Рон Рэш - The Best American Short Stories 2018

(Re: the uncles: later she will claim what she was talking about was the time the uncles were asked to watch her oldest daughters—Monique was doing two shifts at Target—but then fell asleep and let the baby girls wander off down the road—almost two miles on their own. She wanted to kick them in the dick, hurt them so they’d stay awake forever, damn stupid talkers.)

What’s going on? Monique asks, as you rest against an oak stump. She smiles. In 1981, she poured sugar in various gas tanks, and then told the uncles it was a case of ornery white men. Girl, it’s nothing to be ashamed of, she whispers, clasping your face between her hands. You attempt to smile an answer, but then the bile comes back up. Monique looks into your eyes, unwavering. Exactly what kind of bun, she asks, do you have in your oven?

There was a story before Long Island. In it, El boarded the plane with the Melitta in her suitcase.

She’d never been on a plane before, had never been spoken to by a stewardess bearing peanuts and napkins, had never left her home in the night like some common criminal. The stewardess brought around a cart of drinks, but El shook her head; all she could think of was Bobby, waiting for her at the end of the line, opening his arms to her so that she could melt inside. Liquor on the breath could possibly prevent that melting. The third time around, however, El gave in and said she would just adore a gin and tonic. She’d been gone from the Laboe farm for a little over six hours. Though her suitcase—the one from her dead father—was stowed solidly underneath her seat, she imagined she could hear the Melitta dishes clinking softly against each other.

El had taken the dishes in the middle of the night as her mother slept. She’d lifted the tea and coffee pots from the cabinet in the basement kitchen and wrapped them in a cotton nightgown, stowed the cake platter at the bottom of the suitcase, hoping the cushioned lining would prevent it from breaking. During the fourth gin and tonic, El gazed again out the window and imagined she saw the chocolate-wafer edge of America.

They landed sometime in the early day. The waiting room was loud, strewn with paper cups and newspapers. The sounds of planes overhead rattled the chairs. She stood looking for help, for Bobby, but there was nothing. Eventually, El slumped into a chair attached to a miniature TV; she was hungry and thirsty and tired. To watch the television cost two quarters per fifteen minutes, but since Bob had told her she wouldn’t need any money once she arrived, she’d only packed an emergency five-mark bill.

The clock on the wall moved slowly; next thing, it was eight and the sky outside the plate glass was pure black. The janitor sweeping at her feet told her it was time to close this waiting area, that she would have to go to Arrivals. He showed her to the escalator. Good luck, ma’am, don’t let nothing happen to you.

But she nearly toppled down the moving stairs. Her suitcase seemed heavier than before.

She felt tears form. This country, it was so loud, so ugly, so wildly placid. She wanted to find a stewardess and ask how she could return to Germany—to Laboe on the Baltic—because was this how they did things in America? The man who swore his devotion—vanished like a ghost?

At the bottom of the moving stairs, she quickly saw Bob. Now Elspeth.

He looked much different than she’d imagined him since their fifth meeting five months ago: gaunt, mustached, palpable. No longer Bobby Lee—she saw immediately that he was to be called Bob. Now Elspeth.

He reached out a hand to her. No embrace, no tongue in her ear, no touch of her breasts. In her mind they were practically married, she’d run away to be with him, had taken her future wedding dishes without permission. She expected Bob would at least put his hand under her elbow, leading her the correct way into the future. But instead, he walked in front of her toward the luggage carousel; and when they got there and stood side by side, and she reached over to caress his cheek, Bob stepped back and frowned. Now Elspeth. Isn’t it enough you made me look all over the damn airport for you? Don’t you know I have better things to do? Plus, I had to get up and go to work this morning, unlike some people I know who spend their days drinking cocktails on Lufthansa jets.

His voice was so different from the voice he’d used in the aerograms, the one that began each letter with Baby or Darling or Sugarpie and ended with Forever Yours. His last letter, dated April 29, 1961, had begun Dear Sugarpie, I saw you in my dreams last night. As the luggage began to tumble onto the carousel, Bob took out a cigarette. Life in America was tough, he said, did she think she could make it? Did she bring any money? If she didn’t think she could make it, she might as well get back on the plane.

El didn’t know why they stood there; she already had the yellow suitcase in hand. As if reading her thoughts, Bob quickly tossed his cigarette. He led her to the exit by her hand. All the while never looking her directly in the face. Had she ever seen a cockroach, he asked, because his mother’s apartment, it was a cockroach paradise. His mother’s apartment—you couldn’t call it a honeymoon suite unless you were crazy—was only one bedroom, with him on the couch, and collards and chicken-fried steak three times a week. Pork chops and gospel radio on Sunday. He hated it, sometimes. But that was what was on the table.

Did she think she could handle that—black life?

Baby, we will live off a love, the letter from April 29 insisted.

Bob wiped his forehead with his shoulder, and El then noticed the large perspiration stains in the armpits. He noticed her looking. Been hot as hell, he said. Here in America, summer’s no joke. My mother has a Westinghouse fan, yes. But no air-conditioning, if that’s what you’re expecting.

The letter from April 29 had ended with the words I don’t know if you will want me once you are on these shores, but I will pray every day that you will. Forever Yours.

They walked out to the parking lot under a half moon. Bob swung the suitcase into the trunk, and just then she thought she heard the platter crack, the little lids of the coffee and tea pots clatter together. What in the hell you got in there, Bob asked, laughing, as he started the car.

The drive was bland, a few lights sparkling over Jamaica Bay.

Monique makes sure you can stand on your own (how no one else saw you throw up is a mystery) and then leans you against a pine tree, saying she has to go back inside for just a minute; she’s afraid Kate (a white girl from Duke who has forever and a day wanted to experience this kind of family reunion) might have fallen prey to her cousin Stanley. You haven’t seen Stanley in years, Monique whispers. But he’s still the same. Thinks he’s gone get his hands on Kate. But that’ll only happen after I get my hands on her.

You’ll love Kate, she says. You’re different.

She hurries off in a cloud of roadside dust and pollen. You imagine Monique finding her white lover and kissing her under a pile of stale pillows, in a wrought-iron bed, under dozens of family photographs—the ancestors. Forgetting about you for whole hours. When you attend their commitment ceremony three years later—only one uncle will come to the church where two females are saying “I do”—you notice the same crystals of love in her eyes, the same spike of deliverance as you see on this day, the last reunion you’ll ever attend.

You were ten years old when you told your mother about the nighttime touching. She rolled her eyes into her head, as if this were the straw that literally broke the camel’s back. How could he do this to me? she blurted. Then: Oh, baby.