The Book of Salt - Monique Truong [77]
As all of this was playing itself out in the Old Man's spirits-soaked b rain, he stood waiting for me at the front door of his house. From the look on his face, I could tell that no part of that structure belonged to me now. From the stance of his body, I could tell that he was beyond drunk, one shot glass away from kissing the floor. When I was younger, I used to think that if I shoved a lit match into his ear canal, his entire head would ignite into flames, burning away the alcohol that clogged it in a single flash. Now, well, now it was too late. As I walked toward him, I could see my mother's straw hat hanging in its usual place at the entrance to the kitchen. The kitchen was an addition, an afterthought that jutted out from the back of the house. It had its own entrance but no door. A piece of cloth the color of honey hung in the opening. My mother said that the color soothed her. She saved our tea leaves for a month before she had enough to dye the piece of muslin, which she had carefully ripped from a larger bolt. "Why not leave it white?" I asked, anxious for something to stand between us and the flies.
"White is the color of mourning," she said.
I know that she saved the rest of that muslin, rolled-up and hidden away. Did she take it out after I was gone? Did she take down the sheet of honey, kiss it as she would my cheeks, wrap it up to keep it safe?
"Don't come any closer!" the Old Man shouted. He lowered his voice and greeted me in this manner: "I have three sons. A chef. A porter. A printer."
Is that it? I thought. I was expecting something more vio- i63 lent. It began long ago with his thumb pressed into the soft spot of my skull. Then a stick of wood thicker than my arm splintered into my shin. Lately, a chair leg shoved into my Adam's apple. Though it was true that as I grew older, the Old Man had become less reliant on physical violence to get his points across, or maybe I had grown more adept at dodging his blows. Either way, the same damage had been done. In the end, words were easier for him. They took less of his time, and they tore through the same skin.
"Did you hear me? I said that I have three sons."
He sounds as if he is practicing for a speech, I thought. "I am a Catholic Holy Man, and I have three sons..." I imagined him refining his opening remarks.
"I've always had only three. You are your mother's. As for your father, you'll have to ask her. Because I'm a charitable man, I kept you both anyway, and this is how you repay me?"
A question is sometimes best answered with another: "Charity that has to be repaid? Wouldn't that make it a loan?" I thought and then uncharacteristically said aloud to him.
The Old Man, who was no longer my father, looked at me, spat in my face, and walked back inside his house.
I stand there still. A line of fire ants crawls up the frame of the doorway. Tiny orange marigolds, their petals bunched together, twisted inside themselves, crowd around the dirt path on which I stand. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the fraying chin strap of my mother's hat moving listlessly in the sun. I stand there still.
The story of Father Augustine, as I remember it, also included a journal that he left behind filled with ecstasies, raptures, and a dying wish. Death, they say, was kind to the Father and gave him prior notice. Father Augustine, according to his own entries, took that opportunity to secure a promise from the ship captain that if he were to die before they reached shore, his body would be delivered to Avignon and interred in a Catholic cemetery. In exchange for the promise, the captain was to receive all that Father Augustine carried with