1

frayed ribbon

“An anti-war book...?

Why don’t you write an anti-glacier book instead?”1

1 Vonnegut, Kurt. (1969) Slaughterhouse 5. Dell Fiction Publishing, New York.

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I

oft bullets of rain were falling the day I learned that conversation isn’t an abstract

notion, the day I looked at Mr Henry Yu’s shoe and used it to save a life or two. It

marked the moment that I started unlearning.

SConversation is highly literal, and we hold it, dictate, kiss or kill it. We can ignore it or

pursue it. Conversation exists not in the black hole of our bodies; the hollow midnight behind

our heart that shelters our ideas, emotions, soul and all that other stuff. Conversation is just

streams of ribbon suspended from a ceiling, in a light, airy room with whitewash walls,

waiting to be tied up.

Some conversation ribbons are doomed. “Why don’t you love me anymore?”

Some are limp, a thready vein beneath papery skin, barely beating. There are velvety ribbons

we tear everyday of our lives. Society christened me an anagram and a nuisance, fraying my

ribbons, tugging at their loose ends, until the knots became too tangled to be undone.

Last night. I couldn’t sleep. There was a man breathing in bursts, chortling as though blowing

bubbles in milk through a straw, the only din amidst the numbing ring of the silence. There

were sanitary walls, the ebb and flow of oxygen machines, and a light that had no room for

shadows. I was sick, and tired of blood tests, apple juice and pity.

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The cacophonous silence reminded me of Winona, Mississippi, in the summer of 1966,

listening to car alarms wail and tasting the melted plastic of tinned spaghetti. It was that

silence choking with wobbly heat, like when you gulp down sickly sweet, tinned pineapple

and wonder if you will ever wake again. I thought of Winona, my unhappy town, like the

misplaced blink that conveys a lie. At Christmas time, the elementary school kids gallivanted

across the makeshift stage in paper bags and purple glitter. I remember the lipsticked and

ladder stockinged teachers dictating their movements from down the aisle and watching the

breaking grins of toothlessness. Outside, the lavender and peach sunset was dripping with

charcoal sketches of thousand year trees and Rain Commits was tying up the first

conversation ribbon of my life. I only had three.

Some have more; businessmen with shoes for feet, guilty upholsterers and children saying

their prayers in the name of your father. Some say each person journeys to tie up their

ribbons. I think they tie themselves up eventually. Life has a most agitating certainty.

A nurse shuffled toward me with cream-coloured, laced footwear and shushed me. I

pretended not to hear her. I kept chattering,

“I knew every single line to Don Giovanni. Mozart, what a fellow! Not in English, Italian! If

I had known what they were saying, I might not have enjoyed it as much.”

“Stop your babbling Sir, go to sleep now.”

“See that painting? Hmm? The daisies? Still life, that’s called.”

“What?”

“Still life...Life still...”

“Why don’t you try your breathing exercises?” the nurse murmured.

4

“Soured old mule,” I chuckled. I had old man’s chuckle now.

As the nurse walked away, I hummed a song beneath my breath. My voice groaned like an

ancient organ grinder. She turned to silence me, and her swimming pool eyes glinted in the

fluorescent blaze.

“Although the masters make the rules

for the wise men and the fools

I got nothing, Ma

to live up to,”2

I finally fell asleep and the damp midnight was gentle oil for every creaking muscle in my

heart.

And I’m free at last…

Thank the Lord, I’m free at last.

2 It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding), Bob Dylan

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II

Fall 1955

Character measured by overgrowth of shrubbery and sheen upon bonnet. Sepia faces stare

with blind beige eyes out of sepia minds out of sepia photographs, spoiling the polished

cabinet of parents embarrassed by their beatnik son. He blasts spools of betrayal in lingering

heaves, compiled of his failure to give a damn, writes poetry overflowing with what is cool

and then denies craving consumerism. Punctured earlobes and hairspray drenched personas

were enticed by appliances that trickled the promise of a new dawn. Backward ideas drove

forward those infatuated with the past. The moment that hurt the most was when I was born,

and my neighbors watched indifferently while opportunity was assassinated outside my

doorstep.

The street was lined with steel, and I had begun to unlearn.

Tommy Hickson’s 10th birthday party was milling playground gossip. That was when nothing

was more thrilling then a sleepover, and nothing as disastrous as not being invited. My friend,

Earl Pall and I, peeped over the fence to the white school and yearned for a paler existence.

“Them kids just ain’t for us, I reckon,” Earl said mournfully.

“Nah, we ain’t for those kids,” I replied.

And I found myself at the party somehow, like a memory starved grandfather, wondering

who on earth positioned him like a dumb statue, on a creaky porch, overlooking an alien city.

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At Tommy’s, I fumbled and squinted in the shadows of the stirring sleepover trying to figure

out if it was her face, or the back of her head, or if I was really looking at myself. Rain

Commits was ten years old, and told me secrets, the only thing less scary when you are

enveloped in darkness. Secrets are delicate, and they crumble, like sand biscuits and forgotten

conversation ribbons. The children slept formlessly, scattered beneath the security of

familiarity, that deceitful mistress. Rain’s waxy skin glimmered in the seashell moonlight,

dappled from the dance of the daisy curtains. Before Tommy’s parents woke up, I bolted

down the street and saw my first sunrise.

Eight years had passed. TV’s became a little bigger so we could more clearly see the

brainless game shows leisurely snatching our dignity. We had changed along with the times.

Colour had become even more a judge on our temperaments, degree of violence, and skill at

being a human. Earl Pall did a stint in jail for stealing a car, when he could just as easily have

walked to the factory, where we worked. I hated everyone but Rain Commits. I was

unfortunately falling in love with her. She always seemed busy but never actually did

anything. Her hair was long, and she washed it every time a politician did a good deed. I

envied her and the way she stroked the tops of tree stumps and never thought about the

prospect of working in a shoe polish factory until she was a decrepit old man.

Winona, as years went by, grew a skin of spray paint, pepper and cheap wine, and the air was

a glassy fog sprinkled with the yellow headlights of too many cars and junk dotting the

highways.

After work on my 21st birthday I walked down Main Street and passed the grocery store.

After imagining some reason to go in, I waited at the register, stroking the outer groove of my

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coins with my thumb.

“Hi, Mr. Snood! You are dirty.”

It was Mr. Henry Yu, the upholsterer, standing in line behind me. His cart was shielding his

slight frame like a suit of iron armour.

“Hmm, yeah. Just going to Stonehenge Reserve. Got my cookies,” I waved them.

“To lake?” he asked. He had pointy shoes, like an elf, and brittle hair slicked back with slime.

He was only thirty, but seemed infinitely older.

“What lake?”

“There is nice lake in Stonehenge,” he arched an eyebrow.

“Really?”

“Yes. You go, yes? Have nice wash. Follow sign that says, ‘This way,’ ” he beamed with tiny

gapped teeth. He always smiled when nothing funny was happening.

“See you later, Mr. Henry Yu.”

“I tell you something, Mr. Snood,” he whispered, pulling my arm, indicating to his groceries.

“See here, I buy two packets of chili con carne, so check out girly doesn’t think I live alone,”

he blinked frantically.

I smiled, I think. “Well, I pick out the chocolate chips when I could just buy the plain ones.” I

paused and tasted bitter coffee disapproval in my mouth.

“How much of our souls are hidden in packets and tubes and bottles?”

“Too much, my friend.”

As he walked away, I could hear him prattling peacefully to himself,

“Tell my fortune, wrinkled lady

With your cashmere scarf, dyed plum

Tell me the woman whose name I shall change

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And the future of the future.”

It was later that I stepped over Mr. Henry Yu’s chalk sign, on the broken path to Stonehenge

Reserve, and into hollow water. The lake smelled like a diamond, and Rain Commits sat

beneath a waterfall in her underwear, clothes abandoned at the foot of a tree. She guzzled the

jeweled water and I stared at her. There was an invisible ribbon dangling in front of me, and I

tried so hard to grasp it. Instead my hands clenched as I heard my father say over the lip of

his newspaper,

“Marry? Ha. Ok, go ahead then. What’s that saying…? Oh yeah, civilization gave us

marriage and progress is giving us divorce. You’d handle the disappointment ok. Hell, it’s

just the norm, really. Take the trash out, will you?”

So I didn’t picket fence the norm or boycott the expectation. I was, after all, trying to unlearn.

On the way home, I ate my cookies, hearing only the crunch of my molars and the thudding

of my foolish heart. What was the point in having dreams, if they were smothered by the

smell of breakfast?

Future. The word was terrifying, like in dreams when you see people you know who are

nothing like themselves; the unknown imaginings of flying cars and brow furrows, feeling the

outlines of the shape but blind to its detail. I couldn’t bear the thought of growing old when I

was young. That youth was my privilege, lost with my stupid, reckless inevitability. What

was it that Mr. Henry Yu said…? The future of the future.

And I never wanted to end up as just some old guy with hairy knuckles and an ivory mane,

outdated belt buckles and the smell of burning books lining my nostrils.

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III

Rant and Rave Tuesday, they called it. Bring your own milk crate. No profanities. Maximum

20 minutes per person. I listened, because I was never so good at talking. People would

mutter, recite, shriek or wail, depending on the weather. In the summer of 1966, I was 21 and

drunk on the promise of coming home. I was drafted for the Vietnam War. I was to present

myself for the Armed Forces Medical Examination.

I trudged through the bottle green grass, and the scarlet synthetic of a slide and the giggles of

soft, squishy children to listen to the Rants. I especially enjoyed listening to Mr. Henry Yu,

the upholsterer, who spent his weekends on public transport, listening to what people said.

On Tuesdays, he took the afternoon off, and very politely informed people of their misdoings.

He began,

“There are those who measure their lives

By clocks and calendars

Those who ignore or devote to faith

Who wastes more time?

We are beginning to recognise words

Instead of reading them

We pass nature to our children

Who then shreds it,

And dream of the desk where

Silver coins come above

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The gold of our son’s heart

But love is almighty

Crimson obsession, cherry blossom affection

And the cornflower blue dots on a spotted egg.”

Rain Commits was there, hair shining the colour of a shelled macadamia, and arms quivering

with bronze bracelets. She took a real long time to chew her sandwich, and I watched her

throat climb and plummet as she swallowed, and the thump of the sinewy muscles in her

temple. A flick of bangs when they tickled her eyes, a tiny, almost invisible smile when

someone shouted “you da bomb, Mr. Henry Yu!” Gnawing a fingernail, her toes wriggled in

the confines of her rust coloured sandals.

I stood very carefully beside her, as a paper tissue poet did his best to stumble over word

hurdles.

“Why don’t you ever say anything?” Her eyes were like horizontal teardrops.

“Why don’t you?” I replied.

She shrugged, “it’s easier not to. I kinda get the feeling that once I began, I’d never be able to

stop.”

“I pursue nothing heroic!” I wanted to holler in her babyish face. I pretended I hadn’t heard

her.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?”

“Don’t think so. Oh, wait, I just did.”

“Idiot,” she smiled.

Suddenly, I felt a leaden thud on my back, like I’d been hit with a wet fish.

“Snood Primmest, a-ha! Zippity do-da!” I heard Earl Pall’s overly chirpy voice, then saw his

bright smile.

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“Hey there, Earl Pall,” I said.

“Hey Earl Pall,” Rain echoed.

“You got a stick?” my old friend asked.

“I’ve been a little under the weather, but I’m feeling much better now, thanks,” I handed him

a cigarette, and noticed his vivid orange sneakers.

“Whatcha kids doin’ today?” He only just seemed to notice where he was, and took a deep

breath.

“Ah, ain’t hippies grand?”

“They’re alright,” Rain sighed. “There’s too many of them, though.”

“Says you, who looks like one! I agree, though. Moanin’ and whinin’ ‘bout no clear air,

smoking who knows what. And that music? No beat, man, you know.”

“Whaddya do to your hair?” I asked him.

“Braided it. You dig?”

“No.”

“All the boys are doin it, bro. Come up to Randy’s later, he’ll do it for you, five bucks.”

“I’m busy.”

“You know I’ve been wrecked today. Ain’t got past one stinking fuzz who ain’t turned me

inside out,” he grinned widely, “I spat on last one pulled that.”

He fidgeted, constantly. He was like a fat fly bouncing around behind closed blinds.

“You’ll go back to jail, Earl,” Rain warned in a motherly tone.

“Eh, maybe I will. At least I don’ hafta earn my keep in there, lotta lazing around, is all. You

know Snood, you gotta try and get me my job back at the factory. I can’t keep collecting

welfare; my mom will have the skin of my back for curtains if I don’t get a job quickly smart.

Last week, I thought you said you was gonna talk to the big guy for me?”

“I haven’t seen you for almost two years, Earl.”

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Rain choked down a laugh.

“Woah! Dat been dat long? Hooley dooley, have I gotta pay more attention! Now that you

mention, you did get awful ugly. And you don’t smile no more.”

“What did he used to smile about?” Rain asked.

“Why, the sparkle in yo’ eye, Missy.”

“Give it a rest, Earl Pall,” I muttered.

“Say, why don’t cha come down the parking lot tonight? We got a great Falcon, an old hunk

of a machine. Do some wheelies and stuff.”

“And what will you do tomorrow?” I asked.

“Huh? I dunno. Take it apart for parts. Then I might part,” he laughed hysterically, like a

hyena.

“No thanks.”

“Whaddya do for fun then, Snood?”

“Nothing.”

“He critiques,” Rain answered for me. “He judges. He observes. You see, Snood...”

“Rain, don’t...”

She smiled her cheeky smile, slow and deliberate. I had no idea if she was being sarcastic or

not.

“Snood tries to use every one of his actions as a tool of digressing from the societal norm,”

she said, circling me, “he re-writes functionality, based on what we are told we should look

like, what we should think and how success is measured. He unplugs. He unlearns.”

“You did what?”

“It’s true, he told me himself.”

“Jeez bro, I didn’t get a word of that, and it don’t sound like much fun neither. Come on,

seriously, what do you do for fun? I never see you ‘round any of the hangouts.”

13

“Fun? Why should I have fun?”

“Hang on a sec’, if you trying not to be the ‘social normal’ or whatever...” Earl spoke

carefully, “then how come you are normal?”

Rain lifted her dazzling eyes to watch my mouth struggle.

“I ain’t normal,” I mumbled.

“You live with your parents, you work at Shinola, and you are real angry ‘bout something.

Betcha want in on Vietnam too, nice fat pay check, aye? Equals normal! You normal,

Snood’s normal!”

“Tell Earl Pall why he’s wrong, Snood. Go on,” Rain said tightly.

Everyone clapped feebly for the poet. I felt a conversation ribbon whip in the air. I blurted

out,

“Hell, my whole life is a Rant and Rave. Shouting out when food is too salty or when art is

on a mug instead of a museum. Everyone’s obsessed with Marilyn, but she’s hidden behind a

glass screen. I read Utopia, yeah, and realised the closest thing we have is a Ken and Barbie

Dreamhouse, ‘cause we can move their mouths for them. Yesterday Dad had a go at the paper

boy because he was late, but if you think about it, we spend time when we aren’t making

excuses looking for things to make excuses for. I’m not normal. I won’t listen to their

silence.”

“Things or people?” Rain fixed an emotion on her face smack in the middle of sincere

interest and utter boredom. Earl Pall was high-fiving a friend and had stopped paying

attention. There was a ribbon plummeting towards me, but I dodged it swiftly.

“There are things everywhere, all these things, all this stuff.”

Rain yawned, “It’s too early in the morning for philosophy.”

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Someone changed the radio station and the ribbon snapped in two, like it had been lopped

with a samurai blade. Earl Pall slinked back to the parking lot. The static blur grew louder

and thunderous, until it became one piercing shriek that shattered the soft stillness of the

scope.

Rant and Rave Tuesday, they called it. Bring your own milk crate. No profanities. Maximum

20 minutes per person. I listened, because I was never so good at talking. People would

mutter, recite, shriek, or wail, depending on the weather. In the summer of 1966, I was 21 and

drunk. I was drafted for the Vietnam War. And I was to present myself for the Armed Forces

Medical Examination.

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IV

I am aware of each feeling as present in a bodily function, like a breath, like a blink, like a

heavy swallow. I am aware of each thought passing through, I ripple. I read about war in a

textbook once. Blood, guns, mud, trenches, and my shoelace is untied. My fingers calloused,

thickened like frozen, curdled cream, smacked away like a scorned child for trying to touch

my silenced rights. War in a dog-eared textbook is old fashioned, a grainy black and white

newsreel where they walk too quickly down a street, and smile so insincerely. There is a

ticking noise, a light switch off and on and off and on. War, war, the war of our times, the

product of our smoggy air and the sounds of our echoing voices. And I begin to ask, would

you sell the divinity? And now for something completely different, the light of a nectarine

sun, and a glitter of tears down a sallow face, loving me, missing me, waiting for me. Here is

Rain, with closed eyes. I feel my throat has been scooped out with a blunt metal spoon. I do

not dream. My nose tingles like I’ve been pummelled with a football. Scissors for

conversation, death for words, and an anti-hero pursuing nothing heroic; let me be artless, to

be without art. Someone opens a window and a gust of wind reacts to the hair on my arms,

pulling me away, enticing me to liberal, democratic materialism, commercialism, capitalism,

and a cheeseburger for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

I want to tell Becky Johnson from across the street that it is our similarity against their

difference. Every morning she weans from a couch to venture for a newspaper, eyes darting

back and forth like a dying pinball, as though murder is being committed. Yet when are we

not being chased? When are we not being despaired or conscious? There is a blackness in

unconsciousness, a breath in coma, and a body in death. And Becky is a roundabout memory

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once I go to war. Men fall to the ground with red elixir spurting from their stomachs, wailing

in agony, clutching a charred photo of their girl. Movies are always right, right? Reassure me.

I set fire to the drafting letter to see the wrinkled time, each formulated letter diminishing into

powder. There is a book burning, and a battered sandcastle that can never be saved, only

rebuilt.

I said. I wish. I scream. I am. I could. I won’t. I am so tired. So now my country needs me, oh

convenience, oh this happiest of glories, this luminous trophy. There is plastic on the laser

lemon bench tops in my kitchen, where I was born. I remember distinctly the unpainted walls

of my classroom, but nothing about what I learned. Body-grinder, manly, proud, courageous

soldier, of the bicep-pumping, chiselled-jaw variety, this, this is how they christened me. I

ooze potential, I am khaki personified, and I will kill for my country. The formerly disgraced,

the unpainted, brown child.

I said. I am. So. And I am no longer a chocolate stain on a crisp, starched white shirt of this

Eden, this pleasure valley, this lucky country, this America.

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V

Rain Commits tied up the first conversation ribbon of my life, and I ran away to war.

Honestly, I was far too terrified of living to bother myself about dying.

“Welcome to Nam-arama,” they chimed, dripping with an iridescent insincerity, a nuclear

waste resting in globules on shoulders, seeping into your clothes and skin before you could

shake it off. The emerald slime of idiocy carried to all functioning parts of the body. Vietnam

was unlike any war I had fought in history class or battled in a textbook. 50 pounds of bullets,

tinned potatoes and dirty magazines on your back. Comradeship extended as far as sharing

your joint with the guy next to you. Learning all the lingo: ‘gooks,’ ‘kliks,’ ‘boo-coo,’ ‘r and

r.’

We were the ‘grunts.’ No trenches, instead we marched through bottomless jungle teeming

with killer insects that crawled in your ears, throat, until you choked on larvae.

We were the doomed.

We slept for four hours at a time.

But you never really slept.

The circus was in town. The ringmaster shouted orders from backstage and occasionally

peered out from behind the foggy maroon curtain. He called jokers to the stage when they

were unprepared for the show; they lurched with their faces barely covered in war paint, their

spindly limbs puppetered by the lazy creak of the master. There were tightrope walkers who

perfected their parade in no time, achieving a balance of push ups, gun control, downing

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weed and minimal sweat. The clowns restlessly bounced around, swearing to make you

blush, ready and terrified for action.

My mother wrote me letters in awkward handwriting, wishing me well, telling me that my

wages were being used for Dad’s heart medication. I wrote back asking,

“Where is mine?”

A phone rang in the middle of a forest.

Someone hollered,

“Who’s gonna get that?”

“It’s your call,” someone shouted back.

I grunted alongside a white man. We had been there a week. He didn’t flinch. Odd. When we

reached a ditch splattered with twisted, mossy weeds, he grabbed my arm and helped me

over. Odd still. I was so surprised, that I missed the step and almost fell in.

“Whoa man, you good, yeah? Easy does it.”

Man.

Not boy.

As he pulled me up, he glanced at me fleetingly under his eyelids. I had never seen green

eyes before.

“Yeah, fine man. Thanks.”

And Mr. Henry Yu shook his head and scratched his ankle, a clear sign of his disapproval.

All he said, over and over, was

“How did we get here?”

And my mess tin clunked dully against my askew belt buckle. It sounded like my screen door

back in Winona, banging in the wind and shattering the ghost of the night as I tried to fall

asleep.

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VI

The next night, I lay on my back, my good friend Agent Orange blurring the sight of the

stars, as a single wine coloured bougainvillaea made my heart ache. The thing is, before I left

for the war, the day I had presented myself for the Armed Forces Medical Examination, the

red arrow on our mailbox was pointing toward the grey clouds.

“snood:

why did you make this hard for me? you know neither of us fit in. dont leave me here to be so

lonely. I cant escape it like you can. sure, take the easy way out and go to war. ever since I’ve

known you, youve used whatever excuse you can think of to be satisfied with what little you

have and cause trouble, because people expect you to. remember when we talked about

excuses? Instead of listening to the snood that you pretend to be, why don’t you listen to

yourself?

I want peace. do you? maybe you know what peace is, although I doubt it... I don’t know

what it is. Is it constant fine weather? Is it rows of neat, combed children grinning with

tomorrows promise? Is it cardboard men shaking hands for the camera?

you must be angry at me. you are angry because you figure that if I don’t know what peace is,

you sure won’t never know. why do you want me to feel guilty for leading a life that is so

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completely normal to me? I’m sure we've all had a little heartache, even tommy hickson.

Anyway, it doesn’t matter that I don't know what peace is...it matters that I know what it isn’t.

I wont be proud of you if you go. I wont wait for you, because I'm already here. you wont be

brave for going, you’re a coward for running away. Its not our war, its just filthy politics,

and I’m never going to wash my hair again. go play hide and seek in the forest; cower away

from easy choices and hard-earned integrity and search stupidly for the mediocrity you

believe you deserve.

Sorry. its been a long time coming. my ribbons must be more impatient than yours. just

because I love you, don’t mean I don’t think you’re a fool and a hypocrite too. Im sorry you

were drafted two lots in life you didn't want.

I have no idea how to end this. here goes. this is the unsaid.

I’m going to get a job. secretary at a law firm, most probably. I’ll wear neatly pressed grey

suits and black heels. In a year or two I’ll marry a cleanly shaved high school teacher, a

bespectacled virgin who loves me in whatever way he knows. I’ll have children; name them

Susan, Jeffery and David. I will cook dinner every night and once a week I will invite four

married, beehived women over to my cover shot Vogue Living house. We will play Mah-Jong

and drink low sugar lemonade. At night when I get in bed with my husband I will let him kiss

me and think about how differently my life turned out to what I had hoped, how exciting I

thought life would be... back when I was 21 and in love with the slowest, most frustrating man

called Snood Primmest.”

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I caught her halfway down the street, sensing the sightless stare of Becky’s children as they

shot tin soldiers in their front lawn. I felt the curve of her back and the flutter of her eyelashes

as I kissed her.

“Cut that out, Snood!” I heard Becky holler. “Or I’ll call your dadda!”

“Oh, go to hell!”

I half expected the moment she broke away.

“Snood, let’s go!” Her voice had that scary, panicky pitch.

“Why?”

My father grabbed my arm and swivelled me around to face him.

“Whatcha doing? Come inside a minute!”

He said to Rain, “I’m real sorry miss, if he’s been causin’ you troubles. You ok?”

He may as well have slapped her.

“What? Yeah, I’m fine...”

“He won’t bother you no more, will ya, Snood? Ah’cept our apologies, yeah? No real...you

don’t need to tell anyone about this, do you? Come on, boy, you fool!”

“Wait! Sir, my name is Rain Commits, and...”

“And what?”

“I...Snood and I were just...”

“Rain,” I barked.

“Just what?” Dad’s eyes narrowed. I leapt in before she could answer.

“Rain, get outta here now.”

“Excuse me?”

“Lookee here...” my father pointed at her accusingly, and I recognised the distinct ‘don’t

mess with me’ in his voice.

22

“There are white people in this neighbourhood, and I don’t need them havin’ words with me,

alright? Go on your way.”

“Are you serious? If Snood was white you wouldn’t say a word! Why you saying who his

friends can’t be?”

“Dad!” my voice rose several octaves. “Dad, don’t say anything! Come inside. Rain, you

leave right now, I mean it.”

I dropped her note on the driveway.

“How dare you...” Her voice shook, like thick heat floating on tar.

“Don’t argue with me! Now, Rain! Let me alone a minute, ok? I told you this would happen,

but you think you ever listen?”

“Told her what would happen? Whatcha been up to now?” Dad struggled to worm out of my

grip. I shoved him toward the house.

“Why do you keep doing this? Why you keep dragging me in, then pushing me away?” Rain

began walking backward very slowly, but Dad seized her arm and said through gnashed teeth,

“Listen up, you leave here and never come back, ok? I mean it...”

“Let go of her, Dad! Shut up! Get inside.” Rain stumbled as I pushed Dad off, her face livid,

eyes hurt and bulging.

“You hear her, boy? ‘Who your friends can’t be?’ ” Dad mimicked her voice and spat on the

drive.

“That’s rich, that is, coming from her blue eyes. Whatcha hanging round with useless white

hippies for, you idiot?”

I was stronger than him. I pressed him onto the tiled bathroom wall and locked the door. He

thrashed around, swearing, threatening to castrate me. In a fit of blood cherry anger I pulled

the bookcase down and kicked in the lamp, satisfied with the sound of the shattering

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porcelain, like angel wings snapping in two. Mom screamed and her hands were flailing in

the air.

“Snood’s gone stark raving. He’s gone dog mad!”

I glanced out the window and saw Rain standing on the drive, her macadamia hair flattened

by the rain and her arms wrapped around her arms. The screen door flapped in the wind. She

scurried down the street like a baby lamb learning to walk. The rain fell, pattering like a

lilting piano.

“Babe, baby, no, don’t go. He don’t mean it.”

“God, maybe life is out for us,” she broke away and smacked her tears. Suddenly she lunged

forward and seized my jaw, muttering through gritted teeth,

“What the hell do you want from me? Huh? Tell me why I shouldn’t walk away now and just

let you die as a man and live as a memory.”

“I...”

“No! Don’t say anything! I can’t listen to you!”

“It’s unlearning, Rain, this thing...We need...There are these ancient titans who wrote

millions of rules that no one knows, but everyone follows. Listen! All I’m doin’ is trying to

change what we never say! We have lifetimes training to be orderly and make sense, say our

alphabets and get up on time, and I hate it! Let me...Come with me, shape disorder and get

rid of stupid illusions. Far out, secretary? Susan, Mah-Jong? Why don’t I just strangle you

right now and end it all?”

“You high or something?” she interjected, looking increasingly horrified.

“Look, it’s...I hate you having to be dragged down by me, but I want you. For once what I

want isn’t what I need, cause we’ll never make it happy, you and me.”

“This isn’t the Montague’s and the Capulet’s, Snood. It’s all god-damn excuses again!”

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Her eyes narrowed like a cat.

“And what do you mean, ‘get rid of illusions?’ Then there’d be nothing.”

“Nothing’s better than something, dontcha think?”

She said quietly, eyes downcast, “Snood, if unlearning is about erasing what people tell you

to think, why do you always, always listen?”

My ribbon was shredding, so fast. It was like being sucked into a giant sewing machine. I was

getting lost in her.

“I thought Mr. Primmest told you to leave, missy!” Becky began to toddle over in her

slippers.

“And I thought I told you to go to hell!” Rain screeched, but her voice was timid and hollow.

“Oh, oh dear...” Becky put her hand on her heart.

“Sorry, sorry,” Rain muttered, sitting down on the gutter.

After a moment she reached out and stroked my leg,

“We can work it out. You’re black, I’m white. That’s all.”

I reeled back. The words sounded vinegary and mean. I had begun to learn. My thoughts

were never natural, they were taught to me, and I took notes like a fool, studiously observing

and reciting. The colours around me slowly returned to their regular hues and I heard Mom

and Dad’s lacklustre voices pulsate through the steel streets.

“You’re wrong, I’m right. That’s all,” I stared at my bare feet.

“God, everything’s so, so difficult, isn’t it?” Rain spat. Suddenly, her teeth began to chatter

and she cried,

“It’s never like they said it would be!”

Her eyes dashed all around me; I could see her searching. Her hands were clasped together

like swan feathers.

“You’re meant to be strong, you should fight for us. That’s what it should be like.”

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“Like who? Like who said it would be?”

She grabbed my hands. “No-one’s out to get you, Snood. Life is not out to get you, and

you’re a damn fool if you think it is.”

“Live the life I have, and then say that. I dare you.”

She slapped me. Hard. Really hard. Eye-wateringly hard. She was seething, twitching with

rage. And she turned to leave.

I dug my nails into her pale, yielding skin, hating myself.

“Don’t you run away.”

Her eyes flickered like a candle. “Isn’t that exactly what you’re doing?”

I let go of her. My cheek was burning coldly as I watched the rain droplets make the ink of on

her letter fade away into a sapphire shadow. And I stared for such a long time at the ‘grit’ in

integrity.

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VII

The nurse with the cream-coloured footwear was back. I swore.

“Oh, it’s you again,” I pretended to sound cantankerous. She was actually the nicest nurse I

had.

“Good morning!” she trilled.

“Would you like cereal or toast?” she asked, as the breakfast cart squeaked with its broken

wheel. The plates clattered as it rode over bumps in the tiles.

“Toast.”

“Nurse, could you get someone to clean that wall?” I asked. My hands shook as I raised the

toast to my dry lips.

“Where?”

“Right in front of me, there’s an unsightly mould patch.”

“Of course,” she replied. She was a sweetheart.

I waited all day for the cleaner to come for the whitewash wall. And as he cleaned it, I

thought, memories are very much like excuses, so often glazed with honey and a sprig of

rosemary. Memories are often teeming with an idyllic, falsely coloured air of self importance.

Memories are easier to confront if we shade in the reality with a lead pencil and a sigh of

peaceful regret. Ashamed memories tucked away neatly in a padlocked suitcase, covered in

kitschy stickers from secluded, exotic places that smell of orange peel and your first love’s

shampoo. They itch like madness and mosquitoes. They burn a whole in your reason. They

27

break your heart like a lover betrayed. I have nothing left but scratchy reminiscences, whose

saturated hues glow liltingly from afar, who scamper away from me as I scramble to re-

assemble the series of vibrations, discoveries, numbers, ballerinas, frostings, muscles and

masking tape that made up my golden years.

Best that I never hold her, not caring that age had wrinkled her, not believing death could

separate us, not understanding why she sighed when watching perfect families on TV in

perfect houses, boring holes in her naive eyes through their assuming, identical scripted

exterior.

I sunk into my dense pillow and felt aridness creep over my soggy eyes. My breath was like a

shallow pond of water, bulging with each breeze.

I had an important decision to make.

Do I open the suitcase?

It had been held tightly closed for so many years. The locks were beyond corrosion, growing

pea green fuzz. I was scared to unleash what I knew lay inside it. In my mind the memories

were folded away painstakingly to squeeze as many in as possible. I had a sinking feeling that

when I opened it, they would detonate into millions of messy, pulpy gobbets.

Wait.

Did I say when I opened it?

There’s my answer. Or is it my question?

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VIII

Which of them might have written a poem...?

Which of them would have taught a child to read...? 

It is our responsibility to let these men live.3

And after I opened the suitcase, I smelled orange peel and Rain’s lemony shampoo.

“Welcome to Nam-arama,” they echoed, the chorus lines of khaki.

Dr. King was floating through the radio and the guy with olive eyes was in line behind me for

C-Rations. Everything was a different shade of green and I began to feel as though I wasn’t in

a war at all, but a boy’s camp playing soldiers. It had been three weeks. We ate at sunrise to

get on the move by 0600. There was less chance of the Viet Cong lurking so early, and since

the Army had decided that the grunts main form of defence was never-ending walking, we

made sure to get an early start of it.

At a quarter to six in the morning, I blinked to distinguish shadows, and a white boy with

scratchy stubble served me a slop of potato and lukewarm casserole. I had a sudden impulse

to hug him.

I masticated the vile trash and shifted across the bench to allow Olive Eyes to sit next to me.

We listened to Dr King on the morning news,

3 Edited extract of Robert Kennedy’s Vietnam speech, given 24th March 1968

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“We have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on

TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them

together in the same schools.”4

My first thought was Olive Eyes would be offended by such a speech. I was fairly confident

that I had unlearned pretty much everything I had been taught, although white guys were very

much uncharted waters for me.

He made an amused noise.

“Funny guy, really.”

“Who? Dr King?”

“Yeah. Neglects to mention the whole slave thingy. No offense, bro.”

“Whatever.”

“No, really. Uncalled for,” he wiped his hand on his pants and presented it.

“I’m Thomas.”

“Thomas who?” Flashes of a fuzzy sleepover and first soldier’s sunrise.

“O’Reilly.”

I wandered how someone with such beautiful eyes could be so callous.

“Snood Primmest.”

“Seriously?”

“Yep,” I swallowed heavily.

“Is that code for something?”

“Yeah, actually. It’s code for fuc-”

“Ah! Now, Mr Snood!” Mr. Henry Yu interrupted me.

“You shut your mouth please. We here now. We fight. We go home.”

“I’ll fight him if he wants,” Olive Eyes growled and chewed his casserole.4 Extract of Martin Luther King’s Vietnam speech, given 4th April 1967

30

“No, no, very unnecessary. Mr Snood not means what he say. He means to say, ‘you are my

brother.’ ”

“Oh Henry...” I murmured.

He blinked very quickly and cut his meat carefully.

“Yes, it is indeed true. We all same now. See these colours, no meaning really. All light

pigments, dispersion of electro...” his voice faltered, “...something or other.”

“Maybe now. But back home things’ll still be the same,” Olive Eyes stood.

“Yes, exactly. The same.”

“No, no, you don’t understand me...” Olive Eyes became exasperated.

“Same, same, same, always and always,” Mr. Henry Yu sang.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about yellow-bellow!”

Mr. Henry Yu flinched. He looked like a wounded child, milky eyes and slick lower lip.

We were all watching him carefully when he took a small notebook out of his sock, and read,

“I put my jeans in a bag to freeze like

The ice cubes I drop in my drink

To cool the sweat that beads my face

And the heart that pounds

Then in the morning

When frozen jeans go walkabout

Looking for the sunshine

We watch them go and never chase

Hark that beautiful lark

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And the rainy shadow that follows it

Restlessly. Like the jeans I froze

In a bag, scrambling for the lemon zest

Of the sun.”

Olive Eyes burst out laughing. “Remind me never to take a cancer stick off you, chink.”

“Thank you, Mr. Thomas,” Mr. Henry Yu grinned.

“What did that poem mean, Mr. Henry Yu?” I asked, some moments later.

He simply looked out the crease of the plywood hut at the pallid, watered-down high

summer.

Staff Sergeant Lewis entered the hut, and shouted at us, though we were only two feet away.

“Men! Listen up! Tomorrow we go two kliks south to destroy…”

Something bubbled on the stovetop. The cook with stubble bent over to investigate. The

officer raised his voice above the clamor,

“WE HAVE HAD REPORTS OF GOOK ACTIVITY. YOU KNOW THE DRILL. BURN

ALL HOUSES YOU SEE. ‘IF IT’S DEAD AND IT’S VIETNAMESE, IT’S A VC!’ JUST

REMEMBER THE THREAT TO OUR GREAT DEMOCRATIC TRADITION. AT EASE.”

“It’s not my tradition,” I coughed.

Sergeant Lewis hit me so hard that I felt the inside of my cheek crush between my teeth and I

threw up blood and chunky potatoes on his smartly polished shoes.

“Get outside, Private.”

The sun was feeble and mustard coloured. A tiny black bug was shovelling its teeth into my

ankle. My shirt clung to my back with wet mud and sweat. I tiptoed around, acutely aware of

toe poppers. I took a long drag of my cigarette and realised how utterly bored I was.

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Then out of nowhere, like sky writing that suddenly hangs over our heads, I felt a

conversation tickle my spine with a sleek black ribbon.

Oh no...

“Gooks!”

“What in the name...?” Sergeant Lewis whipped around. I smelled burning books.

“Where, Private?”

“In the...I saw the...”

“Are you sure now? Hell, get the bloody arms! Quick!” We scampered inside the hut.

But our platoon were running out of the hut, feeling ash stain the dampness of their eyes. The

hut was fast filling with billowy smoke interspersed with a muted orange glow of flame.

“O’Reilly! What’s going on?” Lewis roared.

“Sarge! Sarge! They rigged the fuel pipes!” O’Reilly’s voice was high.

“Yeah, get the grenades out before they go up!” Another shouted.

“And the god-damned VC are on the patch!” Lewis boomed, and scuffled for his radio.

“Don’t let the guard down! Is everyone outta the hut?”

“Yessir.”

I thought I could deal with just about anything. I thought that the black hole of indifference

which I tried so hard to project would protect and serve me from attachment I might lose. I

knew it all. I knew that the government wanted me to be a failure. There was a hasty head

count. I knew that my health couldn’t be measured by compliance to a sick, twisted system.

We all stood in a circle with our backs inward, scanning for VC. I knew, exactly, that life

illusions were choreographed just so, to help us feebly meander through life to tie up ribbons

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and succeed. Succeed by whose measure of success? We had no cover. Mr. Henry Yu slowly

removed his shoes, as some strange, final sort of offering, perhaps a tranquil penance for his

sins. I had unlearned all this so long ago; I was better than them, I had the answers, I had the

most perfect excuse to crucify ambition.

But, at that moment, I wanted my mom so very much.

“We need the grenades outta there! We need something,” Lewis growled, “and where’s that

sorry excuse of an Air Force?!”

“Wouldn’t the gooks have shot by now? We ain’t armed or nothing!” someone trembled.

“Nah, man, they play it mean,” Thomas O’Reilly dragged out the word ‘mean’, like a

brooding clarinet note.

“They’re teasing us, the bastards.”

“Well, we need something for ammo!”

“I’ll get them.” My ribbons were charring, just standing there.

Sergeant Lewis had a steely ocean gaze that asked me dangerous, horrifying questions.

“If you’re serious Private, go now before the whole hut’s burned down.”

“Yessir.”

And then there was black. An exhausted, smoky, chaotic blackness, overpowered by sickly

gas smells and singeing mattresses. My black. For seconds I was back at that sleepover in

1955, trying to see Rain’s face in the cool ebony of the night. My hands clumsily felt over the

mattresses, one, two, three. There, under the third, I knew lay the weapons. A bed is

something you should share with someone beautiful, not overturn to find ammunition. I

tripped on a broken support pole and dug ash out of my eyes. I tried crying for the cool ebony

34

darkness, but all I had now was a carbon belch. Another pipe burst and I saw a nebulous

ochre eruption. I seized the box and felt the metal slice into the pink melon of my burned

hands. Thomas O’Reilly caught me as I missed the step and stumbled out of the hut.

Everyone scrambled for guns, grenades, something, anything to kill with. I moved away, fell

to my knees and cradled the split skin of my hands. I faced the alien jungle and had to cry,

just once.

There was that flash once more. The liquidly black conversation ribbon. A lone Viet Cong

man was slowly loading his machine gun at the edge of the forest.

I dashed to Mr. Henry Yu’s shoe, lying forgotten like a lover betrayed. He lifted the machine

gun, aiming at my platoon, organising their senses.

“Hey man!” I hollered, and threw the shoe.

In the second that he glanced to see what had hit him on the arm, I shot him.

And so it began. And it continues today. It was a grey, wet morning with a watered down sun.

“Sarge, it’s the Air Force! About bloody time!” Thomas O’Reilly hollered, as we watched,

stunned, as a Channel 3 news crew zoomed casually overhead.

How is one supposed to unlearn in such a world? I asked so often.

“How did we get here?” Mr. Henry Yu asked so often, and to which I so rarely had an

answer.

Then, like a raindrop sashaying down an iron curtain, we received orders for advances that

drove us backwards, where, in the end, it came down not only to what you knew, but what

you hadn’t yet learned. And so we shot blindly at the philosophers who abandoned us in the

35

face of an era where war was projected into the living rooms of a family dinner, followed by

a snap-happy killing for dessert.

How did we get here? Good question. The answer is tucked away neatly somewhere in my

memory suitcase, smelling like orange peel and my only love’s shampoo, along with the

frayed ribbons that were my conversations. There is still one fluttering in the breeze,

somewhere. The whitewash wall has been cleaned, and the foil on the hospital dinners has

creased. We each are the keepers of our own memories, so rest now, rest.

And watch the rain fall.

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The End

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