Reunion, 2005

Thirty seconds into the barbecue, my Cleveland cousins have everyone speaking Southern—broadened vowels and dropped consonants, whoops and caws. It's more osmosis than magic, a sliding thrall back to a time when working the tire factories meant entire neighborhoods coming up from Georgia or Tennessee, accents helplessly intact— while their children, inflections flattened to match the field they thought they were playing on, knew without asking when it was safe to roll out a drawl . . . just as

it's understood "potluck" means resurrecting the food we've abandoned along the way for the sake of sleeker thighs. I look over the yard to the porch with its battalion of aunts, the wavering ranks of uncles at the grill; everywhere else hordes of progeny are swirling and my cousins yakking on as if they were waist-deep in quicksand but, like the books recommended, aren't moving until someone hauls them free—

Who are all these children? Who had them, and with whom? Through the general coffee skin tones shamed genes cut a creamy swath. Cherokee's burnt umber is transposed onto generous lips, a glance flares gray above the crushed nose we label Anonymous African: It's all here, the beautiful geometry of Mendel's peas and their grim logic—

and though we remain clearly divided on the merits of okra, there's still time to demolish the cheese grits and tear into slow-cooked ribs so tender, we agree they're worth the extra pound or two our menfolk swear will always bring them home. Pity the poor soul who lives a life without butter— those pinched knees and tennis shoulders and hatchety smiles!