Bodega | Junk

Chase in the gooseyard, bee stings on big toes. Sitting shower-wet on the heat vents, the air ballooning our nightshirts. Mom died early on a spring morning, Dad got the call while we listened mouse-silent on the stairs. He learned how to boil water, oven-bake frozen meatballs, his only meal. Evening TV, he’d fall asleep in his armchair with a warm can of Busch, his face like loose putty pulling away from the bones. He became like a stranger, reclined there. We’d tiptoe around his chair, sneak beer-swigs, play pirates with pieces of old blinds. Then one Saturday he woke us up from our beds to show us an ottoman abandoned across the street—Help me lift this is all he said.

He began to build piles in our basement: taxidermied ducks, crystal doorknobs, records, record-pieces, canes made of oak roots, stacks of cheap china, lampshades, animal heads, particle board, an old salon chair with the hair-dryer extension. We weren’t allowed down there—he knew Thomas and I would accidentally break porcelain dolls under our bare feet, topple precious piles of aluminum cans. But during night-dares we would creep through the stacks, convince each other to touch the wood cat with the horrible smile, spit into the brass vase by the furnace. The first golf balls he stored in egg cartons, and as he slept I waited for them to hatch.

Years later, when my dad died, Richard and I got a four-day babysitter and flew in for the funeral, flew to clean out the basement. Richard’s first time in Cincinnati, so hot, the air cheese-thick with exhaust. Thomas met us at the airport, in from Phoenix, Wow, how long has it been and This is going to stink. And who knew lockboxes of old duck feathers had a smell? Lakewater, scum, nickel. Stacks of junk mail crust and buckle like maple leaves, the addresses flake and fade. A military-surplus jacket can melt in your hands, if it sits in a puddle for fifty years. It drooped to the floor in long ropes, I almost couldn’t bear to watch.

105 – June 2021

By Hadley Griggs

Junk