Part 4 (1/2)

When I felt better I looked out of the front carto see if I could see my father and my sister All I saas the brilliant blue sky - all the sun and all the whiteup so I had to keep rubbing a see-through circle with s with her I see the oes over the mountain

I knohat I felt at first I felt ecstatic To be alone withWrapped inside her southern drawl, her raccoon coat, her story of us as Becky and Israel Boone But even at age four ht after a while I never lived a day without the squeeze of sister around my heart Where Was She

When my mother looked out of the carand up the hill, her eye twitched

Even at that age I kne Christ and silent Presiding My sister would open presents looking like a girl doing chores I would open presents with the know nothing glee of a kid and look around at the - nearly anything - would happen, and er would crush even the faintest tenderness, androo paper to clean up The sarettes

By the ti down the mountain I was sleepy So they looked like dream people to me My mother said, ”Oh thank God,” as they approached the car, but I could hear so else in her voice

That's the picture I would show you - the way on Her cheeks like apples Her eyes puffy My father had a hold of her arht My mother rolled the n and I saw snot under ? She did not make any sound But she shi+vered Then ht at me I bit my lip Her eyes more cold than snow That's the picture

I ree, we did not bring ho that was our family, laden So laden

Ash DEAD INFANTS DON'T GET URNS UNLESS YOU PAY FOR them - and then they stuff crap in besides just ashes to cover the shter's ashes were in a sirls - a box the size of a hacky sack ball that fits in the palm of your hand I took my box to Heceta Head The coast at Heceta Head in December is epic Me, my first husband, ers

Pretending to be a fae The sound of ocean waves is large enough to stop your thinking My mother closed her eyes and said a prayer in a southern drawl Phillip sang I See the Moon - the lullabyto ht faint My sister read ”A us all Thenout of his pocket A folded up piece of paper On it, he'd written a poem Sort of It rhymed When he read it, his voice shook The only time in on is

After that, Phillip and I took the little pink box which I had been clutching in h to nearly crush it and walked over to where the river joins the ocean That's why I'd picked that spot I could see river rocks leading into the sea and sand, and I s - uard All the waters of a life ile little box He took it in his hand I said, throw it as far as you can So he - there isn't another way to say this He chucked it

Yeah, so the thing is, that little riverway that leads to the sea? Right there at Heceta head? It has a mean cross-current So while Phillip and I stood there watching the little box float nearly out of eyesight, we also stood and watched itco itself against his shoe

I looked back over my shoulder to where the posse of sadness that was my idiotic family stood - they were far away, al it out No, I don't knohy I said that

So he, uo very far at all, it siily into the air and plunked back down and circled back to us, just slower this ti And he started laughing I et it, Goddaun to disintegrate Cheap ass pink crappy cardboard As I peeled the dumb paper away, I saw that the ashes were actually inside a little plastic bag Alh but I couldn't help it, and Phillip hat? And peeked over les we couldn't stop

I said Godda It's not funny It's pretty fucking far froreed, but he couldn't stop either I had snot all overso hard my stomach - former world - hurt Finally I knehat to do

I opened the little faux caul full of ash carefully with my teeth Like animals do Then I walked out into the ocean for real I had a vintage red wool coat on And brushed leather cowboy boots Phillip tried to follow me in but I said no I alked until I was up to my abdomen The water felt ice cold on htless contents of ht hand Some of the ash blew into the air, but most of it didn't It et Like sand And then I let o I closed my eyes

My father toldhe has ever seen I never kne to take that

When I walked out of the water back to my first husband, he held me close - ere already apart by then - but he did it anyway Then I felt his shoulders shaking, and I thought he was crying, but nope, he was laughing again, so I said what? And he pointed to the side of ain too and went I know I know Clutching each other

My sister said fro

Maybe ere sobbing

I don't know

I kept the plastic in my pocket like that for years I still have the red coat - though if there is any trace of ash left, you can't see it

II Under Blue

Baptismal

A FAMILY ON THE BEACH AS IF WE WERE EVER A FAMILY on the beach

When my sister and I were adults we visited uilt We visited them because of shame We visited theroomen are idiots I don't knoe visited thehters Me 26 My sister 34

Myon the sand A father and his two daughters waded into the ocean at the beach in St Augustine When we played in the ocean we forgot ourselves: sister, self, father, memory loss The water in Florida is body temperature The waves, unless there is weather, are calently I heard a sound fro, lopsided I followed her arer to the father face down in the sea I tasted salt on my own lips When I finally reached him I could see the moles on his back at the surface of the knee-deep water Running in water is like running in Jell-O Almost funny When I flipped hiri eyes, purple and white blotching his face My sister then there Us pulling his 220 pound of dead weight onto the shore, both screa penguin with a cane on the shore, too far frohters

There are reat force when you do not expect it My father al to say it plain: I could have killed hi, staring blue eyes twinning nize it I held his nose closed I put ue, his teeth, spittle His lips arm but unresponsive My sister pumped her fists into his chest His swi harmless I held my lips to his I breathed air into his mouth until an ambulance came

Hypoxia is suffocation in water that does not result in death It an failure My father lost his memory from hypoxia

I did not kill hi with Amateurs

YOU CAN TELL A LOT ABOUT A PERSON FROM SEEING them in the water Soiant insects, others slide in like seals, turn over, dive down, effortlessly Sooofy sed or as if they are in some kind of serious pain

I swam, once, with Ken Kesey In a man-made reservoir up near Fall Creek Puffy with drink, his bulk rounded and bulged around his for Five people, I think Totally, coh

Thein and out of focus as the clouds moved around And the water arm yet, so it must have been late summer, but in my mind it has the crisp clarity of fall for some reason If it had been fall ould have frozen our tits off So sometime in late summer less than a decade before he died, we entered the waters Man-ae

I dove down into the black and openedinto deep space while drunk Black, and blurry I resurfaced and strong-arain, then took a look back, and saw his unirl, what are you, so a stream of water Yeah

In the black reservoir water a water, floating on our backs and letting our feet break the surface Sometimes Kesey's belly rose up like an island We shot the shi+t, mostly he told stories

That's a bald faced lie Just now I made it sound like we casually shot the shi+t out there, but really my brain was as nu interesting to say, so I just let him talk and I don't even re and contracting like an idiot's

And he wasn't really in the water with me

He was on the shore

But then hefrom somewhere that penetrated, because I openedwords until it wasn't nothing anys people had said to s like: ”You know, it's probably better that she died before you got to know her” Or: ” Well what you really want in your 20s is the freedom to party” Or my personal favorite, from my father's sister, fascist catholic: ”The saddest part is that she'll go to hell, isn't it, since she wasn't baptized”

Then he was saying ”When Jed died, everyone who talked toasinine Like the craziest crap you can iine No one understands death anymore Death used to be sacred Look at the Upanishads Goddaion has killed death”

I had read the letter he wrote to friends Wendell Berry, Larry McMurtry, Ed McClanahan, Bob Stone, and Gurney Norman in the summer of 1984 in CoEvolution Quarterly when Jed died How they built a box for his body themselves How he threw a silver whistle with a Hopi cross soldered on it into the grave How the first shovelfuls of dirt sounded like ”the Thunderclaps of Revelation”

I held ht about the ashes of on The deaths of our children swa us twinned and floating

So if Ken said these things to me, does it reallyKen so close to a death brought writing into my hands, and if I cast that out as a dreaives a shi+t if he was in the water? His big hearted wrestler's body His irreverent ut Me in my better world From the water I could see hi his for, the sht I swa to drown out voices

Father BEFORE MY FATHER'S HANDS MOVED AGAINST US HE was an architect; lover of art