Hochzeit
I remember circles—the swirling cuff of my father’s pant leg, the layered hem of my mother’s skirt. A neighbor lady polkas by, the one who yells so loud at her kids every night when she walks to the barn that we can hear her across the still fields. She has a delicious smile on her...
Japanese Garden: Portland, Oregon
Once, a long time ago, I walked in the Japanese Garden with my friend Pat. And with us: his girlfriend Nancy, who would be his wife in a few years’ time but not yet, and so as I walked between them I could feel their love just budding, the giddiness of it. I remembered how...
Humminbirds
My grandfather and I sit in the August sun, on the back porch of the house he built himself, watching ruby-throated hummingbirds hover like living jewels near the plastic feeder. The glass of molasses-sweet tea he poured weeps cold and wet in my hand. “Them humminbirds really do sing. Says they don’t in bird books,”...
Monsieur Young and the End of Existentialism
In front of Basilique de Fourviere, up in the sky, my face moist from the cold mist moving, I saw the whole city of Lyon spread out in front of me, squat geometric shapes of brown and white and gray. I watched the specks that were speeding cars on a distant highway. I saw the...
A Bilingual Halloween
For thirty-five years she’s been speaking English. At a Korean orphanage, at age nine, she began learning English by memorizing “Old MacDonald Had a Farm,” learning that in English puppies woof woof, rather than mong mong, and that cats meow rather than yayong. She and her seventy-nine friends sang to the American Marines, sailors, and...
The Way Fire Talks to Wood
In front of me in line, a man hisses at a woman. I can’t distinguish all of the words, but the words don’t matter; his voice crackles and stings. He talks to her the way fire talks to wood. She stands perfectly still, unflinching. She makes no eye contact, but I see her head sink...
“Tetanus, You Understand?”
September 2, 1994:Has anyone ever loved you as much as me? October 12, 1995:My possessions thrown into the arms of skeptical moving men, my three tiny dogs snatched and trundled into an apartment with white-painted walls, my mother arrived from North Carolina and sleeping on the floor inside the frame of a mattress-less bed. Fled,...
The Music Teachers of St. Augustine’s Elementary
None of them last long. The first one is large and imposing, wearing blue shirt-dresses that swing just above her nylon calves. Her hair is iron-gray and swept into a stiff marcelled helmet, and her glasses have silver chains. On the first day she marches in, faces us, and sings out stridently: “Hel-lo, boys and...
Audible Frequencies
But I’m not deaf. I hear things, but they are the wrong things. And if I become deaf, what then? Several years ago, we feared my mother, who has had hearing loss since age six, as I have, was going deaf. Her graphs of audible frequencies plummeted to Severe. The next level is Profound, which...
Incident in the Lunch Buffet Line in Atlantic City
My father who faints at the sight of blood—his or anybody else’s—saved a life today. My father with his 80-year-old stiff arthritic joints, dropped to his knees seconds after the woman who had been standing in front of him in line for the lunch buffet in Atlantic City collapsed and lay ashen and not breathing...
Immigrants on Vacation, 1965
After May 24th, all roads in Canada lead north. Your mother wears olive green Crimpeline pants from Simpson’s basement and your father’s shorts are at war with his black nylon socks and dress shoes. A grandmother like a squat shrub in a headscarf occupies the back seat. The green rolling hood of the family Buick...
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