Inherited Survival
My grandfather should have been shot in a foxhole in Vietnam before my father was born. Before he was even a concept. Before the idea of his life was something to perceive. Before my grandfather met the woman who saw demons long before war gifted him his own and made her into a mother.
The photo created in my memory’s eye is torn at the edges. I heard this story long ago. I remember the ashes but not the flame. For this reason, I will assemble backward.
Four soldiers are positioned in a foxhole, rifles resting on the ground’s lip like a lazy kiss. They are quiet. Solemn. It is so, so dark. There is no wind, no rustling of leaves, no crunch of boots or grind of metal. The men feel the ache of their heels and knees from crouching so low in the hole that stank of earth rot and blood and dried-up shit. They grimace at the pressure forming above their bladders. What little water they have consumed already searching for an escape from their war-torn, toxic bodies.
Two of the soldiers shift. They need to relieve themselves. Begrudgingly, their limbs unfold and they drag themselves up and out of the mouth of the foxhole. The whale spitting out a sanguine leg.
The men prowl quickly to the grove of gnarled trees. One soldier unzips his pants and urinates onto the gray dirt while the other keeps watch. They switch, zip back up, and slide smoothly back to their foxhole.
The stench of death does not hit them. There has not been enough time for the scattered bits of skull and brain to marinate. The two soldiers in the hole are still crouched forward on their knees. On the back of their heads are matching wounds, small and cylindrical and red.
They are not crouched but keeled. Keeled over and dead.
In the five minutes my grandfather took to piss behind a tree, his comrades had been shot. The enemy had spotted two soldiers in a foxhole, teasing its muzzle with their loaded rifles. Swift and silent, the enemy took aim. The bullets did not whistle as they worked through bone, fluid, and flesh. They were deft, straight, cold assassins. They knew how to kill in the quiet folds of war.
I used to think about this story a lot. It is how I first learned about timing. Not punctuality nor scheduling, but the dark mirages and chest-clutching twists of Time’s ebony cloak. How, if my grandfather had not gotten up at that precise moment to empty his bladder behind a tree in Vietnam, he would have been shot in a fetid hole and left for the foxes. How, if he had left earlier or come back later, perhaps he would have had his throat slit from behind. Drowning in blood instead of being drained, drop by drop, through a third eye drilled into his forehead. Sticky rivers trailing between his eyes, soaking over the bridge of his nose, and leaving a final crimson kiss across parted, chapped lips.
My grandfather should have been shot in a foxhole in Vietnam.
My father should not have been born.
I should not have been born.
Where would I be if not here? Someone refuses to tell me. My ball of yarn is continuously knit.
I should have been engulfed in splintered metal and burning rubber before I reached high school.
Before I was ever kissed. Before I learned to swallow pills that took my pain and with it my poetry. Before I grew up and wished I didn’t.
This photo is not charred at the edges. I remember this story.
My mother is driving out of the school parking lot. She flicks on her blinker, signaling right down Market Street instead of left towards home. One of the bus drivers, John, waves at us in his rearview mirror. My mother and I are leaving school late, and he has finished his bus route. He smiles and drives off in his comically small red car. For a man large in both presence and stature, he looks cramped in the bright cherry vehicle. I squint through the snowflakes as he drives down Market. I am reminded of a dot of blood at the tip of an index finger.
I have decided I want to play on an indoor soccer team, or at the very least try it out. Of course, it had nothing to do with the blond boy I was in love with telling me I should come. I unzip my book bag as my mother asks if I have everything I need. Water bottle, check. Shin guards, check. Sneakers…I look down at the brown boots warming my toes. It is February and everything is icy and cold and leached of color. It is barely 4:00 p.m. and the sun is already too cold to stay above her covers.
My mother is annoyed. She pulls the car over and flips around. We head back towards the house; luckily we hadn’t gone too far, and we drive around the corner of Adirondack and John’s Brook.
I rush inside and grab my forgotten sneakers. My brief visit inside offers little reprieve from the biting cold. Heat seeks escape from every corner of the narrow, one-story structure. My little sister’s room becomes so bitter that we huddle together in my room to keep warm at night. Clouds of breath weasel out the door as I open it and bolt back to the car. I am careful not to slip on the icy walkway. I have lived here long enough to know the ice is sneaky, only reflecting its danger when stabbed purposefully with light.
My mother backs out of the driveway and nudges the car carefully down the quickly disappearing road. The snow is coming down hard, concealing the cracked asphalt tucked between blanketed trees. She puts on her headlights and wipers and we fight our way through the encroaching dusk.
We do not get far. My mother’s knuckles on the wheel match the pasty color of the snow she is pushing through. She looks worried. The weather is especially bellicose tonight, threatening to consume anything in its path and bury it under flaky iron.
After about twenty minutes, we come to a slow, slippery halt. A pickup truck is horizontal on the road. On the right side, pushed over the lip of the ivory-painted asphalt, is a car crumpled up like a tin can.
“Is that John’s car?” My mother asks. She puts her hand to her mouth. “Oh my god, that’s John’s car.” Her blue eyes grow even wider than usual. I can hear her thoughts. Please please please please.
I can admit now that I felt a bit excited. I had always imagined tragedy with myself at its center. It made me feel important. I could have a story to tell.
My mother eases our car up to the left of the red car. She gets out of the car and runs over to his window. I watch from mine.
Blood trails from John’s temple. That is the image I remember. I remember crying soundlessly in the passenger seat. I remember my mother talking to John and then to the cops. I remember her calling John’s wife. I remember how she started the conversation with “Everything is okay, but John has been in an accident.” I remember her telling me that you always have to tell someone everything is alright when delivering bad news (unless, of course, it isn’t) so they can listen to what you are saying without panicking. I remember thinking back to that moment a few years later when my grandmother woke me up by telling me my father was in the hospital, and that she seemed to enjoy making me wait to hear if he was okay. I remember that I did not go to my soccer game. I remember turning around and going home. I remember we got a cheese pizza for dinner. I remember it just being my parents and me that night, my little sister was at a sleepover. I remember feeling very grown up to be talking with my parents about what I witnessed; very grown up to have been a part of something people would be talking about the next day. I remember we watched The Parent Trap and my mother played with my hair. I remember that it was warm.
I do not remember when, whether it was a few days later or sometime in the following weeks, my mother realized what could have happened had I not forgotten my sneakers. We were right behind John. I remembered his smile and the wave of his hand in the red car’s mirror. Would we have been hit too? Would my mother and I have been the ones with blood pouring from our temples? Would we have sat paralyzed in our torn seats while first responders disassembled the twisted metal holding us captive?
Wine-colored roses in a cage of thorns.
My grandfather had to pee. I forgot my sneakers.
He did not get shot in the back of the head. I did not crack my skull after getting rammed by a pickup truck sliding across the ice.
Time dances like grinding metal and sings like bullets. We hide but do not escape. We scream in silence.
Our quilts unravel and we are buried in the folds.
Zoe LaVallee is a senior at SUNY Geneseo where she studies adolescent education and English with a concentration in creative writing. She is currently a student teacher attempting to mold teenagers into writers. In her spare time she plays with her cat Bug and thinks about words that refuse to settle on the page.