The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2017

by Sarah Vowell

  By legitimizing the conduct that produces this double consciousness, this case tells everyone, white and black, guilty and innocent, that an officer can verify your legal status at any time. It says that your body is subject to invasion while courts excuse the violation of your rights. It implies that you are not a citizen of a democracy but the subject of a carceral state, just waiting to be cataloged.

  We must not pretend that the countless people who are routinely targeted by police are “isolated.” They are the canaries in the coal mine whose deaths, civil and literal, warn us that no one can breathe in this atmosphere. They are the ones who recognize that unlawful police stops corrode all our civil liberties and threaten all our lives. Until their voices matter too, our justice system will continue to be anything but.

  I dissent.

  CHRISTINE RHEIN

  ■

  “Woman Fries and Eats Pet Goldfish After Fight With Husband”

  —headline, Associated Press

  FROM The Southern Review

  I made sure the pan was plenty hot—

  the pain over quick—

  all seven sizzling in butter and salt,

  heads and tails flipped,

  just once, to the other side.

  That day we bought them

  at Sunny Pointe Mall—the tied

  plastic bags bouncing

  in our hands—we floated along,

  certain about the feeding

  and caring, that soon we’d add

  a swim-through pagoda,

  a little bridge. He stared at the tank

  first thing each morning,

  waiting for coffee, always

  complaining: “It’s too weak!”

  I felt that way about his kisses,

  excuses, his whines

  over the fish needing more space.

  He called me mean

  when I netted the black-spotted one

  in a corner, for only

  a minute, so that the others

  could reach their fair share

  of food. He knew how much

  I wanted a special anniversary,

  but he gave me a sweat shirt,

  our trip to Reno out

  because he couldn’t trust

  the guy next door

  with a key, let alone with the fish.

  I’m not sorry I gulped

  them down without chewing—

  no scales left clinging

  to my teeth, no bones

  sticking in my throat.

  But I wish he hadn’t walked in

  to see one pair left,

  those stony eyes, ragged faces,

  burnt fins matching.

  CASEY JARMAN

  ■

  An Oral History of Gabriel DePiero

  FROM Death: An Oral History

  There weren’t really any strangers in my hometown of twelve thousand people, but Tony and Gabe, rosy-cheeked identical twins from a big Italian family, were especially hard to miss. They were affable and outgoing, their family was well-liked, and as one of the community’s only sets of twins (there were four, Gabe remembers, but he and his brother were the only identical twins), they were an inherent curiosity. They were special, even from a distance, whether they liked it or not.

  Then, at age thirteen, Tony took his father’s gun and shot himself. He died instantly.

  For the larger community of Florence, Oregon—a scenic coastal tourist trap with crumbling fishing and timber industries—it was a shock. But shock and disbelief gave way to finger-pointing and speculation. Painful rumors flew almost as fast as word of Tony’s death. In one version of events, he had left an angry suicide note. He and his middle-school girlfriend had been in a huge fight, according to another. The most malicious rumors were that Tony’s twin brother, Gabe, had pulled the trigger. Those rumors always made their way back to the family. It was as if the likeliest culprits—a teenager’s failure to grasp the nature of his own mortality; a momentary madness that could never be taken back—were too simple for the community to accept.

  Beyond the rumor and blame, Tony’s absence in the community was tangible. No one felt it more profoundly than his twin brother. “Every time people looked at me, they thought of Tony,” Gabe told me in the living room of his mobile home, his dog, Nix, at his feet. “Every time I look in the mirror, still, I see him.”

  —Casey Jarman

  I’m Surprised That We Survived Childhood

  On the surface, my family life was very Brady Bunch. That’s what my dad strove for. He wanted everything to be perfect. It was very traditional small town: Dad worked, Mom worked, all of us four kids were into sports, and we played outside and whatnot. Mom worked at the school, so in the summers she stayed at home with us. When she wasn’t around, my oldest brother usually babysat us—and tormented us—and we did all the normal shit you go through growing up in a small town. We built forts, we made booby traps, we lit the pitch on the trees on fire, and then, you know, pissed the fire out when our parents drove up—because every time you light anything on fire, your parents show up. I guess in some ways I’m surprised that we survived childhood.

  My mom was brought up Presbyterian, and my dad was brought up Catholic, but we weren’t raised religious as kids. The only religious thing that ever happened to us as children is when we went to go visit my grandparents on my dad’s side. We went to church on Sundays if we were with them, and man, Catholic services suck. There was all this kneeling, standing, sitting, kneeling. Going to church is a workout! Especially when you’re a little kid, and you’re antsy, and you wanna go do something else.

  My mom and her whole family are very open in talking about death. We still, even now, we talk about it. Her father—my grandfather—just recently passed away, and we’ve talked a lot about that. He was ninety-two years old. Toward the end he was forgetting things, and he called me everything but my own name. He would call me different grandkids’ names each time I visited him, but at least he knew that I was his grandkid.

  My grandparents on my dad’s side had some property near Eugene, with a big garden and orchard, and so we ate vegetables and fruit and played. We had a great time. My grandfather, Jeno, was a woodworker. He taught me how to write in cursive. He died a couple of years prior to Tony. He passed away from cancer, and that affected me because we were close. But when I lost Tony, I lost me, too. I know that I was not the same person afterward that I was before. Because that connection—well, it was weird.

  “If You Blink, It’s Gonna Snap!”

  Tony and I were the clinical definition of mirrored twins. As a young child I was predominantly left-handed: I wrote left-handed, threw a baseball with my left hand—that kind of stuff. But when I hit school, I got made fun of for writing left-handed because it looked funny. You know, kids are mean. Tony was right-handed. He was into hunting and sports. I was kind of athletic, but the hunting and fishing I could have done without, you know? I didn’t want to get up at five in the morning to go kill a bird or a deer, that didn’t appeal to me. But it was very big in my family, and since I didn’t really hunt, I helped do the cleanup. I remember holding a deer by its legs while my dad gutted it, and he handed me the heart, and there was blood running down my arms. I was a part of the whole process except actually taking the life of the animals. Tony would hunt, but I’d carry a gun for someone. Give me a tag, great. That’s kinda how it happened when I was younger. I went through hunting safety classes, I knew how to handle a gun, and I’m still not fearful of guns. Clearly, I know what guns can do.

  Tony and I weren’t in any sort of “twin bubble.” There were always four of us. We had Dominic, who was the oldest by two years, and then Mario, two years younger than him. There are two years between me and Mario, but there were only two minutes between me and Tony. We were the youngest. But whenever we did things as brothers, like when we would play any kind of sports or games, it was always me and Dominic against Mario and Tony. That’s how we always matched it up.
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  We were close. I mean, I was never alone. We shared a bedroom our whole lives. For a long time we shared a queen-sized bed. He had one side, and I had the other. That’s just how we were. We got bunk beds when we started getting a little bit older. We were independent, but still had a lot of the same qualities. We never did do the whole “let’s wear matching clothes” thing. We never did any of that kind of shit. Tony was into music; he played the drums at school. I played trombone and bass clarinet.

  School wasn’t easy for Tony. He struggled with it. It was easy for me, in regards to the academic side of things. Tony was really social. He liked to please people and make sure they were happy. I don’t give a shit about other people. I’m an asshole. I mean, the mouth I have right now is the mouth I had when I was a child, so my growing up wasn’t as peachy keen as my brothers’ was. I stood up for myself where my brothers backed down easily. When Tony got in trouble, I would do things to provoke my dad to take the punishment away from Tony. That was a big thing for me.

  My dad’s very intelligent. He’s got a photographic memory, and he’s super smart. But when I was a kid, he didn’t know how to be a dad, except “I bring in the money, I put a roof over your head, I bring the food home.” Providing was how he showed you that he loved you. I never felt a lot of love, other than that.

  Socially, school wasn’t the greatest for me because I was overweight. I was made fun of for that. And I was always called gay, fag, and stuff like that growing up. That started in elementary school. This kid Taylor was a big perpetrator of it. He called me “Gay Gabe.” I got that a lot. You’ve got to love having a name that rhymes with gay. I mean, I knew from a young age that I was gay, but living in Florence, and in my family, it was a sign of weakness—and I’m not weak. I’m a strong person. But I was fat, too, and I got a lot of shit for it. I had friends, but I was picked on a lot.

  By the time we were teenagers I was two inches taller than Tony. He was more active, so he shed weight and wasn’t nearly as rotund as me. I was round. But I always stood up for myself. If someone said something, I said something right back to them. I didn’t take it. I wasn’t meek. I wasn’t shy by any stretch of imagination. When Taylor or whoever would say things, I’d come back with, “Really? I’m that important that you took the time out of your life to insult me?” I was creative, you know?

  I was never physically hit or anything because of my size. I was always taller and bigger than the other kids, and I never backed down from an altercation, so no one would try to pick on me in a physical way. As a small child, my dad told me this—and I’ll never forget it—he was like, “If you get in a fight at school and I find out you threw the first punch, your ass is grass. If you are defending yourself, and you kick the shit out of them, I will fight tooth and nail to make sure nothing happens to you.” I mean, Dominic and Mario picked on us as kids. I remember my parents going off to some function, and my brother setting mouse traps and holding them in front of our faces: “If you blink, it’s gonna snap!” Now I can beat anybody in a staring contest. [Laughs.] You know how bad it hurt to have the trap snap your face? It stings.

  Like most families, ours looked nice on the surface, but when you scratched just a little bit, it bled like a motherfucker. But when I turned twelve, it was like, life. That’s when my parents divorced, and it just felt like everything went downhill from there. Tony and I moved out with my mom to a little apartment behind the middle school. My two older brothers stayed with my dad at our childhood home. We moved out in July, prior to sixth grade. So Tony and I went from taking the bus to school to walking across the street.

  Tony and I would spend every other weekend at my dad’s house. Dominic and Mario mostly chose to live with him because he had less rules and stipulations. They were older, so that was easier for them. Tony and I had just turned thirteen. I remember when they first moved out, one of the first things that Mario told us was, “We eat ice cream after dinner every night.” I was like, “Good for you.” I mean, my mom struggled, and we worked really hard. That was one thing that my mom did really well—and my dad, as well—is to teach me that you have to earn what you have. Nothing’s ever given to you.

  It Startled Me Awake, But I Didn’t Move

  Tony died on spring break during our seventh-grade year. The last time I talked in this kind of detail about it, it was about two years after that. I remember, it was at a football game. My friend McKenzie and a couple of other people started asking questions, so I went into detail and told the whole story. But it has been a while . . . [takes deep breath].

  It was just a normal Saturday night. We were staying at my dad’s house. Everything was fine. We went to see a movie—Naked Gun 33⅓. Then in the morning, Dad came in and told Tony, “You need to get up. I’m taking Dominic to school.” Dominic was going on a field trip with the golf team, and he’d be gone during spring break. Dad was going to come home, and we were going to go to work with him for the day. He was a plumber—he was going to go work on a project or whatever he had going on. So that was the plan.

  Tony woke up and I stayed in bed. It was just us in the house. At some point that morning, he came in and said, “Hey, dude, get up,” and I was like, “I wanna sleep. I’m still tired, leave me alone.” Tony said, “All right,” and he walked out.

  The next thing I remember is hearing a very loud noise. My dad being a business owner for a plumbing business, he had very large invoice books—I mean like fifty-pound, huge books—and what it sounded like is it came from the dining room-kitchen area. I thought maybe it was one of those falling and slapping against the linoleum floor. So I didn’t get out of bed. I just laid there because it startled me awake, but I didn’t move.

  I went back to sleep. Dad came home and asked, “Is Tony here?” I was like, “Nope.” He went down the hallway, looked in Dominic’s room, looked in Mario’s room, said his name, and then looked in his room and he screamed . . .

  The scream is the part that still bothers me. I still have nightmares now about the scream that my dad let out. He said, “Oh my god, Tony, no!” Then he came running down the hallway. At that point I was out of bed, and I remember stomping on a Nintendo system, then on a remote control, and then tripping over the corner of Tony’s bed to get out of the door. I come swinging out of the room, into the dining room, and he’s on the phone with 911, and I’m like, “What’s going on?” My dad says, “My son shot himself, please send an ambulance,” and that was pretty much the end of the conversation. He looks me directly in the eyes and says, “If you can see the white of my carpet, you’re too close to my room. Don’t go near my room.” I’m like, “What the fuck’s going on?” He’s still not telling me what’s happening, and he starts just calling people.

  I think to myself, Tony shot himself. What a douche. You know, he was very accident-prone. He crashed a three-wheeler into a tree and cut open his hand once. I’m thinking he shot himself in the foot—what an idiot. It hadn’t occurred to me that he could be dead. Dad called everyone. He called my mom and said, “Call someone to give you a ride. There’s been an accident with Tony. You need to get out here now.” He called my grandparents and my aunts, and they started calling all the family in Eugene. We had a couple of different uncles, and an aunt who lived in Springfield, and so people started getting these calls.

  I went outside and pet the dog on the porch. We had a tree stump across the yard, and I went and sat on that with the dog. I could hear the ambulance, so I walked out to the driveway. Of course, they drove past our driveway, so I ran out to the street and ran after them a little bit to get them to turn around and come to our house. That’s when it started to dawn on me that there was something really wrong, because they weren’t rushing. I was like, “Hello, the accident’s over here.” But they weren’t in a rush.

  Then Mr. L [a local teacher] got there right after the ambulance did. He was the first one to respond. He was at church when he heard a dispatch radio go off, and then that’s when all the other police started showi
ng up.

  When the police and everyone started showing up, that’s when I went back in the house and sat on the couch in the living room. I had to put the dog out because he kept getting pissed off and barking with all these strangers in the house. I was sitting on the couch, and I remember my mom got there. Chuck, a family friend who got there right after Mr. L, said, “That’s the mom.” The cops separated, and Chuck grabbed my mom and just lifted her onto our deck. I had stepped out at that point to give my mom a hug, and she just collapsed in my arms. I had to ask the police officer to help me because I was falling over. She didn’t know what was going on, so she ran into the house, and that’s when Dad came out and said Tony had shot himself, and he was gone. I stayed outside at that point. I don’t know if my mom went into the house and saw him or not. I know that at one point my dad went into the kitchen and got a glass of water. I was sitting on a recliner outside of the kitchen doorway, and he was like, “He hasn’t been baptized. Can I baptize him?” That was before anyone showed; the ambulance, the paramedics had just gotten there. They couldn’t pronounce him dead until the coroner showed up, which was like two hours later.