Those Old Chromosomes Were Known to Ramble

by Ian Hall

My mother’s father was a fount
of cockeyed wisdom. Wooed by the far

flung & farther fetched, he left
my mother & her own sainted mother

in an ungentlemanly lurch. Said he was fishing
for dignified work. Something that wouldn’t just

make ends meet, but knock
the socks clean off his naysayers. Instead

he spent the next quarter-century warming
the ache out of his hands at the trash fire of first one

& then another roustabout, wheeling & dealing
under that big arch in St. Louis. He held

a jester’s court among the hyena
cackles of the hitchhikers, hoods, & scarcely

employed while his wife & children waited
in line for government cheese. He turned tail

when my mother was six, so her memories of him
are mostly acid-washed. But one sticks out

like a beach-going albino: he was huddled over
the sink, pretending to do dishes. Every so often, he’d toss

a glance back at her in her highchair, pantomime
a rag across some crumb-spangled tableware, then peer

performatively around the corner of the alcoved kitchen
into the den. Her mother was out there battling

the landline. All this tomfooling sent my own mother
into a laughcry fit. Against the floor tile

her chair made wispy clatter. This mustn’t have sat right
with her father, cause the clownlines on his face

all vanished. For some fruitcake reason, he held up
two pieces of fine china, padlocked his

eyes to hers, & let them sail. By the legs of her chair
they made landfall. In her haste, my mother’s

mother got lassoed up in the phone cord, & laid
waste to a hunk of wall. What on earth? Her mother said, tripping

into the kitchen. Her father was already sweeping up
the commotion. Why that girl there got a wild hair

& started playing frisbee, he said. Stark
raving, my grandmother administered some frontier

justice for the first & last time in her life. Then tucked
my mother back in her highchair with a strawberry

rump. She bumbled back to the den all
flush-faced. & once again it was simply

father & daughter. Cozied up with them in the kitchen: burly
silence. The only sound was the ominous

plink of the faucet. Her father was throwing long
looks out the window overtop the sink. Through pinched

sobs, my mother could see his vast Jutland back
ciphering against cheap polyester. Now little

girl—he finally said, still ogling the window glass—there’re
just two keys to a successful life. The first: don’t blab


everything you know.

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