As I hold out my hand with the crown pieces, the tiny, almost invisible scars across my top knuckles remind me of my mother’s lips so softly on my fingers. At Papa’s funeral, when I was twelve, in the hot parking lot, I had slammed my hand in the car door. Mom took my hand and kissed each fingertip with her soft lips. I liked that she was kissing my fingers so gently, her manicured fingers wrapped around mine. It hurt, but I liked it. Then, without warning, I started to cry. My whole chest cavity and my abdomen sucked in and out with each wail. Mom told me, she promised me, it would all be okay. She cried, and I cried, as the hearse pulled out onto the road toward the cemetery.
Mom bent my fingers one at a time, slowly back and forth, to see whether they could move. Her coral-colored nails at the tips of each finger rocked mine back and forth to see whether they were broken. I passed muster on each finger. But I didn’t want her to stop. Then she put her arms around me. “I’m so sorry,” she said, “there’s nothing wrong, you don’t need to cry.” I was disappointed that my fingers weren’t hurt worse. I wanted to cry some more. I wanted my mom to hold me longer.
Now I look at my hand and the crown disintegrates in my palm.
These memories are my inheritance, not the pots, obviously not the skull or the crown. Who we were, is in these memories. Were we hideous people? That changes with perspective, with time, with holes filled, holes dug. Who we are, that will always be what remains.
Acknowledgments
My gratitude covers decades of people and places:
Many years ago in a class with Phillip Lopate, he sat me down and told me to look at my family with a wider lens, cast a view from experience, not innocence.
Then enter my graduate school teacher Laurie Alberts, who first called it memoir.
Sue William Silverman. What can I say, but she opened doors, both on the page and in the world for me. It would take a memoir to tell what all she has done for me.
Rachel Groves, my fiction friend who isn’t fictional at all, but who read more drafts than a person ever should and still remains a friend. Rachel, the other funny one here.
Katie Scott Crawford, my hiking buddy through grad school, who always saw the bright side, even when there wasn’t one. She has the biggest heart of everyone combined.
Over twenty years some version made a pass through all my writing groups. Thank you for reading in various forms, Judi (Yudi) Hendricks, Janet Fitch, Emil Wilson, Judy Reeves, Lavina Blossom, Lisa Loop, Beverly Magid, Denise Nicholas, Rita Williams, Victoria Clayton-Alexander, Jodi Hauber, Lola Willoughby, Rochelle Low, Anita Santiago, Nancy Spiller, Hope Edelman, Liz Berman, Christine Schwab, Amy Friedman, Samantha Dunn, and so many others.
Meredith Resnick sat beside me in my first nonfiction class, writing and laughing, and meeting me halfway to write more drafts, to share our writing woes, for many years.
Holly Robinson, a long-distance friend whom I met along the way, made me laugh and pointed out a crucial element was missing from the manuscript.
Patty Santana who highlighted the parts I didn’t fully understand and said, “This is where the heart is, do more of that.”
Susan Henderson, who got excited about a gothic memoir and read an early draft, who willingly and enthusiastically asked if she could.
All my students who, it’s been said before but it’s true, inspire me. They persevere and then persevere some more.
David Ulin, workshop partner and who handed me a shovel and told me to keep digging. Check out our manuscript workshops!
Mark Drew, Gettysburg Review editor, for publishing an excerpt and making me think this story really could be something the outside world would be interested in.
Monica Holloway for giving me insight on telling family stories.
Mary Gordon for enlightening and inspiring me on the ways of telling our fathers’ secrets with our walks in Saratoga Springs and her own memoir, Shadow Man.
Bob and Peg Boyers for all their love and support (and dinners!).
New York State Summer Writers Institute for the time and space and literary atmosphere that inspired me to ache for so much more in my writing, where this and other stories were penned. All the Institute colleagues and students where conversations are endlessly inspiring. Most especially Claire Messud—when we compared our stories of lives overseas as children and our parents who took us there I knew I wasn’t alone.
Alicia Christiansen, Emily Wendell, Patty Beutler, editors extraordinaire, and all the folk at UNP who helped make this a book worth reading.
Lee Martin for suggesting the obvious question, which gave me the answers.
The newest members of my family, Neil and Elisse, and Adam with his kindred song, “Ghost Town.”
Eber, who made certain I didn’t die inside my writer’s attic, served me hot meals, put up with me and walked the dog. The person who never wavered in his belief even when I wanted to give it all up and start a pie shop instead.
Fred, Elmo, Mr. B, and Hazel, I couldn’t have done it without you walking across my desk (or keyboard—thanks Fred, the greatest ghost of all).
About Amy E. Wallen
Amy E. Wallen is associate director at the New York State Writers Institute and teaches creative writing at the University of California, San Diego Extension. Her first novel, Moon Pies and Movie Stars, was a Los Angeles Times bestseller.
In the American Lives Series
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To order or obtain more information on these or other University of Nebraska Press titles, visit nebraskapress.unl.edu.
When We Were Ghouls Page 27
