reading him.
i tried to hide it in the speck of my eye. a theory that pop pop had molested me. i stored it behind me like a note someone had passed me in grade school that i must keep secret. don't let anyone know i received it or what it says. so i crumpled it up into a very tiny ball just before we left for Maryland to go see him in the rehab center. and i made it so small until it resembled trash. and i kept it in the back of my eye. i could feel it there. small and pinching yet nestling into me. it did not rub up against the other trash in my memory. it did not unravel somehow every time i moved like other theories and memories i had tossed but did not want to throw away forever. except when i sat down on pop-pop's hospital bed, next to him, it was the first time i scooted over an inch or two to the edge of the bed. more towards my husband. more towards the door. i felt the hardness of the edge of the bed digging into my back thigh because i began to lean so far over it. half of my body tipped until i picked myself up and moved across the room and sat on my husband's lap. pop-pop looked at me and then at the spot right next to him, where i had sat for many years trying to close the little gap between us--what was it like to be in thee war? how many people did you kill in Vietnam? did you ever cheat on grandma? do you have another family over there? so she raised the kids while you were at war? why did your mother give you to her sister for her to raise you? where is your father? did you ever know him? did you want to? were you really going to shoot my father if you found him? was my father a bad man? do you miss grandma? you should get back out there and date--do you want to? are there social events at this new living center? you seen any hot ladies you would like to holler at?
and then one day, two years before i scoot away from him in the hospital, we are at breakfast, and he slips me a note.
first i say, "you seen any hot ladies you want to holler at?"
"nah nah nah nah. i'm an old man pam. nobody's going to want me." and in his eye i wait looking inside of it because a glimmer has started to form. we are sitting at Ihop on university blvd east in Wheaton Maryland. it is where we come every time i visit for our breakfast time together, alone. "i should be there" my eldest aunt says. "i want to go but i know that's ya'lls time" my brother says. i have vowed to grandma on her bed in the ICU that, yes, i would take care of pop-pop and clean the apartment. and now we are at our fifth or so meal together since she died and he is slipping me a note through his eye. it's written kind of blurry and in pencil and the gray has already smeared across the page. so it is hard to read. i am trying to make out the words. i think it says, "i like you. do you like me?" i do not read for a box to check yes or no. i simply start talking louder and scoot my eyes back away from where i found the glare in his, where i found the note. i try to go gray myself. blurry. dumb. lost.
i yell "yeah! you should! you're what? 71?"
"72"
"ok! ok, 72!" i nod looking down at my plate and finding a pancake piece to jam into my fork. i could look at this plate of cold eggs and thickening syrup with half a stack of pancakes on it for the next 20 minutes and then i could look at it the whole day if i felt i could without anyone asking questions. but i look back up at him into his eyes within a decent amount of time from the moment i shoved a pancake in my mouth.
"so you think i should get back out there huh?" he asks. his eyes have softened--he is warm, a school boy hunch has come over his shoulders. i feel something reaching out to me from his glare. i talk even louder. "yeah!" and then i am heavier, staring down at my plate again, and planting a huskiness in my voice, a matter-of-fact tone, a yes-stop-fucking-asking-me. "yeah i do." i close my legs under the table to stop the warm feeling in between them that feels so wrong and angering, and i scoot a couple inches to the left near the wall divider next to me. i scoot again 2 years later in the hospital, and then again when i get back to new york, away from the sweet smell of his Captain Black tobacco, from cleaning out his pipes for him with the tiny wires that looked like the ties that hold together bread bags and garbage cans, from our respective copies of Louise Hays' You Can Heal Your Life and discussions on how far the belief in one's potential can get them, how far it got him, Green Beret and all. i look up to the ceiling in my apartment and apologize to grandma. i do not tell her that its because i am trusting in a speck in me because it has fallen to my gut now. that i know the note has slipped out of me on this last visit to see him, and I passed it back to him, with a new message on it to read.
