I Don't Remember
HEIDI ZEIGLER
Everyone can forget us—as long as you remember.
– Ocean Vuong
– Ocean Vuong
I can’t forget after momma died in 2016 I carried the candlesticks to Mexico from Texas. The guy at airport security unzipped my bag and started digging down to the bottom to the candlesticks rolled up in t-shirts. These are heavy! What are they? Are they fragile? Hey, Dan, check these out! You could hurt somebody with one of these!
I don’t remember I really felt like a foreigner at home until finally the last day when the whole family went to lunch for my birthday. Then I started to feel little moments of like I was at home—little glimpses of, yeah, this is home.
I don’t remember seeing that woman hit by a taxi and her black ballerina flat flying off and everyone hurrying toward the metro and even the taxi driver left and a foreigner helped her to the curb. Another driver who saw it stopped and got out, stood back asking Is she okay?
I don’t remember in 1928, Brown asked my father for permission to marry me. Brown wasn’t Jewish, and my father said, “I can’t give you my permission because it will kill her mother.” Brown told him, “We don’t want to have to wait for her to die for us to marry.” After we married, I couldn’t go home, but my father came to visit us. My family sent for me when my father passed away. That was the first time in two years that I went back home.
I remember I stopped hearing your songs and clicks through seas between us, shrouded by surface roars where no creature had roared all our long generations. Wall-building creatures with no eyes for the rooms of the seas and the way you could hear me calling you across our wide home. Blood trickles from my ears into my mouth, staining my song. Do you hear our red singing back to you through all this blue?
I can’t forget how I wrote emails to you almost every day for the nearly three years you were down there. Month after month of 1999 the university was on strike, but your institute stayed open and you wrote back almost every day. I printed and saved them and a dozen years later saved them again when I was throwing out old boxes of letters.
I don’t remember you make Aunt Eva’s bagels this way. Add a quarter cup of butter, a tablespoon and a half of sugar and a half tablespoon of salt to one cup of scalded milk. When cooled to lukewarm add a cake of yeast, a well-beaten egg white, and three and three-quarters cups of flour. Knead. Let rise until doubled in bulk. Roll in small pieces as wide as your finger and twice as long, tapering at the ends. Shape into rings or pretzels and pinch the ends well together. Let them stand on a floured board only until they begin to rise. Fill a large, shallow pan half-full of water and heat it. When the water is very hot but not boiling, drop rings or pretzels in carefully, one at a time. Cook until the boiling point, until they hold their shape. They must be light and keep their shape when handled. If desired sprinkle with salt and caraway seed. Place in hot oven (400°F) on thin ungreased baking sheet and bake until crisp and golden brown on one side and then on the other.
I don’t remember the tale that says, The Holy One gathered the dust for the creation of the first man from the four corners of the earth, The Spirit of Life asked God why did He do this. The Holy One replied, "If a man should chance to come from the East to the West, or from the West to the East or to any place on the face of the earth, and his time comes to depart from this world, then the dust of the earth which is in that place where he dies shall not say to him: 'The dust of thy body is not mine. Thou wast not born here in this land. Return to the place whence thy dust was gathered at thy birth.' It is for this reason that I have taken the dust to form man from the four corners of the earth. Every place on earth is man's home.
I don’t remember the last time I was home before my dad died, he asked me to trim his toenails so I brought the basin and soaked his feet and then trimmed but I trimmed too close much too close on one and there was just so much blood everywhere all over his feet and down my arm and on my ma’s white bleached towel and I didn’t think it was ever going to stop bleeding.
I don’t remember Jason needed me and stretching my arms I defended him from bulls and army, dragon and my father. I secured the fleece, our flight, his love, if not his future.
I don’t remember when I came here, I lived in Tepito in a student house with other Paceños. After they finished, they moved back to La Paz, but I stayed here. When my Paceños come to visit, they wear coats. This breeze is so nice, it’s like the breeze on the boardwalk in November or December.
I don’t remember Jennie Leah or maybe Sheina – or maybe Scheine, Szejne, Chéna, or maybe Zelda, Chana, Gitel, or maybe Asnah, Beila, Chaya, Elka, or maybe Sarah, Tsipa, Zlata – Goldberg and Harry Benjamin or maybe Hirsh – or maybe Tsvi, Hersz, Chersz, or maybe Ersz, Irsz, Gersh – Cohen or maybe Markowsky left Vladislavov or Neustadt-Schirwindt or Vladislavavov or maybe Wladyslavow in 1884 or 1885 or maybe 1886.
I can’t forget my first visit to your home city in 1998 where your mother embraced me before you, capacious and modern, a whitewashed, high-ceilinged, wide-windowed entry. Decades of visiting I can see the sheep herding the car on our return from the airport. The language still hangs at the back of my mouth. That woolen memory feels as awkward and real and impossible. Cats stretched out on top of the x-ray machine weeks later at our leaving. That place is gone into time drifting from my mouth’s one more breath of sea air. We climbed the little stair from tarmac to plane a last glimpse over the shoulder Aegean blue that never left me.
I don’t remember the village on the coastal plain where they sent us in 1979 when we left Laos. They fed us sweet bread and put us in a house and the oldest ones told us they had come from across the sea, too, when they were small, through Galveston near the door in Houston where we arrived. They showed us gardens behind the houses and gave us seeds and a hoe.
I don’t remember applying for our visas to come visit him, and the embassy in Venezuela sent the letter to Mexico for him to sign and send back – it took almost all of 2019. My face in the embassy window when they told me it was the wrong letter, and I had to send it all over again. I told the boys we were going to visit papá for Christmas because I was so scared that the older one would accidentally say something at the airport. The baby started crying as soon as I gave the officer our papers and the big boy was whining and I had the stroller and our carry-on bags and I just knew he was going to send us back. I had packed so little, but I just knew. I nearly cried when he finally stamped the visas and told us welcome.
I remember finding human bones in Canada. But they say bears remember feeding places, so animal control killed the bear that ate the man. Only after they had killed it, they realized this bear hadn’t actually eaten a man.
I don’t remember the years we’re waiting for entrance and life at the old Athens airport, between sheets hung across flight lounges, under blue tarps on parking lots, in our cloaks and hijab, the babies in strollers. The highway in front of this abandoned wreck drives north to the port where more of us wait. Ends south at the Temple of Poseidon. Separates us from the sea. Across the highway the sea catches us, washes us against graffitied walls of Olympic Aegean International National Arrivals Departures.
I don’t remember I really felt like a foreigner at home until finally the last day when the whole family went to lunch for my birthday. Then I started to feel little moments of like I was at home—little glimpses of, yeah, this is home.
I don’t remember seeing that woman hit by a taxi and her black ballerina flat flying off and everyone hurrying toward the metro and even the taxi driver left and a foreigner helped her to the curb. Another driver who saw it stopped and got out, stood back asking Is she okay?
I don’t remember in 1928, Brown asked my father for permission to marry me. Brown wasn’t Jewish, and my father said, “I can’t give you my permission because it will kill her mother.” Brown told him, “We don’t want to have to wait for her to die for us to marry.” After we married, I couldn’t go home, but my father came to visit us. My family sent for me when my father passed away. That was the first time in two years that I went back home.
I remember I stopped hearing your songs and clicks through seas between us, shrouded by surface roars where no creature had roared all our long generations. Wall-building creatures with no eyes for the rooms of the seas and the way you could hear me calling you across our wide home. Blood trickles from my ears into my mouth, staining my song. Do you hear our red singing back to you through all this blue?
I can’t forget how I wrote emails to you almost every day for the nearly three years you were down there. Month after month of 1999 the university was on strike, but your institute stayed open and you wrote back almost every day. I printed and saved them and a dozen years later saved them again when I was throwing out old boxes of letters.
I don’t remember you make Aunt Eva’s bagels this way. Add a quarter cup of butter, a tablespoon and a half of sugar and a half tablespoon of salt to one cup of scalded milk. When cooled to lukewarm add a cake of yeast, a well-beaten egg white, and three and three-quarters cups of flour. Knead. Let rise until doubled in bulk. Roll in small pieces as wide as your finger and twice as long, tapering at the ends. Shape into rings or pretzels and pinch the ends well together. Let them stand on a floured board only until they begin to rise. Fill a large, shallow pan half-full of water and heat it. When the water is very hot but not boiling, drop rings or pretzels in carefully, one at a time. Cook until the boiling point, until they hold their shape. They must be light and keep their shape when handled. If desired sprinkle with salt and caraway seed. Place in hot oven (400°F) on thin ungreased baking sheet and bake until crisp and golden brown on one side and then on the other.
I don’t remember the tale that says, The Holy One gathered the dust for the creation of the first man from the four corners of the earth, The Spirit of Life asked God why did He do this. The Holy One replied, "If a man should chance to come from the East to the West, or from the West to the East or to any place on the face of the earth, and his time comes to depart from this world, then the dust of the earth which is in that place where he dies shall not say to him: 'The dust of thy body is not mine. Thou wast not born here in this land. Return to the place whence thy dust was gathered at thy birth.' It is for this reason that I have taken the dust to form man from the four corners of the earth. Every place on earth is man's home.
I don’t remember the last time I was home before my dad died, he asked me to trim his toenails so I brought the basin and soaked his feet and then trimmed but I trimmed too close much too close on one and there was just so much blood everywhere all over his feet and down my arm and on my ma’s white bleached towel and I didn’t think it was ever going to stop bleeding.
I don’t remember Jason needed me and stretching my arms I defended him from bulls and army, dragon and my father. I secured the fleece, our flight, his love, if not his future.
I don’t remember when I came here, I lived in Tepito in a student house with other Paceños. After they finished, they moved back to La Paz, but I stayed here. When my Paceños come to visit, they wear coats. This breeze is so nice, it’s like the breeze on the boardwalk in November or December.
I don’t remember Jennie Leah or maybe Sheina – or maybe Scheine, Szejne, Chéna, or maybe Zelda, Chana, Gitel, or maybe Asnah, Beila, Chaya, Elka, or maybe Sarah, Tsipa, Zlata – Goldberg and Harry Benjamin or maybe Hirsh – or maybe Tsvi, Hersz, Chersz, or maybe Ersz, Irsz, Gersh – Cohen or maybe Markowsky left Vladislavov or Neustadt-Schirwindt or Vladislavavov or maybe Wladyslavow in 1884 or 1885 or maybe 1886.
I can’t forget my first visit to your home city in 1998 where your mother embraced me before you, capacious and modern, a whitewashed, high-ceilinged, wide-windowed entry. Decades of visiting I can see the sheep herding the car on our return from the airport. The language still hangs at the back of my mouth. That woolen memory feels as awkward and real and impossible. Cats stretched out on top of the x-ray machine weeks later at our leaving. That place is gone into time drifting from my mouth’s one more breath of sea air. We climbed the little stair from tarmac to plane a last glimpse over the shoulder Aegean blue that never left me.
I don’t remember the village on the coastal plain where they sent us in 1979 when we left Laos. They fed us sweet bread and put us in a house and the oldest ones told us they had come from across the sea, too, when they were small, through Galveston near the door in Houston where we arrived. They showed us gardens behind the houses and gave us seeds and a hoe.
I don’t remember applying for our visas to come visit him, and the embassy in Venezuela sent the letter to Mexico for him to sign and send back – it took almost all of 2019. My face in the embassy window when they told me it was the wrong letter, and I had to send it all over again. I told the boys we were going to visit papá for Christmas because I was so scared that the older one would accidentally say something at the airport. The baby started crying as soon as I gave the officer our papers and the big boy was whining and I had the stroller and our carry-on bags and I just knew he was going to send us back. I had packed so little, but I just knew. I nearly cried when he finally stamped the visas and told us welcome.
I remember finding human bones in Canada. But they say bears remember feeding places, so animal control killed the bear that ate the man. Only after they had killed it, they realized this bear hadn’t actually eaten a man.
I don’t remember the years we’re waiting for entrance and life at the old Athens airport, between sheets hung across flight lounges, under blue tarps on parking lots, in our cloaks and hijab, the babies in strollers. The highway in front of this abandoned wreck drives north to the port where more of us wait. Ends south at the Temple of Poseidon. Separates us from the sea. Across the highway the sea catches us, washes us against graffitied walls of Olympic Aegean International National Arrivals Departures.