David is a student at Fullerton College. He has not committed to one particular major yet, but is interested in History, Philosophy, and English. He likes herbal tea and plain spaghetti, especially while watching his favorite movies. His hobbies include boxing, writing, and wasting his time talking about both.
My grandfather’s broad and calloused hands brush over the cracked face of his wristwatch. He nods at the wall behind me and says, “My mother was from France. There is her photo, see how beautiful she is?” She does look very beautiful. Her picture and a small iron cross are the only things that occupy the bare white wall.
He raises his eyebrows and points at himself, “Now you know where I got the looks!” My grandfather’s English has improved. He is still a little deliberateness in his pacing, but not much.
“Let me see your hands.” He grabs my palms. “They are still young, very delicate!” He laughs at me and I smile self-consciously. He tells me that when he was young, he worked as a lumberjack.
My grandfather leans back in his chair, sitting across from me at the small dinner table. It is quiet for a while. He lives alone here; my father told me he would be glad to have company. He told me that he is usually extremely quiet and that we should get along. He probably said this because generally, I am also very quiet. He begins to speak again.
“The forest was not like those here in America. It was very dry, with no living things. When we chopped down a tree, dust was flung from the branches. It hung in the air; it was difficult to breathe at first. We became very old, because the dirt aged us. We wrapped cloths around our mouths and noses to protect from the dirt, these cloths made us seem faceless. Sometimes I felt that we weren’t people any longer. We hardly talked to each other; I had no friends to speak of.”
My grandfather rises from his chair and pours two cups of tea for us at the kitchen counter. His frame is slightly bowed and he shuffles when he walks.
Underneath his surface, though, there is his presence. It is probably not possible for him to live with others because of it. And if it is not a presence, then it is deficiency at the center of him. It was always something that we felt, something in the embrace of his arms; the gesture seemed to have no emotional content. And because that presence is so different from my father’s, it is both appealing and terrifying to me.
My grandfather clears his throat and continues, “It did not rain for the first month. We drank from a local reservoir. The water was awful, very salty. Our livestock refused to drink it. They had their own water supply, separate from ours. I often became very sick from drinking too much from the reservoir.” He places the cups on the dinner table. The tea is ready; he does not steep for very long and it is plain. He gestures with his eyes and shoulders, would you like anything else? I tell him that I would not.
“I did not ever want to see my reflection in the reservoir. I remember the first time I saw myself. Some of the others were going to town for the weekend, and I wanted to clean up and join them. We wore straw hats for the sun and the dust, I removed that first. Then the cloth tied around my face, I removed that also. And then I saw a very old and ugly man looking at me from the water. He looked unfamiliar. But yes, it was me, and to be honest I should have known better than to think otherwise.”
My grandfather splits a lemon over his tea that drips over his fingers and broken wristwatch. The scent of citrus fills me with the unformed memories of a child. Colorless memories of surrogate fathers whose names I couldn’t remember and whose language I didn’t understand. They collectively remove the cloths wrapped around their faces.
n/a
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