A56
Collective Memory
Excerpt from novel: A longitudinal case study into motherlessness.

there was this huge pane of glass in the house,

the width of a door and ten feet tall.
looking at it now
the thing is like a parody of those movies with a chase scene,
the one where two guys are walking by
with a big pane of glass that exists only to shatter
in some magnificent way.

the opening to my room was two-doors wide
and right at the entrance to the house,
so everyone could look into the room all the time.
my dad had the blurred glass pane installed to close off half of the opening,
and then i put up this big black curtain
to give me some illusion of privacy.

my friend neldie and i were playing in the living room
(because the tv in my room was broken)
and an explosion filled the house
heating up the whole cul de sac, i’m sure
and it was followed by a storm of glass shards
crashing to the floor for what seemed like a full minute.
my dad’s wife ran into the living room,
her expression at once angry and concerned,
and asked if we were alright.

i told her we were fine and asked what happened.

“your father just shot a gun in the house.”
and the way she emphasized it
sounded like she was blaming me
for having a father.

we walked out of the living room
toward the millions of broken bits.
my eyes stared at the glass pile,
then moved to the smoking crater in the hardwood,
then to my father’s trembling knees,
then to the pistol in his hand,
and the way his eyes looked like they were stapled open
staring into my room.
i could tell the way he strayed that he was both drunk and medicated.

—i checked, he said, shaking his head.
he sounded like a child, blaming the world for his mistakes.
—i swear i checked.

i put on some shoes and walked across the glass
following the slug’s beeline
from the dent in the floor to a hole in my dresser.
the house was quiet with shame.
“i found it,” i said.
neldie called her mom to come pick her up.
she didn’t come over again after that,
but neldie and her parents frequently invited me over to theirs.

Samson Manoah