Yeah
On anger, hoarding, and place.
It’s 5:21 PM on a weekday. I’m in the driveway, getting out of my car, claw-hand aching from the weight of my phone, wallet, keys, purse, tote-bag and lunchbox. I look up to find my grandfather watching me, waiting for an opportunity to say: “Did your mom tell you? ____ found a dead fawn on the porch.” I hear the words, and the image begins to develop in the black edges of my vision. I feel the strong urge to leave.
I had been doing okay that day. I had not been thinking of his house — soon to be my house —, with its copper pipes and sighing floors and wraparound porch. But the rope had snapped, and there it was — the anvil on my head. I thought of the fawn, stranded in his labyrinth of chainsaw blades and dead car batteries.
I was angry.
But how could I be? How different is he from the fawn? He must remember February, when he, too, was lost to the mess — a bony silhouette sprawled amongst the rolls of coins and crates of antlers. He must know how it feels to wait, alone. He must remember the uncertainty.
The weekend before we found him, my parents had been away. I had four kids — their kids, my kids, my siblings, same difference — and five classes to attend to. I hadn’t called him when my mom told me to, when she said I really should. Instead, I watched the spool unravel, and then I let it go completely. I hid in her and my dad’s bed, unmoving unless called to by the kids. Their smiles were ceaseless, clearly immune to such adult dysfunction.
I cleaned, cooked meals, took them outside. And then I returned. Through bleary eyes, I watched the pulsing cursor on my computer screen, felt how it gave my heartburn a new beat. I’d sit up, cry, and then get to it.
I wrote four essays that weekend. I never picked up the phone.
I was — am — angry. But now I realize how similar we are. We don’t ask for help, and we don’t do what we’re told. We just keep digging until we can’t anymore, until we have to come up for air. I want someone to tell me what he’s looking for. I want someone to tell me what I’m looking for. How much deeper could our shit possibly go?
I was angry. And then, suddenly, I wasn’t. I came up, watched as the words left his white lips, saw as the sun caught in his catheter bag. Like stained glass, almost. I bound my response to the present: “Oh, that’s awful.” Pushing past, pushing through. My hand cramping from the weight, my mind running after lost time. First: Why do I need so much shit for just eight hours of my day? And then: Why am I twenty-one and selling eight hours of my life, every fucking day? The thought makes me pause, look back. I wait to come home, and he waits for someone to talk to. So I stop, letting him follow me into the garage, my steps teetering as our conversation continues. It’s just what I expected: a dry series of sighs and yeah.
Eventually, we go our separate ways — him to the basement, and me also to the basement, because that’s where my room is —, and we don’t speak for the remainder of my time there. I’m home, but we both know I’m just pushing through.
Twice a month, I meet my therapist over Zoom. I talk myself in circles while she dutifully listens — perhaps to what I’m saying, perhaps to her own grief about pursuing a master’s degree. But because of my new, indefinite roommate, and the general lack of privacy in my house, I can’t hold these bitching sessions in my room. Instead, I walk up to the woods behind my house, where I sit on my little sister’s bench — a bench that came from my grandfather’s hoard, no doubt. I’ve been doing this for about three months now. When it was cold out, I just didn’t see her.
Our last session was fairly routine. I was still walking up to the woods when she joined the call. She said Hi, making a point to say my name, to smile clearly. She asked how I was doing, and I reciprocated it all, pretending that it was a normal conversation. But then she started staring at me, and I just couldn’t keep from talking. I told her I was angry. Angry that the house I was promised is so clearly still his, that it’s still killing people, creatures, all so he can keep his things. Angry that my mom is so overworked, that my siblings are so restrained, that I’m losing everything — my bedroom, my peace, my parking spot at work. I narrowly reveal that my sanity is threadbare. She just nods.
I go on and on until I stop, turn around. Behind the bench, a series of snaps and sniffs has ensued, all to the beat of little hoofed feet. I freeze, watch as their spotted body breaks through the leaves. I’m eye to eye with a fawn. Slowly, I swipe out of Zoom, to my camera. My therapist asks why she can’t see me anymore. Without removing my gaze from theirs, I answer: “Yeah.”
They stay with me for a moment longer, and then bound away.
🖤