While I’m reading, a sentence will grab me and force me to stop. I pay tribute to other authors by sharing their Damn Fine Sentences with you. Then I recount a memory the words bring up for me. It’s about how books connect with your life.


*****

“Even the clearest memories become wind.”
———Hanif Abdurraquib
——--A Little Devil in America

Yolanda’s voice comes to me by way of a network of cell towers that stretches across the country. “Agnes died this year.”

I burn with embarrassment. “Who?”

Yo and I lived across the hall from each other through most of undergrad. She’s the keeper of our details, given the trauma-induced dissociation of my Pomona College years. Even though we’re elders now, she often mentions Dr. Agnes Jackson, whom I’m ashamed of not remembering because Yo is reverential when she speaks of Agnes.

During another of our regular calls, Yo laughs with recognition at a comment I make. “You learned that from Agnes.”

I did? “Agnes … I vaguely remember…” I want that to be true. I feel like a failure, not knowing how to remember.

I didn’t know how to be a college student, how to give answers in American Lit Seminar or live independently in a dorm. I ran away a lot, skipping American Art & Architecture to sneak home on the Greyhound, even though home was more painful than campus.

Yo says, “You never missed Agnes’s class. Girl, you had that head down, going across campus to spend time with Agnes.”

I sense the shadow of an almost memory—books in my arms, the motion of my body walking in the direction Yo describes, toward a safe place hidden in that shadow.

“Agnes said you were a writer.”

She did?

And how does Yolanda know? Did I confide it to her over every-Friday dining hall hamburgers? My constantly swirling shame settles. I grip the phone tighter, craving Agnes. When my mind reaches for her, it closes around empty space.

Agnes aches like a missing limb.

May. An actual email hid between the LinkedIn message and the so-and-so-liked-your-Facebook-post. Chris, a long-missing friend, had updated her address.

“What’s new?” I asked.

“Glioblastoma multiforme.”
Google filled in details. I calculated a six-month prognosis.

June. I asked, “When you think about dying, are you afraid?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Because what comes next … is nothing.”

July. She said, “I don’t have enough lounge wear.”

My siblings visited that summer. Evenings, we changed into sweats to hang out after dinner. My sister swept down the stairs in a gown worthy of Dionne Warwick, her entrance all bosomy and fabulous. We applauded.

August. I said, “I’m jealous of my sister’s pretty lounge wear.”

Chris said, “You be pretty. I’ll take comfort.”

Our conversation lagged, her email buried ever deeper in my inbox, beneath coupons, yoga studio updates, and water bills.

October. “Now, where were we?” I asked
.
She didn’t answer.

While I’m reading, a sentence will grab me and force me to stop. I pay tribute to other authors by sharing their Damn Fine Sentences with you. Then I recount a memory the words bring up for me. It’s about how books connect with your life.

*****

“Death isn’t the only way to die though it can be argued that it’s the most merciful.”
———Hanif Abdurraqib
——--There’s Always This Year

My father waited like a sniper at the end of the dark hallway in our house, on his knees wearing an Afro wig and a backwards fur coat. What showed up most clearly in the shadows were Dad’s malicious red eyes and the partial plate he’d pushed halfway out of his mouth for fangs. On his knees put him eye level with my baby brother who was about to enter the hall from the opposite end, coming from the sunlit kitchen into the sadistic gloom.

I should have stepped into the hallway to block my baby brother’s view of Dad—our father who enjoyed the sound of his own son screaming for his life.

Because I was a coward, my brother screamed and lost his balance and fell on the floor hard and screamed again, and it kills me that I did not protect my baby brother from our sniper father.

And it kills me.
And it kills me.
And it kills me.