My Family History
By Justin Kesselring
I don’t expect a single one of you to believe this. I’m not even sure why I believe it myself. I was asked to do this report, as were all of you, and at first I had considered making the whole thing up, creating a fanciful story of how my family came over from Japan in the late 70’s and lived the American dream. But that would be simply untrue, and if my family has taught me anything its that honor comes first.
There was no point in asking my parents about our family history. Bringing up our roots was like inquiring after a ghost in the attic. I knew where I had to go if I wanted answers, who I would have to talk to. My grandfather lives in a nursing home now. Although to say he lives there is an overuse of the word “live.” I hate that place. I imagine it’s a sort of training ground for Hell, seasoning and tenderizing you in preparation for the real thing. Mom and Dad haven’t been there since they dropped Grandpa off over a year ago. They don’t get along very well, gramps and my parents. They tried to get me to call him ojiisan. They tried to make him stop drinking with his bathrobe untied when company was over. Sometimes when he’d get real drunk he’d stomp around the neighborhood, his thread-bare, untied bathrobe flapping like a cape in the wind as he raved like half-naked prophets always do. Apparently the suburban upper-middle class don’t like that too much. And I guess after a while my parents got sick of persuading the cops not to jail him for the night.
You may think that since my grandfather and I share my parents’ disdain that we share a special bond of some kind. Let me just stop that train of thought right there and tell you that we don’t. Don’t get me wrong, its not that I don’t like him. It’s more like we’re not of the same species. I often tried to make small talk with him over cold cereal, tried to draw out of him what his plans were for the day. He’d stare at me like I was speaking elephant, and if I was lucky he might string several sticky words together to pronounce some nonsensical condemnation on “kidsthesedays.” That was my gramps and me; like 2 peas in a pod, except one of the peas was actually a pumpkin and no where near the pod.
I went to his nursing home yesterday, although they didn’t call it a nursing home at all.
***
“Assisted Adult Living Community,” the kiosk announced in a deceptively comforting hue of beige and stucco. As if you could change everything simply by changing its name. Both Mom and Dad had to stay late at work, as usual, and I’m not aloud to drive alone with only a permit, so I walked the 2 miles in the mist alone. It was one of those blurry, autumn, Puget Sound days. The kind where cars come and go like banshees; only their watery eyes visible at first, then they are upon you in an instant and gone once again into nothingness. I passed under the towering portico and between the huge cement potters standing guard like verdant sentinels. The automatic doors opened spastically and the smell hit me like a punch in the face. It was the acrid smell of needles, old gauze, disinfectant, and warmed over urine. Ashley tells me that I’m immature but give me a break. Does everyone else enjoy the smell of bedpans? Besides, I’m only 15; America encourages me to be a child until I hit 18, when I’ll magically grow up. But that’s a different story for another time.
I knew the way to his room and began to walk down one of the sterilized, over polished hallways. Just being there made my skin feel chapped and my throat feel hoarse. Nurses rushed about, appearing and vanishing through doors. One of them argued impatiently with an iron faced old woman about when she would go to the bathroom. Both of them looked battle-hardened enough. Who would win out was anybody’s bet, but I secretly put my money on the old lady.
I made it to his room and was unsurprised to find it empty, the only visible life a barely-color TV sputtering some 80’s sit-com into a darkened corner. I thought about going back home, just taking an “F” on the report, and with it taking the lecture I would get from my parents about winners and losers and which am I going to be, but I was already there. And besides, I knew exactly where he would be.
I made my way to the Rec room and found it just as it always was. Elderly people were clumped and bunched lethargically around the room, slouching and huddling like new born babies. The nurses had told me before that they could never make gramps go to bed willingly, that they had to wait for him to fall asleep in here and then wheel him back to his room like a sedated hostage. I spotted him in front of a painfully clean window, slouched in a wheelchair with his back to me. Little sprigs of gray hair clung precariously to his scalp, as if a wayward sneeze might pluck them away. Growing up he had never seemed a small man. Sitting there now he seemed small, fragile, and withering. My stomach tensed with apprehension and I walked his way, each step deliberate and singular. I stood next to him for some time before he stopped staring out the window and realized I was there. He stared blankly up at me, eyes as sterile as the glossy floor.
“Oh… it’s you,” he muttered. He returned his eyes to the outside world, the world of colors and dirty floors, of home cooked meals and bacteria, of independence and family.
“Yeah, it’s me, Grandpa,” I said as cheerfully as I could muster.
We both said nothing for a long, awkward while. I turned my head about as if there were things to look at and fiddled with my pinky ring. He just stared out the window, his face placid.
“So…” he said slowly, phlegm rattling like loose bones in his throat, “How are you doing in school?”
“It’s okay. Ashley wants to try out for the cheer leading squad, like, both of us. But I was like, ‘Hello! Japanese here!’ And she totally knows I refuse to stuff. But you know…”
I trailed off, feeling stupid and trivial. He continued to stare straight ahead, unfazed.
“You’re a good kid, Jessie,” he mumbled. I was silent. That was unexpected.
“Uh, yeah… thanks,” I bumbled, “I’m trying to decide what I want to do with my life, you know? I like to draw, but not anime. Everyone is always like all, ‘but you’re Japanese!’ and I’m like, ‘Duh!’ But, you know, I do like to draw, and maybe I could do that.” I felt like every word I said was progressively dumber than the last, but Grandpa didn’t seem to notice. He only stared on, a flesh representation of a wax dummy.
“Careful…” he said, barely audible, “Chase your dream and you just might catch her.”
It, I thought in correction, You just might catch it.
An argument broke out over some card game on the opposite side of the room. It was probably Bridge or some other old-timey card game like that. A nurse planted her burly knuckles on the table and grumbled polite threats to the two men involved. They made faces at each other that said things like, “How about I break your neck?” but moved little else.
“I’ve got this report to write. I knew Mom and Dad wouldn’t help me, so I was hoping…. It’s about our family history.”
His face remained muted, betraying his thoughts to no one, but he turned slightly to look me in the eye now. The brown of his eyes were so dark they might as well have been black. Lines traced every inch of his face, the touch of memories long past. Brows hung droopily over his eyes, too tired to fight gravity any more and smitten with something more like cat whiskers than eye brows. He wore his years in every way. Unblinking he stared into my eyes unabashedly, weighing out his granddaughter. It was unnerving. I looked away with a twitch.
“I suppose somebody ought to know, eh?” he said suddenly with a grunt. “I tried to tell your father, tried to tell him a long time ago. He wouldn’t hear it. I guess I don’t blame him.” He stopped to wet his lips with his small, pink tongue, then stared out the window again. I waited expectantly for him to continue but he only breathed long, wheezing breaths.
“Grandpa… you were going to tell me about our family history, remember?”
He blinked and made little movements with his head as he gestured with his hands.
“I know what I was going to do! Don’t tell me what I was going to do! Christ! You kids can’t wait 2 seconds for anything, can you?” A nurse distributing little paper cups of medication looked our way, her brow furrowing in preparation for a fight, but Grandpa was quiet once more and the nurse resumed her drudgery; distributing tiny doses of sleep, relief, one more day of life.
“I’m sure you’ve heard of adjoined twins being born…” he began haltingly, “Sometimes they share a heart or something else vital to living, something they can’t do without…. Well, I believe that two people can be born sharing a spirit.”
I must have let some of my cynicism leak from my expression because he looked at me and shut his mouth with a snarl.
“I’m sorry, Grandpa, really. Keep going… please?” I thought I had a pretty good pouty face but I knew that sort of thing didn’t work on Gramps. He stared, granite faced, out through the mist, and though his jaw didn’t relax he continued again.
“I’m explaining this all wrong. I’ll start over. It was the 60’s, and that says a lot right there. Why, in the 60’s there were strange things happening that everyone knew about, and there were the stranger things that no one knew about because they were too wild to even believe. Well there was this fellow, a white guy in his late teens. He was a real mutt, a mixed breed, more races in him than fish in the sea. A real All-American. He wanted to get out and see and experience the world.”
“Grandpa,” I broke in, “Don’t you think you should start with our ancestors. Like the Japanese ones?” His tired, old eyes flared and I knew I should’ve kept my mouth shut.
“Oh, so you’re going to tell the story?” he muttered angrily. “Okay, fine. Tell the story, Jessie. Because by Hell I’m not going to anymore! So go ahead, tell the story.”
“Grandpa…” I moaned. “Come on, I didn’t say that. Go ahead. I won’t interrupt anymore, I promise!”
“Well, you better not… or by the sad, little hairs on your father’s chin, I will shut up and never speak again!” He eyed me warily, daring me to open my mouth again. I remained silent and he continued.
“He was a senior in high school, only 3 more months to freedom, but he felt like he couldn’t wait, like the world couldn’t wait. And besides that he knew that his parents would try to keep him tied down forever. Andy (that was his name, you see) was what they called a narcoleptic, like me. During the day he would fall asleep just like that. Sometimes right in the middle of conversations. And at night he would wake up over and over, unable to sleep correctly when he was supposed to be sleeping. Anyhow, his parents felt it just wasn’t safe for him out there in the world, but Andy didn’t mind his propensity for sleep so much. Oh, it certainly got in the way. A gal can get pretty upset when she’s leaning in close for a kiss and finds you’re asleep. But like I said, it wasn’t that bad.”
I wondered if Grandpa had forgotten that I knew he was narcoleptic, or if he was explaining it all to try and draw me into talking again. Either way, it didn’t matter. I pressed my lips tightly together, as if words waited like escaped animals from the zoo, just itching to burst out into freedom.
“When he did fall asleep he would dream he was someone else, someone else who was free, and he loved every second of it. Of course, when he awoke the dreams would evaporate and he’d find himself grasping at something he couldn’t quite remember.
“Well, one morning the family is sitting around the breakfast table and Andy’s father starts going on about this story in the paper, about these depraved hippies ruining the country. The story was only a snippet, really, just a little blurb about something that happened on the other side of the continent that was funny enough to mention, but not funny enough to acknowledge with a whole article. So Andy reads the little story for himself and is dumb founded, blown-away, totally flubberbungled. The evening before 3 hippies disguised as IRS bureaucrats had attempted to rob a corner store in Seattle. To their surprise the fellow that ran the store had something else in mind! Why, he beat the living tar out of those degenerates, sent them packing ashamed and empty handed.
“So, Andy reads the story and can’t believe it. He had dreamt the exact same thing the night before! He even remembered little details that the paper hadn’t given. Well, he exclaims to his parents that he had dreamt about it and his father tells him that he didn’t dream it, that it’s just something called déjàvu. But Andy knows better. Andy knows what he saw.”
Gramps was quiet again, his face the shape of remembrance. I had the impulse to jump start the story again but didn’t dare. An elderly pile of a woman was flipping through channels on a hi-def, flat screen television behind us. The thing looked far too new and awkward amidst the rag-tag couches, an eclectic and historical assortment of the last 5 decades. She settled on an all-day Jeopardy marathon. I had always wondered who watched those things.
“So…” Grandpa began again, “Uh, Andy… Andy continued on the next several weeks doing the normal high school thing; go to school, date your girl, do your homework, hang with the guys, sleep, you know. But he didn’t forget what he had dreamt, and the more he thought about it the more he realized he needed to meet this man in Seattle.
“Well, he bided his time, and soon enough the opportunity came. He was at a party, the kind his parents would never have let him go to, the kind he had to sneak out the window for. There were a group of hippies at the party, 5 of them, all of them in their 20’s. They were on a journey to discover America, and they were headed for the North West. Now Andy was no hippie, but he knew this was his opportunity; it was now or never. He told those hippies that he was searching for the motherland too, and that he wanted to come with so he could find her.
“Hippies weren’t the brightest of characters, but whether or not they believed him they embraced him with enthusiasm. He was in. He told them he just had to go home and pack some things, but they told him that he didn’t need that stuff anymore; he was one of them now. Reluctantly he decided it was for the best anyways. If he went home he would risk discovery, and that wouldn’t do at all. So he left everything he had at his parents, keeping only the clothes on his back, what little money he had, and the newspaper article in his pocket. That night he slept with his new friends in their VW bus, burying his face in his jacket in an attempt to escape the putrescence of 5 unwashed bodies.
“He awoke the next morning to find he was no longer in Connecticut (that was where he lived, you see). Unfamiliar highway scenery flew by, distorted in the tiny, round window in the side of the van. And that was how the next several days passed. Sometimes they would pull off the highway, drive through some cow pasture until they got a good vibe and they would stop and sleep under the stars. They always managed to find something to make a fire with, and gathered around the fire they would talk about metaphysics, eat what little food they had bought along the way, and get higher than eagles. It was a new experience for Andy, not one that he particularly liked, but if he was to get to Seattle he had to play along.
“His little nap attacks still came and went and he would often awake to the laughter of the others. When this happened he would pull out the crumpled newspaper clipping in his pocket, the one about the attempted robbery, and he would read it over and over. He was starting to remember more when he dreamt. There was nothing as exciting as the night of the robbery, but the dreams always had the same man in them; little pieces of another life.
“It went on like that for about a week or so, he wasn’t really sure about which day it was anymore. He woke up one day from a narcoleptic nap, slumped on the side of the road against a tree in Montana. He was used to waking up in weird places, but the last place he remembered being was in the van, bumping along I-94. The tree he was slumped against was solitary and alone. He was alone. His cash was gone, and he felt as if things had been done to him, things not worthy of decent conversation. He had wondered how they always seemed to have enough money…”
Gramps trailed off once again, staring intently out into the rapidly approaching night. The inhabitants of the Rec room had thinned considerably. Many, I’m sure, were already swaddled in their beds, lost in the bliss of sleep. The TV continued in its marathon, unwatched, waiting for someone to liberate it from its noisy toils. I looked back down at Grandpa, ready to suggest that we retire to his room. There was no need. His tired eyes had shut with the weight of mountains and he wheezed long, slow breaths.
I pushed his wheelchair quietly down the hall back towards his room. The back, left wheel wagged spastically, unable to keep time with the rest of the wheels. Repeating panel lights passed above us like an inverted landing strip. I didn’t dislike this place as much as I thought I had. Or at least I was warming to it. It was a strange place though. It was like the inhabitants had at some point started going backwards in time, needing more and more supervision and care until finally they exited into the next world in the same state they had entered this one. I smiled as I imagined a baby-shaped portal between each world.
To my relief a nurse just outside of Gramp’s room offered to help me get him into bed. Even in his diminished state I didn’t think I could lift him. The nurse was male, tall, strong jawed, and very cute, but I tried to act like I didn’t notice. He planted Grandfather beneath the sheets as tenderly as a mother with a newborn. As he exited the room he smiled and gave some sort of instructions, but I was too busy acting disinterested and avoiding eye contact to remember what he said. I walked stealthily to the TV through the dim room and silenced the box with a knob.
“He’s just a boy, Jessie. They don’t bite… well, most of them anyway,” Grandpa mumbled sleepily.
I felt my ears burn red as my attention snapped back to him. He was almost smiling.
“I thought you were asleep,” I blurted, embarrassment flooding out of every pore.
“Well I was until that ape dumped me here like a pile of rocks!”
I sat gingerly at the foot of the bed, considering sticking up for the nurse, but I knew better. Dissuading Gramps was like dissuading a charging rhino.
“Well…” I probed, “Since you’re awake do you wanna finish your story?”
Now he did smile; a full, warm sunshine kind of smile, the kind of which I had never seen from Grandpa.
“You’re a good kid, Jessie.”
I smiled in turn and looked at my pinky ring as I turned it round and round on my finger.
“Yeah… you said that.” I muttered.
“Okay… where was I then?”
“Andy, he woke up alone in some field in Montana.”
“Right, right… did I say Montana? Well, that sounds right.” He paused to clear his throat. It sounded like he was rearranging his trachea.
“Alright, so basically he realized he’d been taken advantage of, in more ways than one. Huh! ‘Free love’ they called it. More like ‘Take what you want love.’ But our Andy wasn’t one to give up. He was made of tougher stuff than that! So he started walking with his thumb up in the air, figuring he’ll get there one way or another. Well, sure enough a trucker has pity on the poor fellow, pulls over and tells him that he’s headed to Olympia, but he can take him as far as Snoqualmie.
“So, Andy makes it all the way to Seattle like that; hitching rides with truckers and eating whatever stale sustenance they offer him. But as he finally reaches Seattle he realizes finding this fellow, this dream fellow, is going to be difficult. You see, this was before they had computers and internets and all these other blasted contraptions you kids have dreamt up. A man use to have to use his instinct, his intuition, and a thing you’ve probably never heard of called a phone book.
“So Andy starts asking around, showing everyone the crumpled, little article, inquiring after the gentleman who fought off the 3 hippies. But it’s a different kind of place out here. People act differently, and they did so even more back then. Mostly Andy just got brush-offs and rude excuses, but there were enough friendly people that he finally found himself standing in front of a downtown corner store, the kind that’s built into the bottom of some high-rise. Its gray windows were covered in dirty steel mesh, behind the mesh were faded signs proclaiming various sales that had long since expired. I’m sure he was apprehensive, but like I told you; he was made of tougher stuff than most. So our boy Andy put aside his hesitation and charged through the door and right up to the counter.”
He coughed suddenly, his whole body shaking with the force of it. I felt as if I should do something but remained anxiously immobile, my hand half out stretched. He pointed to a cup of water just out of reach on the night stand. I snatched it up and placed it into his quivering hand. He fumbled for the straw several times before it landed firmly between his thin lips. He gulped shakily several times, handed the cup back to me, and closed his tired, bleary eyes. He strained for each breath, as if each gasp was a mile.
“It’s okay, Grandpa,” I said apologetically, “You don’t have to finish the story. I’ll come back another day. You get some rest.” And I meant it, although I wanted desperately to hear how the story ended. I was pretty sure at this point that my report was shot. As fascinating as Grandpa’s tale was, it didn’t seem to have anything to do with our family history. I guess I would be getting that lecture from Mom and Dad after all.
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous!” he sputtered. “You stay right where you are. There’s no point in hearing a story if you’re not going to see it through.” He took several long breaths, the kind that made alarming rattling sounds, and continued.
“It wasn’t the right guy. The guy behind the counter, he was someone else. Turns out that the owner manned the night shift. Well, Andy, he walked out dejected and a little annoyed, but he figured he just has to wait for night. Patience was all he needed. But as he walked he noticed a metal stair in an alley leading up to a little apartment above the store. Now, you might not understand, but back then people had their instincts, and Andy knew his fate lay in that apartment. So, with no more than a pinch of hesitation, he took those stairs 2 at a time and he gave the old door several firm raps. No one answered.
“Now, our boy Andy was a respectable young man, but he knew that he had come all this way for this moment… for this place… for what he had to do right then. What it was he had to do he hadn’t known, but it was in that moment that things came clear.
“Andy twisted the knob and pushed open the door he had known would be unlocked… and he stepped through into his own apartment…. Everything was where he knew it would be; the stack of unread magazines on the old coffee table, the orange, glass ash-tray that overflowed with spent cigarette butts like a volcano. Even the stagnate beer bottles that sprouted about like weeds. He walked through the tiny living room slowly, seeing for the first time the apartment he had seen so many times before. The faded green paint on the walls, the burnt out bulb in the lamp, everything was where it should be. He had been there a thousand times, living through this dream, or perhaps dreaming of living. He sat on the threadbare couch, felt himself slide into its familiar, greasy imprint. Goosebumps bristled from his body like an earthquake in braille. Of course… if he had known what was happening, he would have run as fast as he could and never looked back. But how could he have known? How could WE have known?”
“Well… he got up and did the last thing, the only thing he knew to do. He gently pushed open the door to bedroom. And there he was… the man from his dreams. His journey was at its end. He had found him… Yume Shinzui. The man slept on a sagging, slender bed, a thin blanket twisting about him like seaweed. Andy approached him and reached out a trembling hand to the man’s shoulder. ‘Yume…’ he said, barely more than a whisper at first. The man didn’t respond, didn’t even stir in the slightest. He said it again, and louder, and he shook the man by the arm. Well, Andy began to feel one of his nap attacks coming on, and it was coming on hard, but he fought it with everything in him. He had to stay awake! He began to shout and shake the bed urgently, violently. The sleep in his eyes and limbs was almost too much to bear, but he only fought and shook and yelled with all the more urgency.”
Something was happening across the hall. A tiny beep had turned into a persistent squeal and nurses had appeared out of nowhere to rush into the tomb like room across the way.
“And then? What happened then?” I probed, almost pleaded.
“And then….” Gramps waivered, as if he himself was unsure of what had happened. “And then… I woke up.” We were both silent. The urgent shuffling in the next room was barely a far-off echo.
“Wait… the whole thing was a dream?” I twisted my face like I would wring out a rag.
“Jessie,” he said painfully as he turned to look me in the eye, “I was the dream.”
My mind hit a brick wall.
“I woke up… and for only a second… there standing in front of me was Andy, the young man I became in all of my dreams. He only stood there for a moment, staring, and then he dissolved into nothing. Just like that. And I woke up.”
“So….” My mouth kept opening but no words would form, like the spastic automatic doors that opened only to shut again.
“Christ, Jessie! Don’t you understand? He messed up! Andy did something that ought not be done. He forced us to both wake at the same time, and so upset the balance! He pushed himself into who-knows-where, and I didn’t dream about him for a long time. But several years back my narcolepsy came back and with it came Andy, pushing and pulling on my existence, trying to fight his way back in! For now, he is the dream and I am the dominant spirit twin, but if he manages to fight his way back to the surface… to assert himself as the dreamer… I don’t know what will happen. Me, my children, your father… you… you could all dissolve into dreams.”
My mind churned like a car wreck. I think I understood, and somehow I even believed. I had always known there was some dark reason why my family history seemed to abruptly begin with my Grandfather. Something that was too amiss to talk about.
“Gramps, I…” I started, but stopped short. The hairs in his nose whistled softly as he breathed the breaths of deep sleep. I sat immobile and detached, watching the man I had somehow never known slumber. I stood to my feet and gingerly pulled the monotone blanket to his chin, then kissed him ever so gently on his blotched, wrinkled forehead.
“I love you, Grandpa.”
I walked down the over-sterilized hallway as a human tide of pandemonium flowed around me. The clap of their shoes, their hollers and urgent calls, somehow managed to ignore my ear drums. Their presence barely registered in my pupils. I walked alone through them all, out through doors that jerked open before me, and was swallowed into the darkness and the mist, bones and all.
***
As I said at the beginning of the essay, I don’t expect any of you to believe this, but it is true nonetheless. My family history started in dreams, and likely one day it will return there. I don’t know what that means for me, but I have decided to search for others like myself and find out. If one day I don’t show up for school, if I disappear from this world altogether, just remember this; be careful when chasing after your dreams. You just might catch one.