field for a rhino
"Let's stop at 7-Eleven!"
"7-Eleven doesn't sell flowers, Mom."
"You never know," [and i don't know what else, because I tuned out after that].
my big sister voices the feeling I have walking in - "there's something so exciting about walking into gas stations, it's like this unexplainable feeling of joy."
"prob'ly cause our brains associate them with road trips. and, like, snacks that we were never allowed to even ask for otherwise."
"oh, right. the poverty trauma."
we both laugh. aisles of candy, gum, chips, microwave meals, sodas, beef jerky and Takis and pre-packaged donut holes and Krispy Kreme apple fritters, a freezer box with Dippin' Dots - no flowers.
we find what we're looking for, though. one at first, then a second trip to the register upon second thought.
we're back in the car. we drive through flat land, a horizon without mountains; foreign, to me. no blues or purples outlined against the sky - just the flat meeting of heaven and earth that stretches as far as the eye can see, and even further. it feels... bare. naked. unprotected. exposed. the only trees are dripping with spanish moss; or climbing towards the sky with no leaves or branches until the very, very top; or tumbling over the edges of fences with thick, shiny leaves that look as though they could be snapped in half, leaves that conceal green mangoes which hang impossibly with weight that seems improbable for any tree to hold.
no pine. no fir. no maple, or oak, or cherry, or birch. but the thing I notice most of all is the silence. there are no cardinals to wish upon, no signs of ancestors and lost loved ones flitting between the trees with never-ending chirrups of song as they check on those of us left behind.
gravel crunches, mom makes two wrong turns (which is two less than average) and one haphazard u-turn ("It's fine, it's Florida,") and then we're on soft, green sod, cut & laid precisely. there's some tree I've only seen once before casting shade over stones laid out row by row, and my feet tread carefully, softly, dancing towards the other silhouetted figures waiting for us.
we are greeted with arms upraised, hoots & hollers, and "about time!" shouts of jest. it feels unfitting, but thus so is our family - nonconventional. I give my aunt a hug and crouch down to the level of the youngest cousin with hand outstretched. "you told me that you liked ballet class so we thought you might like this one." she takes the white stuffed mouse with big, blue eyes and soft fur in its pink tutu and crown.
my mom places a little dragon, blue and starry and velvet with wings that crinkle and cotton-stuffed spikes, down among the votives: a halloween decoration, stone angels, a plastic race car, an empty vase. "see? now you and your brother have matching buddies."
I stay squatted down. "This is kind of weird for you, huh?" a nod from the six-year-old bilingual artistic genius. "But you know what? It's kind of cool that you got to know grandma and so did your big brother. I bet they're hanging out together right now." a smile, now, from Con Tho.
we chat for a minute, my aunt & uncle joking that they've laid down here before just to try to imagine what it would be like to stare up at that sky forever, and how it's not a bad place to lay down forever. morbid humor, sure, but humor is a Blake family specialty. I don't speak to my other siblings.
when we walk away I try not to think of the bones beneath my feet. I don't look back, but I don't need to. I know what's there - a little blue dragon in a sea of grey stones, carrying our stories and the tension of dysfunction between siblings towards the skies, and the tiniest one of them all reads:
Francis Dinh "Tê Giác" Blake
October 23, 2015 - February 5, 2016
Beloved Son and Grandson
I wish I could tell you I saw a cardinal or two, then, but I didn't. I imagine that my grandmother, holding him, would not smile. things don't work that way, she'd say, ever pragmatic. so I think it to myself instead, as I say it to you now - you'll just have to trust me. I know.