In These Times the Home Is a Tired Place: World War II in the Central Pacific

I Would Stop

20 I Would Stop My spike-haired aunt: the speech corruptor , the hamperer of plans—my mother warned me. At the airport , waiting for me at baggage claim, she wore a papier-mâché parrot. The bird wobbled against her chest. “You can’t lollygag at the airport.” She squeezed my arm. “Tell me about—” “It’s best—no.” I carried my heavy suitcase. With a broken wheel I had no money to fix, I was at the mercy of my mother, who I’d begged for this ticket, who said, “If you must go, go heavy and hobbled.” “We should have met before,” said my aunt. Her chin—it was my father’s—small and sloped and committed to the neck. She was much older than she should’ve been. “My mother,” I said. Her elbow pinned her purse to her side like it was something slippery. “I’m glad to see you’re a child,” my aunt said. “I only knew your father as a child. He wasn’t himself after that— most aren’t.” The walk from airport to parking lot: hurried, frigid. We loaded into her car half-full of flimsy and filmy paper: grocery receipts and lost-pet fliers. I stuffed my coat by my feet when she turned up the heat and got us on the highway and drove the wrong way—I knew by the signs; I knew because my mother said I Would Stop 21 specifically, “Ypsilanti, if that’s not a town for crazies,” which was west and south from the airport. We drove north, north, north. “Tell me how he was found,” my aunt said. “My mother.” “She told you, yes? Tell me, how did he look?” A myth about his family—the Zarbours—they smiled when they died. Over hotdogs, the night I choked, my father told me I would die, I would stop. He closed his eyes and smiled. “Do you like living . . . ?” I motioned to the bland highway dotted with snow—it was like a paper grocery bag, molded. I wanted to say something nice. I wanted my fingers to be of use, to feel her chin for stubble. “I’ve been proximate to death my whole life,” my aunt said. “I could reach out and hug it.” “I came to hear about him.” “He let me speak at the wedding. I was his only family, and your mother—I’m sorry.” My mother had told me: Death should be a mystery. My mother had shrieked: Why do you want to visit your aunt? “Tell me,” my aunt said. “Did he smile?” Not really knowing—“It was a grimace.” “Show me,” said my aunt. “This can be misread.” She watched my face move—it portrayed something; she sighed. Through the windshield: trees smothered by white, the ground pocked and gray. Birmingham—an exit. Texaco, MacDo, stop sign spray-painted “8.” Breadcrumbs to find my way back, back, back to my mother. A hill covered with rocks, an iron gate: a cemetery. An orange cat licking its paw. Black and white and striped, like moving markers, cats darted between graves. My hand braced the dash; my aunt out of the car before I knew we’d stopped. Like white smoke, the sky was translucent. 22 IN THESE TIMES THE HOME IS A TIRED PLACE “Your grandparents,” she said. Two flat stones—charcoaled, sunk in the snow-spotted dirt—she toed them with brown boots; she bent toward them, the Zarbours. Her papier-mâché parrot: too summer for winter, too large against her chest, it wobbled. My spiked-haired aunt: her pale chin, her smile— gorgeous, contagious—it reminded me of someone else. ...