leaving (dejando)
by Casey Jo Graham Welmers
We were on a large jet to Aruba and my dad wouldn’t stop singing the chorus to “Stir It Up.” My uncle was drunk on vodka he smuggled on board in a cheap plastic water bottle that grew increasingly crinkled with every thought of the plane plummeting from the sky in a fireball of twisted metal and unidentifiable human cremains. I lied and told the flight attendant I was adopted when she asked if my dad was my dad. I can’t remember if I said this sarcastically or not, so she may have actually believed me. She asked if I liked Phish and I thought she was talking about the fish you eat and said yes, only to realize she was referencing the band Phish when she said, you remind me of my daughter, she loves them. I doubt I could have picked Trey Anastasio out of a line-up, but I guess I fit the profile in tie-dye and beads and an ancient pair of Birkenstocks. The twin towers still punctuated the skyline in New York City, and I could have easily boarded the plane with a chunky shoe full of prison shanks were I so inclined. But all I carried was a macro-dose of mortification related to the intoxicated energy emanating from the XY chromosome bearing members of my group.
*****
I found my dad crying over a battered, plastic laundry basket brimming with unfolded laundry, poke-y tines sticking out of the sides and white socks and t-shirts still faintly scented with bleach, spilling over the faded brown edge. My mom had always folded his clothes in tight squares and impeccable rolls that he didn’t know how to pull off. She had died like a thunderclap the week before of a spontaneous carotid artery dissection. There’s a sound that remains suspended in the atmosphere after a tympani drum is struck - a kind of resonance antecedent to the boom. I heard it everywhere after her torturous blood vessel and our fragile lives ruptured. Pie crusts she made sat in the refrigerator and canned corn she bought in the cupboards and notes she had written lay scattered across the kitchen counter. Every corner of the house was covered in the same warped paradox of a person both everywhere and nowhere. A tragic cliche of a human, I scribbled bereft and dissected in my journal and spent too much time ruminating on bereavement and dissection, tracing the loopy letters of the words into my skin and onto walls and faux laminate tabletops. I showed Dad how to fold the shirts and pair and roll the socks, turning them into a tucked-up ball. We sat on the shaggy green carpet and rolled and folded and continued to cry long after the basket was unloaded, and the clothes had been tucked away into closets and drawers and empty spaces that would never seem full.
*****
My dad graduated from singing in his seat to sporadically dancing in the small aisle somewhere over the Florida Keys. Bob Marley’s herb and vocal stylings peaked in Dad’s bloodstream and the whole plane became unwilling guests to his interior reggae. I told the flight attendant my mom died hoping to elicit a sort of maternal sympathy. She either took me for a true basket case or an extremely unfortunate young woman. My uncle occasionally slurred a shut up or a sit down in my dad’s general direction, and once something about dental records, but otherwise assumed a slumped over posture for most of the flight. When the plane landed, he attempted to articulate his vodka-heavy legs into the correct upright orientation but collapsed into my dad who toppled into the beleaguered flight attendant, who had been dealing with their shit the entire time. She transformed then from professional and self-restrained steward of the air into a lit stick of dynamite. The entire plane drooled with vicarious pleasure as she dressed down the degenerates, screaming I’ve never had to deal with such ridiculous behavior and I feel sorry for your children and promising she’d have the authorities waiting for them in Detroit on the return flight if they made so much as a peep. My fellow passengers broke into enthusiastic applause, verifying with the thunderous clapping of their hands that the males in my family were an unmitigated disaster. I can’t say the women weren’t - we just did a better job of hiding it deep in the folds of our pink organs where it would later manifest in a varying array of vague and explicit ailments.
*****
Unless pocket change and crusty nickels scavenged from beneath sagging sofa cushions are considered an embarrassment of riches, we did not come from money. I was 20 the first time I flew on an airplane, a trip to South Carolina that left red blistering welts on top of my thighs as visual proof of my ignorance (in regard to the UV index anywhere below the 45th parallel). That was one month before my mom died. A postcard from me featuring Charleston’s historic district still clung to the refrigerator door with a cheap black magnet well past her funeral. My dad’s mom, my Grandma Charlotte, died just a month or so after my mom. She had suffered from bipolar disorder and the dissatisfaction of marrying a man she thought would carry her up the social ladder but failed to do so. She drank small rivers of Coca-Cola and wore pearlescent nail polish and drove a Ford Cougar with the vanity plate ‘MANIC.’ I remember her best leaning over the rail of our back patio, chain smoking as we wailed over the fresh corpse of the beloved family dog. I hope you cry that hard when I die! she barked though a cloud of Camel Lights. We didn’t. It was June, and we could pretend everything was fine because the heat of the sun scorched away all maladies, and swimming in Lake Michigan was absolution. The seasons changed and haunted jingles of Christmas started to echo down the aisles of the local supermarket. Dad announced we’d be going to Aruba for the holiday on Grandma Charlotte’s dime. I didn’t want palm trees and tropical drinks in Curacao blue. I wanted a mellow mom-sized hug, but all I had was her old robe, a fuzzy empty shell that seemed just as shocked by her absence as we were. Dad couldn’t stand the prospect of trying to cobble together some semblance of Christmas without my mom. It had always been her holiday. Her and Bing Crosby and Nat King Cole, heirloom ornaments and tinsel and a porcelain nativity scene with a three-legged donkey.
*****
Meerkats dig out safe cavities across their foraging grounds called bolt holes. They normally live together in a burrow, but in the event of imminent predation they can dart into a bolt hole for cover. We ended up living in bolt holes instead of a burrow after my mom died. My younger sister no longer lived at home and my brother was in his senior year of high school. The matriarch mantle foisted upon my unsuspecting head was cast iron, and escaping to college became my refuge. A pot of charred nacho cheese rotting away on the stove was the first thing I encountered back home after one of my more extended absences. My dad and brother flinched while I exploded vintage flash bulb style, white and hot, filaments busted. The saucepan wheeled from my maddest hand and ricocheted off the faucet. I screamed what would mom think of this and you know how to use a fucking sponge! Then we all cried and apologized through fat wretched tears. My uncle showed up sober to help scour away the layer of dust and grief cloying to every inorganic surface. I didn’t know how to climb out of my bolt hole of despair to comfort them in theirs. I still spent every night curled up with my dead mom’s bathrobe, staring at the neon clock, seeing in the bright green digits the dotted outline of her absent form in all my future somedays.
*****
I’m not sure if my dad scored cocaine in Aruba or brought it with him. My uncle continued to maintain a dangerously high blood alcohol level for the duration of the trip. Despite the paternal charades and liquor and the specter of my mom it was an entertaining experience. We visited dank, black caves and vivid white beaches and learned to scuba dive after wasting time on a ridiculous activity called snuba, which essentially involved throwing money into the abyss and then snorkeling while attached to an oxygen hose. We curried favor with a local man named Raul and ended up dining at his brother’s restaurant after my dad became hellbent on experiencing authentic island cuisine. I ordered fish so fresh it arrived with the head still attached. Yes, I remember thinking, I love FISH! My 17-year-old brother was served a full glass of straight tequila without question and nobody cared. The feminine animatronic voice in the hotel elevator became the highlight of our trip. She serenaded us with Spanish pronouncements dependent on our travel up or down, subiendo or dejando. I’m not sure why she was programmed to say dejando, which means “leaving,” instead of bajando, which means “going down,” and technically, is more accurate. But dejando was perfection—our anthem for the duration of the trip and years beyond. We teetered down steps and tumbled into cars and submerged ourselves in the salty, blue ocean all while announcing dejando in bright robotic tones. “Leaving, leaving, leaving!” Mom leaving, us escaping; running, fleeing, disappearing. Defecting from our own lives into an alternate reality, one where we had dollar bills and winter suntans and the hope that, someday, we could just stand still and be something like fine.
Photo of Casey Jo Graham Welmers
BIO: Casey Jo Graham Welmers was named after a Grateful Dead song. She grew up in rural northern lower Michigan and holds a BA in English, Language and Literature from the University of Michigan. Her most recent work is published or forthcoming in Bending Genres, wildscape. literature journal and Jelly Squid. You can find her practicing written and healing arts from the Great Lakes state and at caseyjo.carrd.co