Mom said the folks who’d be at the family reunion were Randy’s people, so I’d probably never met them but that was no reason not to try to talk. It’s true I often stayed quiet. If I raised my voice, I’d be accused of the sin of wrath. If I got too happy, my voice might lilt and sound too much like a girl. If I mumbled, my words would be whispered back to me in affected Michael Jackson breathiness, but I’d be screamed at for being disrespectful if I tried to project. So at 16, when I had to talk, I hid behind quotations. To show sympathy, I once responded to my papaw’s farmer friend telling me about his sick wife by saying, unironically, “The blood blooms clean in you, Ruby. The pain you wake to is not yours” (Plath, “Nick and the Candlestick”).Article continues after advertisement
It was unclear to me whether Randy was blood or something thicker—Mom never spoke about him much. But then again, I never knew who was related to me. I’d seen too many smoke-stinking strangers, young and old, let themselves in the front door of our house when I’d forgotten to lock it after getting home from school. If my mom or brother was home to see me panicked at the kitchen table, doing homework, when someone walked in, they’d just say oh don’t worry, Justin, that’s Cousin Y or Uncle Z. I understood not to ask questions and to treat the strangers as family.
