Coming Home

There is a determined black fly trapped between the panes of the closed bedroom window. It is almost dawn when I hear him buzzing, hear him colliding against the glass. I lie there in bed, under the window, listening to his struggles, thinking that we are all like that trapped fly. Trying to make our way, bumping into the same things over and over. The same tenacious futility. With perhaps the luck of someone coming along to open the window, and suddenly discovering our freedom. Of course, so many of us—like the fly—would not recognize the freedom that was offered, would fly right back into that same window casement.

And he sleeps peacefully beside me, his breathing quiet and rhythmic, his hand tucked under his head. And I am awake in the early dawn, listening to the struggle of the fly, watching morning creep along the far bedroom wall like a quiet spill. Eventually, we get up, make coffee, shower. The fly forgotten.

When we get to that small town, we enter from the east. Travel without stopping past the old house at the dip in the road, and follow the long road where I used to walk into town to find books; to go in my imagination where my feet could not yet take me. Which was anywhere but in this small town with its snow banks and its memory. When I moved away, I left nothing behind, and so the memory is a single-sided one that I have tried to erase, re-write, and erase again.

It is her birthday, and she sits in the seat behind us in the van. He drives along unfamiliar roads and streets, listening as we tell him to turn this way and that. She and I talk over each other, trying to give our histories. He is patient as we reconcile our stories, finding overlaps, discrepancies. We are deciding which story gets to be the “real” one—and we both understand that the only truth is what we decide is real... Then we drive over the bridge, and turn onto 1st Street. Past the Armory where they looked away from our gaping, hungry mouths as they dropped into our boxes the things they would not eat. Our hands covered with socks against the Lake Effect snow, against a vicious winter wind whistling across that Great Lake. They made us wait outside in the cold, I remark; and she nods, remembering…

And later, as we drive past the housing project, we recall our first day there; of sleeping on the hardwood floor with a sympathetic furnace thawing out our bones. We look at each other and smile over this shared memory, remembering the way the heat made the hairs on our arms stand up after a long winter in that unheated house. How did you stay warm? he asks. And she—or I—explain that we lived in our coats and hats, slept together on the fold-out couch. And we agree on this memory, too…

But she does not remember my hunger, does not remember going three full days without eating—until her boss at the diner let her bring home the leftovers. I remember her coming in that Friday night, the smell of the fish making my empty stomach broil; the oily stain in the parchment paper that she carried through the front door like an offering. Hoping as she unwrapped it that it was enough this time. Instead, she recalls only her own hunger—which I remember, too—and does not want to remember hungry children whom she could not find food for. This woman who sold her own bed to feed us, who “borrowed” cans of tuna from her boss to feed a hungry daughter, replacing those cans when payday arrived. This woman who would not let me steal the package of chicken I had slipped beneath my coat that day at the supermarket when both of our stomachs howled. No, she cannot remember this on her birthday forty years later. She shakes her head and takes one tiny sip of her birthday wine. I did what I had to do to feed you, she says, certain that her memory is true. This resourceful mother…

Later in her bedroom, I will flip through a book and find where she has underlined a short passage about being grateful for the blessings you have, when you find that you don’t have enough. I take a pen and write in the margin: fuck that.

And we travel around that small town, built quietly along a strapping Great Lake that sends water rushing down an abundant river. We catch a glimpse of the fishermen; drive down by the marina; out past the school. And she says from the backseat that perhaps she will move back.

Tonight as I come across the bridge into Westchester, the sun is setting against a pink and gray sky. I navigate the construction around Peekskill; accelerate onto 9A to get up that extended stretch of hill; drive past the sign that says “New York City 21.” It is a warm evening for November, and the radio plays. Two more miles and I will be home...
***