Trash

I come from a long line of very distinguished French Canadian drunks. That’s it: that’s my claim to heritage and history in a quiet nutshell. And who are you to tell me that’s not a good thing? Or that it’s something I shouldn’t say? We are story tellers, musicians, artists—this family--and waitresses, cashiers and laborers because of all that. We got poverty in our blood, and snow under our rugged fingernails. No finery for us, no Sunday crossword puzzle.

Where the hell did you come from? I’ve heard time and again. With a saucer under my cup, a book under my arm, and a yearning for something other than where I was then. You and your Parisian French, my mother used to say. Miss La-tee-da. Without my grandmother's piercing black eyes and oversize feet she’d swear I was someone else’s child.

And I am all of that, yes. A good old fashioned French Canadian stew—with a dash of Cajun dirt and cuisine. I am storyteller and reader, waitress and teacher, with the threat of poverty and hunger munching on my well heeled shoes. Don’t tell me about your perfect family, your manicured life—because for years I believed it. Carried the loose change of shame in my back pocket and savored your made-up stories like peppermints on my tongue. You with your dental insurance and summer vacations, your framed family photos. We were the trash down the road, I believed…

And now I’m under scrutiny again—and the past I shrugged off kicks up the dust. I see him quietly observing and scribbling notes in his pad. More transparent than he knows, he takes my measurements and misreads my history. Thinking in his comfort and distance that I am not doing the same… So many people equate poverty with other things, and I wonder if he might believe that, too. He considers how much I will ruffle, how much I'll require--me in my hunger and my cold history. And I am poised to tell him: some days too much, and other days too little.

But he should know this already.

And so we drive together to a crusty New England town--and he navigates the highway with both hands on the wheel. We are to visit a quiet woman who knew him as a boy. The sun shines in through the dusty car windows as we tell our stories and put lights on our selves. We talk, sticking one toe in and pulling it back out again. And we laugh at the broken mirror of family--but not too much because we see our own shards in there.

In a room down the hall, two aged women sleep, the blinds drawn to the hot July day. Separate beds; separate families who don’t come often enough. But all the rest is shared... And while we have been busy knitting our lives together, the women are acquiescing to the end of theirs—not knowing of course that their separate trajectories would land them both here. They sleep the sleep of oblivion—against the static of a solemn TV—while he and I talk about difference, about past, about future. Yet this is where we will come in the end--in ill-fitting shoes or fine Italian leather, to a room very similar to this—the storytelling daughter of a Welfare mother, or the educated son of a no-nonsense nurse. It makes no difference. We will come here to wait... To sleep... To awaken sometimes to discover a nephew caressing one delicate hand...
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