Diane Bush
remember. I watch an elderly couple unwrap a colorful bouquet and am ashamed that I did not remember to bring flowers. I find Dennis and Barb's names etched on marble squares high above my head and have to sit down because suddenly I am dizzy. Then I am angry that their names are here, angry that they died. And then I am crying again because I was only 26 and because the birds are singing. My heart opens as a robin's chattering echoes off the marble and bounces around me the way the song of a hermit thrush pierces the morning calm in High Creek Canyon back home in Utah, where I am far from where Dennis lived and died. And that, I think, is how I want to remember Dennis: not as a pile of ashes behind a square in a wall but out in the world.
Aunt Fannie dreams of a blue jay in an oak tree. Its call sounds like a squeaky garden gate or branches scraping the windowpane. She raises her head toward the sound as black wings brush her face. She spins in the space between sleeping and waking, unsure of where she is, eyes tracing the outline of a crib. Mildred's crib. Fannie, 10, shares a room with her sister, who has diphtheria. Her mother is often sick, her father often drunk, and she is the oldest girl, responsible for watching her younger brothers and sisters; three-year-old Mildred is her favorite. Mildred breathes through a small tube that prevents her swollen throat from closing shut. A piece of string tied to the tube attaches to her clothing with a pin. Fannie picks up the wiggling girl, notices the missing pin, realizes she has swallowed or inhaled the tube; she is choking, throwing her head from side to side like a cranky baby who doesn't want to eat. Mildred, she calls, her voice thin and wavering. Mildred! Mildred! She shakes her sister to make her listen, but Mildred is quiet and still. A day or two later, Fannie sees her casket in the parlor. She picks up her sistershe is as light as a bird. Fannie holds her, rocks her to heaven. Put her down, Fannie, her mother scolds. She hears her mother from far away and rocks the baby. Ssssh, she whispers. Ssssh. How to remember Mildred, who died in her arms? Remembering triggers the feelings of helplessness and fear that choked her like the tube in her sister's throat. She will speak of the baby's death only once, to her niece Lynne, who is tape recording her stories. As she calls Mildred's name, Fannie goes into a trance. In her gaze, Lynne sees the outline of the tiny bed and knows she is in the darkened room remembering everything.
The year before I was born, my father left my mother, sister, and aunt and hitched a ride to California before going to Hawaii. He spent six months living on the beach and working in factories, dreaming of owning his own foundry. What did he think about when he walked along the ocean at twilight and saw Diamond Head looming in the distance, pushing up into the Hawaiian sky? Did he 96
FUGUE#37