Alison McGhee

Here is a tiny story of American immigration, set down here exactly (or as close to exact as I can get it while going against my own nature and resisting completely the instinctive urge to embellish and embroider it, re-tell it in my own way – as told to me in my childhood by my maternal grandmother).

“Your great-grandfather, my father, Paul Ajas, was French Basque, raised in the Pyrenees Mountains of France. He was sixteen years old and living at a Catholic boarding school not far from his family’s home. His mother had been sick, and the day came when he overheard someone from his village in the headmaster’s office, asking for him.”

‘And he knew that his mother was dead,’ said my grandmother,  ‘and he walked out of the classroom, and he walked down the mountain, and he walked right past his family’s home without stopping, and he walked to the sea, and he stowed away on a ship bound for America.’

And a few days into the voyage, he was discovered. The captain put him to work below decks, and as the ship approached New York Harbor, he was locked up, so that they could return him to France upon their return.’

But he managed to get free from the hold, and in the middle of the night he made his way up to the deck, and there he saw New York City before him. And he dove off the side of the ship, and he swam to the shore, and there he hauled himself into the city.’

And when dawn came he approached a man in the streets and asked him where might he find work. And he spoke no English – he spoke only French – and the man answered him in French.'”

And that is the story of how my grandmother, Reine Eugenie Honoree Ajas Kirsch, came to be born in America, in New York City, which to her eyes, and all her life long, was the only real city in the world.

A few of the long-standing rituals without which I fear I might float away:

A daily to-do list, made each morning at dawn and returned to throughout the day, only three of which, in twenty-five years and to the best of my recollection, have ever been crossed out in their entirety.

Picturing each of my beloveds and blessing each in turn,  also at dawn.

Toffee-making with my daughters the entire month of December.

A Thursday late-night phone call with my best friend as she is driving home from her classes.

My mother telling me that “all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”

An annual birthday email from a friend of 30 years’ standing.

The filling in, week by week, month by month, year by year, of three blank journals, one for each of my children.

A daily long walk with my dog or his cousin.

The Y every other day, and the people I always see there and never speak to, but nod to in respectful greeting: the tall bald man on the stairmaster, the blond woman on the bike, the elderly woman with the bright orange tennis shoes, the two loud men side by side on their inclined treadmills from 5:30-6:30 a.m., the always-pleasant man at the check-in counter, the multi-tattooed weightlifting woman.

One small mug of hot strong coffee at dawn, with heavy whipping cream stirred in.

While waiting for our food in restaurants, playing rummy (and losing, continually, to the best rummy player I know).

Music, of all kinds, at all volumes, at all times of the day and night.

Listening to my father mispronounce my name (yes, I am his  daughter, and yes, he has mispronounced my name all my life) as Al-Oh-Sun.

Waking my children at 6:45 a.m.

Making sure that as much as possible in my life happens in threes or multiples of three.

An annual trip to Minnetonka Orchards, where the cider doughnuts and cider brats are  eaten in abundance.

Two narrow photos of eyes, brown and hazel, belonging to two girls who live in this house.

A photo of two street signs, taken by my best friend, at the intersection of Joy St. and Mt. Vernon St. (points to those who can name the city)

A 2/3 eaten box of Oreos, hidden under a plastic grocery bag so no one else will find it.

A black stapler.

A poorly functioning Nokia cell phone.

A mostly-used tube of Burt’s Bees beeswax lip balm.

A black curly-haired dog curled on the floor.

An ivory mesh bag bought at Value Village in Richfield.

A washed and ready-to-return empty Cedar Summit Farms heavy cream bottle, for which I will receive $2.50 if and when I actually return it to the store from whence it came.

A 2008 summer medical form for Camp Icaghowan.

A letter written on Batman and Robin stationery.

A “Swank Loves Retro” business card.

A nametag reading Lenny Faedo.

A Polaroid photo of a beach ball covered with stars.

A Polaroid photo of a doll’s head propped between the toes of a man’s foot.

A tiny plastic stake that reads “Cerastium, Snow in Summer.”

A large plastic bottle of Target brand Baby Lotion, the pump of which no longer works, a fact which necessitates complicated maneuvers in order to extract the lotion.

A check for $65 from Laptop Repair.

A black Precise Rolling Ball V5 Extra Fine pen.

1.”Is everything really $2/bag?”

“Yes. It’s Bag Day. Except for the clothes from the Finer Boutique.”

“How much are the clothes from the Finer Boutique?”

“$5/bag.”

2. An elderly man pulling one carefully folded men’s T-shirt after another from the bottom of a stack, shaking it out, staring at it, and tossing it to the side.

3. A large man stroking his chin as he gazed at box after box of brown plastic teacups, plates, and bowls – restaurant surplus – and a large woman wearing a Rummage Volunteer apron standing patiently next to him.

“How does $10 sound?” she said. “For the whole lot.”

The large man stood and stroked his whiskery chin.

“I’ll give you five,” he said.

4. A tan cowboy hat with a feather and a ribbon, hanging on top of a bank of spotlights.

5. A VHS copy of Austin Powers, International Man of Mystery, shelved next to Favorite Bible Stories for Modern Children.

6. An enormous automatic bread baker, perhaps the first one ever made, marked $12, being muscled into a Kowalski’s grocery paper bag by a middle-aged woman.

Rip.

“The bag tore,” the woman said to a Rummage Volunteer-apron wearing man. “Can I still get it for the $2/bag price?”

7. A table full of little potted perennials, marked down from $2/apiece to $1/apiece to $.50/apiece to 3/$.50.

8. A small girl dancing around a used Mickey Mouse high chair while her mother examined it.

“But a baby might have thrown up on it!” she said.

“A baby certainly threw up on it,” her mother said. “That’s what babies do. They throw up, they poop, they pee, they eat, they screech. If they weren’t so cute we’d kill them.”

I came out of my house yesterday with two dogs and a big “For Rent” sign. The dogs, knowing they were on their way to the dog park, streaked to the car and jumped and panted at the backseat door. I opened the door and they leaped in, wild to get going. (Is there anything an urban dog loves more than a dog park?) Then a large blue sedan, the kind that my grandmother would have driven, slanted up behind my car, its hind end jutting into the street, provoking a few quick beeps from other passing cars.

“Excuse me?” the driver called. “Excuse me?”

I was trying to muscle the For Rent sign, which is big, into the not-big trunk of my not-big car, so I turned to the driver and smiled politely and held up one finger.

“Excuse me?”

The sign made it into the trunk and I walked up to the driver’s window, which was rolled down. A blue handicapped sign dangled from her rearview mirror. She was an older woman with a nimbus of gray hair, peering up at me. One hand clutched the wheel and the other held the Classifieds section of the newspaper, carefully folded to the “Apartments for Rent” section, several of which were circled with pencil.

“Are you renting an apartment here?” the woman said, nodding toward my house.

“Not here exactly, but three blocks away. Are you looking for an apartment?”

She nodded vigorously. “Yes. Yes I am.”

“I’m not sure what sort of place you’re looking for,” I said, “but the one I’m renting is huge and pricey.”

“How much is it?”

I told her. She nodded again.

“Thank you,” she said.

I knew that thank you. I knew that nod. I’ve given that thank you and that nod myself, many a time. It’s the nod of someone who has immediately crossed something off her mental list because no matter how much she might want it – the apartment, a trip, the daily special at a fancy restaurant, a year’s tuition at a private college, the dress with the daisies on it – it’s too expensive. Far too expensive.

I looked at the woman. Her eyes betrayed her anxiety. The circled classifieds were smearing under her grip. She didn’t look like someone who would know about Craigslist or the online ads. In her clean sedate sedan she looked like a woman who should be living in a house with a long-paid-off mortgage, filled with belongings gathered over a lifetime. Family photos on the walls. Why was she roaming the streets of Uptown Minneapolis, looking for an apartment? I pictured the long flight of stairs to that big apartment three blocks away. I pictured the bed and couch and dining table and chairs being hauled up those stairs by movers much younger than she. The handicapped sign dangling from her mirror.

“Well, the good thing is that you’re looking at a good time of the year,” I said. “There are so many For Rent signs up all around the neighborhood.”

She nodded.

“I know you’ll find a place that’s just right for you,” I said.

She nodded. I nodded. The dogs behind me leaped and scrabbled at the partially-open window of the backseat of my car, which is trashed, filled with dog hair and food wrappers and cd covers and dust and the detritus of children and dogs and a thousand errands. The older woman put her car in gear and put her blinker on and peered behind her to see if it was safe to pull out. On down the street she went, the ads still clutched in one hand.