Go Home!

by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan

  political history, our family, subjects I know he can talk about

  with pleasure and authority (and that I, now, am

  genuinely interested in), letting him apply the gas

  to the conversation while I steer it with just a light grip

  of thumb and finger, enjoying the opening space

  of two drives, and he’s supplying me with dates, telling me

  he was born in 1945, went to high school in the early

  sixties, served in Vietnam in the early seventies, married Mom

  in 1973 and moved to America in 1974, none of which

  I knew, exactly, until now, growing up as I did not just

  with gaps in my knowledge of family history

  but a whole obliterating fog, and as he talks I realize

  how greedy I am for this knowledge, the simple facts

  of my past, notched in dates, the credentials of a twentieth-century

  personal history, as if my self were a hole finally filling

  with the proper topsoil of information, the featherweight

  seeds at the bottom abruptly catching into life,

  and I feed him questions at greater speed, with more reach,

  asking about the Korean War, how badly our family

  was affected by it, whether we had to flee our homes,

  whether anybody fought or (gulp) died, slightly afraid

  that he’s going to reveal a whole substrata of slaughter

  and suffering beneath my level of consciousness,

  but he says, No, our family was lucky, the war never reached us.

  Daegu was the last line of defense and it was never crossed.

  Grandpa was a police chief so he didn’t need to fight in the war.

  And I’m thinking, Whew! but at the same time, Is that it?

  wondering how I managed to evade history even in a country

  literally split in half by it, almost disappointed

  by the narrative, musing, This is not the Korean

  American Experience publishers are looking for,

  “may you never remember and may you never forget,”

  that sort of thing, but digging Dad’s no big deal attitude,

  the cool way he recounts all this, the partly surprised

  expression he wears on his face, as if he hasn’t thought

  about this stuff in years and is not exactly sure why

  I’m asking. We’re driving through New York State,

  both of us feeling pretty good about ourselves, Dad damn near

  chatty, but I start to feel that old familiar tug

  toward silence again, the not-quite-ease of the conversation,

  the buildup of so many previous car rides in silence

  to and from the airport, school, violin and tennis lessons,

  the silence more a father than my own father,

  when he asks, Do you want to go to Cooperstown?

  And my immediate reaction is No, not really, but I can

  sense how much it means to him, how he’s starting to believe

  in the romance of the father-son relationship again

  and needs to cement this feeling with a solid event,

  and something tells me it’s now or never, that if we don’t go today

  we’ll never go, and then I’ll have to take my son,

  so I say, Sure—do we have time? since it’s Sunday, 3 p.m.,

  the museum likely closes at five and we still have a good

  seven hours to go until home, and Dad needs to work

  tomorrow. He calculates, Well, it’s about twenty, thirty

  minutes detour, and we have about thirty minutes to go before that,

  which leaves us almost no time to see the museum

  but we go for it, shooting through the countryside,

  and even though it’s only supposed to be about a half hour

  off our route, once we’ve made the turn for the museum

  it seems to take an eternity to get there, our car proceeding

  more and more into nowhere, no cars before or behind

  us, and I joke, What genius put the Baseball Hall of Fame

  way out here, trying to keep the mood light, since the landscape

  is no Field of Dreams (especially under a light rain

  during the off-season) and I know Dad’s sense of romance

  must be fading; but I think we’re supposed to feel

  we’re moving back in time to a “mythic” America,

  leaving the evil of cities and the twentieth century behind,

  though all I feel is anxious and out of place, the growing

  obviousness of our faces, and I’m half-hoping the museum

  will be closed when we get there so we won’t be seen.

  But it’s open. And Cooperstown itself is charming, all

  the stores and restaurants baseball-themed—everything

  bats and balls!—and I can imagine this whole experience

  would have been less threatening to me as a child,

  in the summer, in the sunlight. We approach the ticket

  counter and I find myself bristling slightly at the man

  who addresses Dad in a louder-than-usual voice, Hello, sir!

  How can we help you today? But I’m determined

  to feel welcome, so I smile, joke with him, ask

  a few questions about the Hall in crisp English.

  Then Dad surprises me: Could I have one adult, one senior citizen?

  At first I think he’s trying to put one past this guy

  but then I realize he is that old, and for the first time

  since coming home I look him steadily

  in the face, notice the skin is paler, blotchier

  than I remember it, the already thin hair not just thinner

  but weaker, the scalp more glazed. We take the man’s advice

  and start on the second floor to make sure we see

  the permanent exhibition before the museum closes,

  the window display of history from the nineteenth century

  to the present, all the browning artifacts, the long cool bats

  of sluggers, Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, the homerun balls

  notching a number, 60, 61, 714, the no-hitter balls all lined up

  neatly together on a wall, some smudged and greasy,

  others surprisingly clean, each bearing the whorled imprint

  of its author somewhere in the cowhide and seams,

  the tightening of a grip, fastball, forkball, slider, erosion

  of oil and saliva; but as I’m looking at all this I’m struck

  by how much effort of imagination it takes to get inside

  the history, how groomed and clinical this history is,

  the objects mute, almost helpless in their Plexiglas cages,

  robbed of movement, the real record of the game,

  the signature of each swing and delivery upon the air,

  the weight shifts, positionings, balances, the digging

  of cleated toes into dirt, the pitch-to-pitch, inning-to-inning,

  game-to-game, season-to-season accumulation of tension

  and release in memory—so that I want to dump this all

  into stadiums, foul the objects off into stands,

  fleck them with beer, mustard, relish, the dirt and germs

  from each grasping hand. Nothing feels organic, least of all

  me in my black leather jacket and shoes, leaning in to read

  each accompanying paragraph of information (I learn

  a pop-up was once called a “skyrocket”), the objects

  kept from me not only by the glass but by my image

  on top of the glass and then my glasses on top of that.

  Dad falls behind, fussing with his camera. He catches up

  to ask if I can pry open the plastic packaging

  on a battery and, when I can’t, goes downstairs to seek out

  scissors. He returns,
triumphant, then has me move station

  to station to create a storybook of our lives against

  the century: first, Cy Young (a Cleveland Spider),

  Bob Feller (ace of the last Cleveland Champs

  in ’48), Mickey Mantle (my favorite legend as a kid),

  and then the Thurman Munson Yankees of the seventies,

  the team my parents followed when they lived in New York

  and I was born. I think back to Cleveland, nights in the kitchen

  when Mom would let me listen to the game on the radio

  while she cooked, going over the heroics of Guidry, Jackson,

  Lou Piniella (When he came up, we’d all go Loooooo), helping me

  to believe in a possible immortality for my woeful Indians,

  a time when I cared about each game with an intensity

  that made Dad scowl ( Jay, it’s just gayyym), praying before

  every Cory Snyder at bat (who hit .236), not wanting to leave

  games until the final pitch (even the 17–0 rout we attended

  as a family), believing each missed moment took a brick

  out of the next, that I could build out of baseball

  an edifice of meaning to house my lonely, unimportant self.

  I would have given anything then for Dad to do

  what he’s doing now, taking me to Cooperstown!

  But he always just seemed to be annoyed with me,

  and Mom, if anything, was the more indulgent of the two,

  and she was not indulgent. Now Dad needs this

  more than me, and I try to wait patiently as he takes

  one picture after another with his digital camera,

  often asking me to re-pose when the picture turns out

  badly. I look too tall in all the images, overdressed,

  not awkward enough, and I start to wonder if it’s too late

  for father and son, the Hall closing, a long drive through the dark

  still ahead, but Dad looks so happy, oblivious to all

  the disappointment dusting his shoulders, trusting

  in his camera to lock our experience into glossy rectangles,

  that I can believe, for a moment, in the rightness of our presence,

  the confirmation of the country around us,

  until a rude old woman comes up to me and says, Sir, we’re CLOSING,

  as I try to catch a glimpse of the inductee plaques.

  I say, But we still have five minutes, and she says,

  Don’t you want to go to the gift shop? and I storm out

  thinking—I can’t help it—racist, small town, white trash,

  where the hell does she have to be at this hour, just wanting

  to get in the car and leave—but Dad wants to take

  a few more pictures outside the museum. I stand there

  stewing in the flash, thinking I’ll say something when

  she comes out, like Don’t you understand going to Cooperstown

  is a pilgrimage? But when she does come out, we’re still

  taking pictures, and she doesn’t even look at us, just waddles

  on her merry way home, and I look past her at the lights

  twinkling the streets, the windowfronts softened by the rain,

  and understand that confronting her would disrupt

  this quiet passage home she likely looks forward to every day,

  the clean pine air fresh on her skin, a comfortable couch

  and a night of good television on up ahead, and the anger

  of an Asian in this context just seems ridiculous . . .

  I turn back to Dad, smile sincerely this time, defiantly, trying

  to hold it as he troubles over the angle, the background,

  and a car drives by and sees us Asians with a camera

  Chicken & Stars

  T Kira Madden

  My mother is late. She is often late picking me up from school these days, but today she is later.

  I am in the seventh grade, waiting outside under the palms. I have recently decided that I am depressed. I don’t look like any other kids in Boca Raton—my black hair, high cheeks—and people tell me I smell like a Nike factory. I want to be white. I want to have a nickname, a skirt rolled up at the waistline, smooth knees. I want to be pretty enough to kidnap. Murdered in an act of passion. Worth that much.

  I always tell my mother to stay in the car at dismissal, don’t ever, ever get out to look for me, because more than anything else, I want to make friends.

  Today my mother is later than late, and I think she must have fallen asleep somewhere. My mother and father have been in their Other Place lately—the place they go when the sweating glasses come out, the pipes and cigarettes that smell funny. I like to call them magic sticks, because it is only a matter of minutes between the blaze of the sticks and that Other Place, where my parents’ voices change pitch and their eyes bulge with colors and their throats bob differently.

  It wasn’t always like this.

  We used to have car rides, the three of us, clasped fingers on the center console. Music. Cigarettes flipped out the window in scabbed trails of light.

  It was like that.

  I saw one of the magic sticks in a commercial recently. In the commercial, two boys swivel around in office chairs, smoking. One of the boys accidentally blasts the other boy in the face with a gun. I asked, Mom? Is marijuana one of your magic smokes? She said yes. I said, Did you know it is a DRUG and it will KILL you? She said all commercials want to do is make everybody walk around the world looking the same, acting boring. A patty-cake world, she says. And there is no sameness about us.

  The other stuff I learned about from Whitney Houston on the news. I ask my mother about this, but she says it’s not the same thing. Sometimes she buys a white powdered ibuprofen from the pharmacy and mixes it into her ice tea. She says, See? Look. Read the package, it’s harmless. This is what you saw.

  I am beginning to know better.

  MY MOTHER’S BLACK truck grumbles up around the corner. Her truck is not fancy. It has dents all over, a few of my horse ribbons sun bleached, tangled, hanging from the rearview mirror. My mother likes to call this car “Big Beau,” petting the dashboard affectionately.

  I use a suitcase on wheels as a backpack, because my spine can’t handle the weight. I roll it over to her car, yank the handle of it when the wheels snag on the sidewalk cracks. I open the backdoor of the car, chuck the suitcase in, It’s about time, slam the door. I open the passenger door and slide in.

  My mother’s face is battered, blue. Her bottom lip drags down as if an invisible hanger were hanging her clothes on it. Her eyes are almost entirely sealed shut. Purple marks the size of boxed chocolates cover her arms. She reaches for my hand and holds it.

  There was a fight, she says.

  HE’S ASLEEP ON the couch when we arrive home. This is his place in our house. My father has never been a bedroom father, a kitchen father, a backyard father, an office father, a roof father; he is a father of the living room couch. I wonder if he was always this way, with his other family, that other life none of us are supposed to mention. He keeps a worn photo of two boys in the slip of his wallet, boys in the sun, playing ball. Even though their faces are crinkled as petals, I can see that they have his nose.

  Now my father is facedown on the pink, leather cushions and I sit down next to him. His left arm dangles. I lift it and let it drop. He feels dead to me. I love him more than anyone I’ve ever met.

  Beneath his arm, on the floor, is his crown-sized ashtray overflowing with orange filters. It’s almost beautiful this way, like an exotic flower or a Bloomin’ Onion from Outback. When my father is too drunk to walk or drive, he lights each and every butt in the ashtray. He sucks at them between his fingers like he’s drinking a milkshake through a cocktail straw. Around the couch are several empty vodka bottles, a cracked cobalt glass, one hundred dollar bills, a smashed mirror. My father doesn’t move no matter how much I touch
him.

  I watch my mother fill a cup with water from the kitchen sink, holding steady to the counter. We use well water here. It smells like cheese water, the kind that collects in the refrigerator drawers, so we plug our noses to drink. My mother points over to our pantry, and I walk over to it. The white door hangs off its hinges like a loose tooth. The shelves inside are split perfectly in half, That’s where my face went, all the screws yanked from the walls. I lift a can of Campbell’s soup from the pile of them on the floor, Chicken & Stars, twist it around in my hand. It is easier to look at your favorite soup than it is at blood. Campbell’s soup, my every meal, the first thing I learned how to make for myself. A can of Campbell’s is exactly one pound, it says so on the label, and this is the measurement by which I weigh everything else in the world. I weigh eighty-one soup cans. My mother stares into the pantry, shaking her head. She sips slow and gently from her glass, careful not to spill.

  What’s all this? I say.

  My mother points to each shelf and there are noises now—words coming out between each cry: money, investment, snapped, pushed, and then, the soup cans, the money. I ask her to slow down. She says my father has been binging on his special stuff and hasn’t slept in over three days. The fight started in the kitchen, simple at first, before he took her by the wrists and didn’t know what to do with all his love. She says things like this all the time lately, words like love to describe our suffering. She doesn’t know if I’m old enough to hold the truth in my hands, to measure that.

  I hug my mother at the kitchen sink, let her cry into my shoulder. She leaves black and blue and red there on my white, crisp uniform. I am only five two but we are the same size by now. From a slight distance, people mistake us for sisters.

  I send my mother to her bedroom and tell her I will heat up two cans of Campbell’s for dinner. I pluck them from the top of the pile. I crank the can opener till the aluminum exhales. I smash the pots and pans around, bang them into each other like gongs. The stove coils throb red. The stars boil. I open and close the dishwasher in a crashing swing, like I’m bowling. I want my father to wake up so badly, for him to tell me his side of the story, to bury his head in his hands, apologizing, changed. He doesn’t move.

  WHAT ARE WE going to do? my mother says, in the bathtub. It is one in the morning, and my father is still asleep. She has been in here so long the water’s gone cold, and I turn the Hot lever every few minutes.