Mise en Place

There are dust bunnies the size of guinea pigs swirling around the corners of the dining room every time I walk by to get a wine glass from the cabinet. The wine glasses are small with sturdy stems- an inheritance from my mother-in-law, who bought them in Paris, but who is now living her best life in a city apartment too full of thrilling newness and good Mexican food to fit another set of glasses. I pour out some seven dollar rośe and sit on the broken porch swing, watching the hordes of cars crawl in traffic up the mountain, trying to get home.

I grew up at the top of a hill that bore my last name; a legacy of war, brothers too young to fight, and a brother too young to die. I am not that far from where my grandfather’s feet shuffled with his brothers to Devil’s Hole to fish, then on his beat as a police officer in the same hometown- forever made to dance with the ghost of his older brother’s name etched into sidewalks and tombstones and stained glass windows in his home church sanctuary.

I am far enough away not to feel the hum of his blood pulse in the ground. See his face in the small business windows, black-and-white and patina. No one knows my Dad’s rebellious youth stories in the Shoprite here- no one stops to regale me in secrets, crooked fingers heavy with lapis rings to lips, walkers blocking the aisles.

No one has my wan, childhood face fixed in their memory here, either. There are no recollections of Mickey Mouse sweaters and purple leggings. The third-grade birthday party that ended abruptly when a boy in the neighborhood mooned the cake display in the front picture window. The year Dad moved out into the apartment a few blocks over. Where he kept a painting of a tiger I had made in the third grade on the wall above the sink in the efficiency kitchen- where the only thing in the fridge was an industrial sized can of chocolate pudding.

No one watched me grow up on the stage here. Cling to the curtains as they closed. Dig my heels into the grooves of the wings. Cry when it began and never when it was over- the settling of one’s bones into something bigger than I knew; the ache of knowing it wouldn’t stay.

There is no one here to ask why I don’t sing anymore.

To become an adult in the place that was yours since before you were born, and then to leave it, feels equal parts betrayal and rebellion. 

I still walk to the wrong cabinet for my coffee mug every morning, my hand reaching for a phantom knob like The Angel of Death and the Sculptor. In sunrise moments, the lighting just before waking, I am still unsure where I will be when I open my eyes.

My room remains unpainted- I still palm the walls, distrustful.

Could this really be mine?

This street doesn’t bear my grandfather’s name. The creek in my yard climbs just above my ankles after the rain, the rocks loose and wobbly under each tentative step- like it doesn’t recognize me yet.