down the hills; there was nothing in me but mucous and coffee. Somehow, I wasn’t hungry. The limo turned into the familiar lot, felt the parking break secure. The driver’s door opened and closed. My father didn’t move. He sat in the same position, now watching the blacksuited men walking through the rows, attaching orange stickers to windshields. He cleared his throat. “He had these blue, footy pajamas...” His gaze didn’t come back into the car, thumb didn’t leave his teeth. “He’d follow me to school almost every day. They were just like the ones that you guys wore when you were little except the feet were completely worn through. He was always barefoot. I had to leave early every day because I knew that I’d get a block from school and have to turn around to take him home. He was so little. I don’t know why my mother wasn’t watching him. I don’t think she ever noticed he was gone. He was so little – maybe three? God, he must’ve been three or four.” He fumbled for the door handle and stepped out into the light. * People began arriving and we fell into line along the right side of the room. My father’s sister and cousin stood at the front with my grandmother; they cared about pecking order more than he. My grandmother stood at the end of the line closest to the casket, positioning a camera towards his painted face. “What is she doing?” I whispered into the back of my father’s gray blazer, wrapping myself behind him to shield the view. “What she does,” he answered, turning himself away from her. “I think it helps her. Creepy though.” Less the mustache, my father and his brother looked alike; the assumption of their relation was easy to make. People wanted to shake my hand to tell me what a good man he was, hug me to tell me how sorry they were for my loss. I gave them the tight lipped smile of the grieving, nodded when appropriate, wondered where my brothers were, why I was again thrown to help my father when they asked him if I was his only child.
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