A9
Collective Memory
Excerpt from novel: A longitudinal case study into motherlessness.

we were playing charades one night at this guy dalberck’s place.

it was me,
my wife,
dalberck from work,
dalberck’s wife bernice,
and dalberck’s brother byron.
just the five of us
playing after-dinner charades
in dalberck’s living room.
it was berck’s turn
and when i handed him the card
i accidentally saw that it said “raining” on it.
i thought maybe i should tell him that i’d seen it,
but then i thought –
well i didn’t want to stop him
before he had the chance to charade.

so here’s what he does for “raining”:
dal looks down at the card,
then just stands there in the middle of the room
and points over to the window
(it was raining out).
then he just stands there,
pointing at the window.
that’s the kind of guy dalb is.

they’re shouting out things like
“shelves?”
“bookcase!”
“is it… is it a specific book?”
“famous authors?”

and with every wrong guess
it looks like dalberck’s eyebrows are
tiring
out
so he walks closer to the window
and points again,
more emphatically.
“window?” they say,
“blinds!”
and i’m watching this, knowing all the while that
“raining” is what he’s getting at.
it’s the funniest thing i’ve watched without smiling.
i want to just yell out “raining!” to end the anxiety in all of us,
but more than that I want to see him
work his way through this.

dalb is the kind of person you could spend all night trying to talk with him
and you’d still know him the same as the day you met him.
charades, though, gives a part of you away,
any way you play, it just does.
charades informs the audience:

i) How this individual forms connections.
ii) How well this individual communicates without language.
iii) This individual’s threshold of patience.

so watching him here, failing entirely to communicate
(or else just refusing to do something as ridiculous
as holding his arms over his head
and mimic raindrops with his fingertips)
was mesmerizing.

six times he points at the window,
each time more intently,
until he’s tapping on the glass.

his wife is trying harder than any of them
her face a prune
yelling out
“window!”
“glass?”
“dirty?”
“fingerprints!”
“sill?”
“pane!”
and at that he nodded.

then out of nowhere dalberck stands up too straight,
tugs at his sweater and says,
“alright.”
he says, “if it were any colder outside, it’d be snowing.”
and after that it’s quiet for at least seven seconds —
everyone silently deciding who would bring up the faux pas
that berck had broken the only rule of charades.

in that moment there’s this strange tension
that wasn’t sexual but reminded me of sexual tension.
finally bernice goes,
“you can’t say anything in charades, dalberck.”
and he’s standing there staring at her when
all of the sudden byron goes,
“oh! i know it!”

dalberck’s face lights up,
and he points at his kid brother with such pride,
both faces beaming,
and then byron goes
“hail! ‘if it was any colder outside,
it’d be snowing.’ it’s hail!”
then dalberck exhales his everything
and walks toward the coat rack.
“where are you going?” bernice says,
“for a walk” he says,
“but it’s raining!” she says.
and at that he lets out a single cackle, turns and points at her
and says, “THANK YOU.” while tapping the end of his nose.
dalberck then walks out the front door
into the biggest thunderstorm of the past four years.

i feel like i know him better from that one evening
than i know my own father.
i feel like if i asked him,
he could forgive all my sins.

Samson Manoah