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Questioning My Cousin Elena

67 Questioning My Cousin Elena I’m sure somewhere there’s a photo of me sitting on your lap mesmerized by your false eyelashes like giant black butterflies opening, closing. Surely you had neon-green daisies painted on your bedroom walls, every song of the Beatles on 45s. Where is that lemon-yellow T-shirt I loved on you, the smiley face stretched across your breasts? It’s true, isn’t it— you teased your hair and once I took a taste of it thinking it was frosting? I must remember you right: a big-city, gum-smacking girl from the Big Apple who said wauter not water. You wore white vinyl boots up to your knees and miniskirts parading yourself and me alongside down Riverside pretending I was your firstborn. If I remember the Hudson’s gray, surely I remember us ten years later cool as your Camaro slicing through the shadows of palm trees in Miami, you teaching me the words to that song about silly love songs on the radio. I remember the lyrics, don’t you? I haven’t put words in your mouth, or in my mind, have I? You did say 68 it was love you wanted and not God when you began dressing in white and chanting to the spirits of Yoruba. You did adore your father in his recliner, a 20-cent cigar, a can of Schlitz praising you as too smart for your own good. You still miss him, don’t you? Tell me it’s true, we’re everything we remember, tell me memories never fail us, tell me we take them with us, that I’ll take you with me, and you’ll take me with you. ...