?
I’m so ridiculous. If I live a thousand years and want to say love with every breath, I would never run out. At the end, I would weigh as much as dust, and that one word would be half my weight, and.
I would die with a whisper: “Love.”
One question anyone who’s sane ends up asking, or maybe should ask, is, How cruel a master is insanity? How cruel is depression or schizophrenia or bipolar disorder?
I was hungry, and Nest was hungry, but some force kept her, and us, from sitting down for a meal, from buying a hot dog on the street or a pretzel. From resting and drinking water. Nest’s mind kept us hungry, kept us from water, our lips dry, too dry.
Mania, which is one half of bipolar, and insanity grind on relentlessly. They make mercy nearly impossible. Like the cruelest slave driver, one who does not recognize humanity or allow for any recovery, insanity keeps the whip, cracks the whip, never drops the whip.
Yes, I was hungry, but I felt sorrier for Nest. I thought about all the times she wouldn’t eat, hasn’t eaten, enslaved, walking until she felt only strong enough to collapse.
But for me, Nest wanted to stop. For me, not for herself. At some point we would stop, I figured. She would find a way to rest for me, to get me to sit with her, to find
Fuel.
I have sympathetic hunger, I think. I know you’re hungry, Q, so I’m hungry.
Soon.
Here’s a sentence to chew on, a little snack after the banana. And I quote:
“Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.”
—?—
It’s totally correct. Take all the time you need.
You know where we are? Irish Town. The art galleries and fancy little restaurants and money, all of this was slum and gangland. Irish Town is where you went if you wanted to get murdered. Criminals with names like Ears McGann and Darling Irene. Luke “the Barber” O’Casey killed between thirty and eighty people, maybe a hundred, until a mob lynched him from a lamppost. He really was a barber, but he was also a hit man, a police informer, and a vicious drunk, and he carried a very, very sharp straight razor. O’Casey killed people on the street, day or night. Swish: he’d open arteries in the throat or thigh. That light, fast razor: swish. His victims died before they hit the ground and bled into gutters. Before anyone knew what happened, the Barber would disappear into doorways, alleys, horse-drawn cabs, barrels and buckets, who knows? He’d be found in his parlor, a towel over his shoulder, razor in his hand, at a throat, shaving a man, steady. And the men in his shop would swear he’d never left.
Irish Town was leveled in 1947. Plowed under. Mayor Byrne had actually been born and raised here, one of eleven kids, and nothing made him happier than destroying the whole neighborhood, wiping it away. All the blood and crime and poverty. And here we are, nothing to worry about, strolling by really high-priced pottery and paintings and sequins and mannequins and plates of rabbit and penguin—do the rich eat penguin?—and shark and cheese, the best cheese.
I think every city has an Irish Town. Not all of them get destroyed or improved, and they’re terrible. Right now, they’re terrible. But how many cities have theaters where there used to be slave markets, and malls built on the sites of massacres?
The lost graves.
It’s impossible to remember everything. A city builds on top of itself. Every so often, though, a memory gets discovered, a secret found. A bone, a skull, a shard, an arrowhead, a spoon, a torn-up doll. A story comes undone, a ragged end. Something great we’d forgotten, or something terrible we wish we never had to think about ever again. What’s dead doesn’t always stay dead.
In the middle of the Roman Forum, there’s a stone called the Umbilicus Urbis Romae. The distances to and from ancient Rome were measured against it. Everything began and ended at the navel of the capital, the center of the empire, its belly button, the omphalos. Nothing is measured against it now.
Our city had its own navel, its own omphalos. We learn about Hake’s Oak in elementary school. How many men and women were hanged from the branches? Twenty-seven, right? Four redcoats, five traitors, six murderers, seven cowards, three black boys, one woman, and a rapist. That’s city myth, and everyone knows it. But only God knows how many people swung from Hake’s Oak.
Before it was called Hake’s Oak, it was Satan’s Oak. And only the Devil knows how many people he screwed to the trunk.
That tree survived lightning, hurricanes, blizzards, cold, car wrecks, one bus, the hundred hands of God, and. Every myth figured that tree would live forever. That it had human blood for sap. Or liquid iron.
How many fires were set at the roots? How many men went at it with saws and axes?
Then, the tree at our center died.
Our city stands at a crossroads. The crossroads might have been the intersection of deer paths, or where bears broke through the forest, or tribes traded goods. All of it. At the crossroads, there was a tree, thirteen feet wide, forty-some feet around, and, according to every memory, always old, always dark, and always huge. It became the witness tree for a real estate deal between the Devil and two trappers named Hake and Surridge. The Devil and the men each marked the tree, the Devil with his fingernail, and the men with knives. The men gave up their souls, for sure, but each gave up a hand, too. Hake his right, and Surridge his left. Satan screwed their hands to the tree. There the hands stayed for fifty years. Until the Devil took them back.
Out of that deal between Satan and the trappers came the trading outpost that grew into the village that grew into the town that grew into this city. For two hundred years, Satan’s Oak marked the center, the umbilicus urbis, of where we live. Finally—hear my sarcasm? Finally, the council ordered it cut down to make way for the new city hall. The witness tree died.
How long did it take to saw down that oak?
People protested. Even the vice president of the United States wrote a letter urging the mayor and council to allow “that steady witness to a part of the history of this great Union” to live undisturbed and even protected until it died a natural death, “as all living things must, in their time, die.”
It didn’t matter. Progress.
People wanted to chain themselves to the trunk, but no one had a chain long enough.
People wept.
How long to cut down that oak?
There’s a wall plaque and a few photographs in the lobby of city hall, honoring Hake’s Oak. You might make out the three scars, the Devil’s scratch and the marks of Hake and Surridge. Some have claimed to see the branches sway and the leaves shake in the photographs. Some have made out the shadows of hands in the bark.
After it was cut down, the witness tree was made into sawdust for the slaughterhouse floor, to soak up blood.
I keep coming back to death. I have to stop.
My Chimaera usually makes me sad, so—.
Maybe it’s because I feel so close to life, walking with you. Or maybe it’s because I’ve been hungry all along, so hungry.
Or maybe it’s because we’ve been walking uphill, and I feel like I’m going to die.
We’re getting to the steepest street in the city, at a grade of fourteen degrees and seventeen hundred feet above sea level. Don’t worry, it only lasts a couple blocks, then down, down, down.
If you were a gentleman, you’d carry me.
Ten Miles One Way Page 10