David Tromblay - As You Were

OFF THE RESERVATION

Y OU COULD BEGIN THIS WITH how Grandpa Bullshit was an arm breaker for the Irish mob in Chicago. Or how the spring of 68 became the boiling point for the Civil Rights Movement after Dr. Martin Luther King Juniors murder, shortly after Mom turned eleven. Or how she and all her siblings attended elementary school with the Jackson Five in Gary, Indiana, before they went to Hollywood and the Lynns made their way to the woods in the middle-of-nowhere Minnesota. But it would take too long to give all those details and bring the story back on track. It would be a lot simpler to say how Grandpa Bullshit decided to drive his family here in sixty-eight and did so without making a single pit stop. Instead, he crammed one of those little Porta Potties families take on camping trips into the back of his 59 Cadillac hearse, along with a couple of suitcases and all six kids.

Six years later, Mom grew tired of babysitting her little brothers and sisters, so she got knocked up and married to get out of the house. Little did she know shed have to get notes from her husband to excuse her from school once the morning sickness started, despite his being in the same grade. So she dropped out of high school and got her GED because shell be Goddamned.

She got divorced from him before she was old enough to register to vote. Three years after she had your big brother Sam, she has you. She takes a taxicab off the Fond du Lac Indian Reservation twenty-odd miles to St. Lukes Hospital in the east end of downtown Duluth.

Youll notice theres no mention of Dad bringing Mom to the hospital, pacing the hallway outside the delivery room while waiting to hear the news, the proclamation of it, you, being a boy. He is elsewherewith a prostitute. Youll have to pause here, collect yourself, choke back the laughter. All you can really do is laugh. Not a ha-ha laugh, but a Jesus-jumped-up-Christ-what-could-come-next? kind of laughor bite your cheek, or stall, one way or another, before admitting that last bit of information.

Dad doing that might make sense if you were born after midnight on a Saturday, but you were born at about a quarter to four on a Monday afternoon. The real question is: how long should someone go on thinking thats the worst thing he did that day? Because he made Mom take care of the hookers cat while the hooker served a ninety-day jail sentence. He wasnt charged with a crime. They let him go, according to your mother. According to his mother, he could high dive into a manure pile and come out smelling like roses. He doesnt go completely unpunished, however; his only begotten son will not bear his last name.

Perhaps hooker isnt the right word for the woman who kept his company the afternoon you came into the world. She didnt walk the streets or work a corner. Though the apartments above the Lake View Storethe worlds first indoor mallwhere she calls home, do double as a brothel of sorts. Curiously enough, the National Register of Historic Places isnt in the habit of adorning dilapidated shitholes with copper plaques. And to play devils advocate: should it be so surprising to learn the building erected to fill every need of everyone working at the steel mill in Morgan Park, Duluth, Minnesota, did, in fact, sell everything?

Morgan Park came to be for the same reason as Hershey, Pennsylvania, except there are no chocolatiers. When it first opened to the public, the Lake View Store housed a bank, a barbershop and beauty salon, a dentists office, a grocery market, as well as a shoe store. And if it hosts the worlds oldest profession now, it certainly did a century ago.

That aside, youre not special. Youre not the only child to come out of Moms second marriage. She had twinsnot identical twins, but twins nevertheless. You were a dizygotic twin, meaning each fetus had a separate placenta and a separate amniotic sac. But you grow up thinking youre their only child. Thats because your brother is stillborn, as was your uncles twin, as was your great-uncles twinall on Moms side, of course.

Maybe its genetic, or happenstance, or the scientific hypothetical sum and substance of someone hanging around a bar, begging her husband to come home, striking up a conversation with the bartender when her husband refuses to move a muscle, and eventually marrying said bartender.

The above is an abridged version of how this happens. How you happen. Its also from whence the butterfly that peeks out from behind her bra strap came. She got her first and only tattoo one night at a bar while pregnant with the two of you.

There once was an artist who always carried a tackle box filled with tattoo guns and inks and needles, and who was more than willing to tattoo a tit for free on ladies night. This, too, explains why your skin is stained with every color of the rainbowhow tattoos got into your blood before birthlike a crack baby, only the addiction is ink. Mom drank and smoked a bit while pregnant, too. Its easy enough to imagine her Marlboro Reds and the ladies night drink specials played into the loss of your brothers life. At least, they do in the version she told. But in her defense, the doctors didnt know it was bad for babies back thenor so she said.

You bring up Moms drinking and smoking while pregnantwith Bible in handand point out a passage, the story of when the Virgin learns she will conceive and give birth to a son. The angel warns her away from wine and strong drink, you say. But Mom reminds you, Youre a son of a bitch, not the Son of God, and pushes you out of her way with the tip of a wooden spoon, goes back to making dinner, smirking, smiling, laughing at her own joke.

The reason for your twin brothers birth defect(s) is that all the toxins Mom put into her body went to him first. It sounds bullshitty, but its in keeping with the summation the doctor gives after he finishes your football physical and asks if you have any questions. You seize the opportunity to ask what happened to your twin brother.

Mom doesnt know what they did with him after they took him away. He was medical waste, as far as she knows. Like the placenta and afterbirth. But the doctor should know. He delivered you and cared for you right up until you left for boot camp.

You werent born at the Catholic hospital, which has a special plot for all the stillborns and preemies who never get to go home. You were born at the other hospital, so your twin will always be a nameless, missing thing.

Dad never says word one about a twin. When Mom does, it comes out in casual conversation. She assumed someone told you in the decade you lived with Grandma Audrey. The truth of it, and the way Mom tells you, devastates her more than it does you. Learning you shared a womb with a dead kid gives you a lifetime of things to ponder. As does her referring to you as her number two son, wondering whether she merely means you are her second-oldest living son, or if its like in the movie Twins, and youre Danny DeVito in this scenariothe leftover shit.

When your brother came into this world, ruddy yet lifeless, neither she nor the doctor knew you were waiting in the wings. Two weeks after she delivered him, she went back in for a routine checkup to make sure she was still in good health, infection-free, and what have you.

Thats when she found out about you.

She is alone when she learns this. Dad only knows his only son died. Hes out fucking anything he caneven if he has to payif only to spread his seed and prove hes man enough to make a son. This is your SWAG, of courseyour Scientific Wild-Ass Guessbut knowing him, and with whats known about his TBI and the historical happenings of his alcoholic-driven logic, it makes the most sense.

The way Mom tells it, you were a tiny thing tucked up under the right side of her ribcage. She explains how the doctor let her carry you around a little longer. A week or so later, they tried to induce herbut you would not budge. She chuckles when she tells that part of the story, calls you a stubborn little bastard. Shortly thereafter, the sonogram showed you were a sickly child, one losing weight with a heartbeat nowhere near as strong as the doctor preferred. A Cesarean section got scheduled, but you came to town kicking and screaming three days prior.