Dead Relatives

I.  The Fig Tree

The figs have picked me to tell their story. Picking the figs, going through the annual ritual of harvesting and preserving. Then eating.

This is my communion.

I am under the fig tree again where the earth is cool and damp. The fig tree casts its spell on me. Dig deep. Touch the roots.

II.  Photos

A plain white house set on piers stands in the background. Two bedrooms contain seven lives. Margaret and Alma dressed in Sunday clothes stand in front. The cat that surely hides beneath the house cannot be seen in the grainy black and white photo.

The bare earth under the house is cool and damp, like the dirt mound on a fresh grave. It smells of rain and decay. It smells sweet. Crawl and hide beneath the house.

Disappear with Margaret like the cat.

Peering out from the black and white photos they left me are the eyes of dead relatives who lived out their whole lives before I was born. I try to reach out and touch the faces in the picture, to know what they were like, to hear their voices, to speak to them.

But I won’t ever get any closer than this.

III.  Grandma

I hear your voice, your Cajun accent thick as gumbo, speaking to me sometimes in English, then in French.

When I look at the picture of you when you were younger, I can see me. I have your eyes. When I look at the picture of your mother, I see a piece of me, too. Maybe she dreamed of me unborn, dreamed of the day I’d sing her song.

Like the cat, she somehow knew.

She lived again through you. And you both live again through me.

I dream of giving birth to a son, and in my dream you’re there. Everyone is there.  My house is filled with my whole family, though some had been long dead and some were not yet born.

This is how I reach out to touch the faces in the picture, to touch your face so I can remember how you smiled for the camera–so one day it will be my face in the picture and someone else can remember it and reach out to the younger ones who never knew and gather them under the shade of the fig tree.

This is our reunion.

IV.  Family

You grew up digging potatoes out of the Louisiana soil with your bare hands. Then you moved to Texas where there was oil; there was work. And then you stayed. You bought a piece of land and raised children.

You carried with you the habit of picking figs, packed it along with everything else you cared enough about to preserve and share with your children and then your grandchildren.

For me it means that I am part of this parade of dead relatives, people who had been farmers and who didn’t even speak my language.

It makes me feel like I’m not alone.

Your children, your grandchildren all grow up, and some may stay. No matter what they decide, the blood that moves through them moves with them. And that blood is mine.

Show them which figs to pick. Which ones to leave for later. Tell them how good the figs will taste on buttered bread.

V.  Conclusion

The cat peers from beneath the clapboard house begging not to be forgotten. Now you’re in the ground. But I can still hear you whispering when I’m sleeping.  I feel you smooth my hair.

The figs have picked me to cast their spell, to taste of them with buttered bread and you.