Contents

 

Front Matter

I - Autopsy                                                                                                      

II – Incalculable Territory                                                                    

• Green-and-Tan Notebook #1                                                       

III – I Try to Be Myself . . . as well as                          

• Yellow Notebook #1                                                                      

IV – Variations on Desire                                                                   

• Blue Notebook                                                                             

V – Horror Vacui                                                                                             

• Green-and-Tan Notebook #2                   

VI – Our Feet Are the Same   

• Blue-and-Tan Notebook

VII – Denouncing the Xenophobic Country I Still Love

• Yellow Notebook #2

VIII – Home Again 

IX -- Epilogue 

                                                                                                               

 

I

Autopsy

 

Greek autopsia, a seeing for oneself :

auto-, auto- + opsis, sight

The American Heritage Dictionary

 

23 July 1991, 425 W. Jefferson, Boise, Idaho

 

No Children, No Pets

Lila & Dean, Managers

 

I’m Lila, the heat-drugged woman announces, edging her weight out of an overstuffed room into the hall. How can I help you? I explain we are his family. She says she is sorry. He seemed like such a nice man.

​

We follow her up two flights of wooden stairs. Her key opens #41.

​

A battered refrigerator labors in the heat. Slick white maggots unsettle a thin layer of garbage under the sink. A double bed crowds the bedroom. Soiled latex gloves sprawl atop a trashcan next to the bed. Beneath them a desperate spattering of vomit. Cigarette butts. A peach can. An applesauce can. Six beer cans. Containers for Aspirin, Amoxicillen, Alupent.

​

French doors lead me out onto a tiny balcony dominated by a single kitchen chair. I sit down, stretch my legs across two milk crates and try to imagine him gazing across Jefferson Street at the well-tended gardens and white dome of Idaho’s state government. Dark clouds bunch over the mountains to the north. Purple thread dangles from a needle thrust into the chairback. Under the chair squats a can of “turpentine replacement paint solvent.” The words feel weighty. I repeat them to myself: Turpentine. Replacement. Paint. Solvent.

​

In the slope-roofed living room Christy holds up a cardboard box. The shapes of feet have been cut out of one panel. Jill pulls grease-soaked work shoes from under the bed. They are lined with new cardboard

A W-2 form tucked into a manila envelope reports last year’s total wages as $13,235. A cash-register tape lists his recent purchases: a case of Doral Cigarettes, a six-pack of Olympia Beer, a bottle of Listerine, two bars of soap, a can of applesauce and one of peaches.

​

We stuff his things into plastic garbage bags, pile them into the van. A bearded man and a pregnant woman approach from the sidewalk. Are you the family of the deceased? the woman asks. My husband was the one who went into the room and found him. The café called the managers here and asked them to check why he hadn’t come to work. My husband helps take care of the place, so he went up. It’s the second one he’s found.

​

We drive to his workplace where a grey-haired woman is putting salt and pepper shakers on tables. We tell her who we are. I’m Alice, she says. She bursts into tears. Ted, a big man in suspenders, sits us down at a table. He worked for us for 2 years. Sometimes he slept in Saturday mornings. We’d send a waitress to wake him up and he always came right over. One night he asked me for a hundred-dollar advance on his wages. The next day he walked in with flowers for all the waitresses. That’s the way he was.

​

We leave the café and drive to a mortuary. The mortician greets us and offers sincere condolences. I say I would like to see him. He explains that most family members, especially after an autopsy, find it better to wait until the body has been worked on. I explain that I need to see him now. We walk down a flight of stairs to the basement. The smell of pizza and the sound of laughter from a side door. Three bodies laid out on tables. The mortician points to a clear plastic bag on the center table. I pull open the folded plastic. Don’t touch him, he warns.

​

His face is drawn. An open eye leers upward. A scraggly growth of beard and a thin moustache. The sagging jaw reveals uneven teeth.

​

My teeth.

​

A surgical Y from shoulder to shoulder, down the chest to the hips. The top of the skull has been sawn off. Severed locks of hair litter the forehead.

​

I stand before his body. It is unspeakably present. His feet are livid.