"Some days, I think about dying. I don't ponder how dreadful it is or will be to die, I think about what I'll be thinking about when I die, I mean isn't that a good way to gauge the significance of isolated events? I've heard people say that your whole entire life flashes before your eyes before you die like a mental projector that flickers a hundred thousand pictures at you and all you can do is watch all those things you did and all those things that were done to you. But I don't think that's what happens. I think right before I die I'll remember, just, scraps. I think there will only be a few pictures flashing on my projector but they'll be looped and they'll repeat one after the other, over and over until I slip out of consciousness or my heart stops beating or my brain stops sending messages or whatever it is that keeps one alive stops doing its job.
***
Two summers ago I tried to gather every memory that I thought was a possible candidate for my projector. In July the subways filled with the stench of summer. I rode, pressed against other damp passengers, feeling their heat, smelling their salt, and I wrote lists. The first list consisted of various big events, things like birthdays (my brother's twenty-first, he was sent blue-skinned to the emergency room) and graduations (mine, I realized that I didn't belong in Texas anymore) and pregnancies (my best friend's, the summer after our freshman year at college) and funerals (my mother's). There were nine. This depressed me. I decided I wasn't remembering the right things. I wasn't remembering things worthy of the projector. I had to go smaller: I had to dig deeper.
***
A few months later, when the leaves were gold and orange and red and swirling angry circles on the ground, I tried again. Looking out my kitchen's windowpanes with wrinkled eyebrows, I struggled to remember bits of my life on a smaller scale. The second list came in a three-hour brainstorm wherein I recorded the precise details of thirty-six distinct memories. I whittled it down numerous times, arranging them into groups of four or five that I thought could satisfy the projector's standards. They were memories of enormous, daunting yellow cranes just beyond the sliding glass doors of my childhood home in Virginia; the sticky fluid that my brother and I applied to our foreheads after squishing lightning bugs between our fingers, believing that it made us glow too; the way I felt one summer when I sat alone on our family futon drinking honeyed red hibiscus tea, ice clinking against the walls of a blue-rimmed Mexican glass, a warm breeze blowing long linen curtains toward me, the rhythmic panting of my dog in the grass, and tiny specks of dust floating listlessly in the thick light streaming through the kitchen window; and then there was all of the glitter and glue in the pictures I was asked to draw—handfuls of silver and blue and purple glitter thrown at or sprinkled on or rubbed into gobs of Elmer's glue that would later dry and encrust my small fingers in a layer of skin that I enjoyed peeling off. I imagined these memories chasing one another on the projector's loop, each one blurring into the next, and wondered if they would really be enough.
***
For a while, they were. But then the year was almost gone, blown away by its own violent winds, and when tree branches began bending under the enormous pressure of frost and ice, loudly cracking and falling into powdery snow in the dead of the night, so did the memories. Suddenly they didn't seem sturdy enough, like they would snap when the projector started spinning or burn up, too flimsy to withstand the heavy demands that come at the end. And so the New Year came and went and so did my first two lists. In January, I began thinking that there must be stronger memories, memories that exist perhaps primarily for this purpose—to be looked back upon, to be realized, years later, as the singular moments that would define my life when there is nothing left of it. I thought about this for weeks before realizing that what I really wanted was to find one memory that could stand for it all, my entire life.
***
There were days that I thought I had found that memory. The first time was in February, a crisp Monday morning. On the subway with the metal seats, cold pressing through my jacket, I watched the mother and daughter across from me. They were arranging papers in a sparkly folder, completing the morning routine that hadn't been finished at home. They probably overslept. Or the mother's obnoxious boyfriend insisted they eat a leisurely breakfast. Come on baby. Here, have some toast. Prick. I watch them scrambling until the mother exclaims "Ah-hah!" and begins quizzing her daughter on spelling words—"school," "knee," "hour." She switches the "y" and "i" in "bicycle" and refuses to spell more words. Maybe the daughter threw a tantrum this morning. Has extreme emotional swings because of the absent father, the abusive father, the alcoholic father.
Her oversized pink coat reminds me of the one I had in elementary. Two sizes too big—room to grow, my mother said. And then I'm thinking about elementary school. I'm remembering Randy, the short boy with big brown glasses and a stutter, who called me once to ask for my best friend Sammy's phone number, and the recorders in music class that were soaked in large tubs of alcohol so that all of the students could share them, and the way my hands smelled, like calluses and rust, after playing on the monkey bars at recess. And then I remember parachute day. And I keep remembering parachute day until I come home that night, defreeze my supper, shower, and retrieve another blanket from the hall closet. As I'm tossing the massive quilt in the air, trying to cover the whole bed evenly, I smile, remembering. And I lay my head on the pillow thinking about elementary school and P.E. and parachute day and how it might be the one memory that equals it all.
***
Growing up I hated P.E. I hated pretending like I was actually trying to capture the other team's flag when in fact I was looking for lady bugs to put in my pocket, I hated losing in four square over and over because of the goddamn Cherry Bomb move, and I hated the boy with the crew cut who looked down my shirt one day when we were doing push ups and told the entire class that I wasn't wearing a bra.
There were rare occasions when the activity, be it scooters or hockey (which for some strange reason evoked an uncharacteristically competitive side in me and often resulted in shouting and pushing) pleasantly surprised me. Parachute day though, parachute day was magical. It only came around a few days a year— I guess the coaches didn't think that forty kids waving around a gargantuan piece of rainbow nylon exactly constituted strenuous activity. Ordinarily, I entered the gym slowly, discarding my Princess Jasmine backpack near the bleachers and snaking my way to one of the dots (According to the coaches, the dots, which were each about four feet from one another front and sideways, were there to give us all adequate space to do warm up stretches. We knew only that the dots kept us from telling secrets, playing patty cake games, and braiding one another's hair. We hated the dots) on the heavily lacquered floor. But I always knew when it was parachute day—I could feel it in the air as soon as I'd walk into the gym. That, or I could see it there, hundreds of thousands of feet of fabric, a rainbow pie, waiting for me in all its parachute-y glory. "All RIGHT!!" I'd shout upon seeing the mass spread out, or wadded up, on the gymnasium floor. Able to manage the occasional bout of childish self-restraint, I would circumvent the beautiful heap, walk quickly to my dot, sit with curiously rigid posture, and longingly gaze in its direction.
Parachute day warm ups lasted forever. Jumping jacks for over an hour, thousands of arm circles, miles of lunges—I did all of these things diligently, knowing what was coming. I shushed other children who were chatting or whispering or breathing too loudly, reminding them that it was parachute day and that they better not ruin it. And then it was time. With glazed eyes and narrowed vision, I sprinted for the purple triangle pushing smaller (and larger) children from my path, "Ariel,"—there was this girl named Ariel —"Do not even try to take purple." Arriving at the banks of the parachute, I clenched both handles in my fists, which were pink with anticipation, and glanced to either side. On the red triangle to my left: Amelia Glasby; small with big blue eyes and a lime-colored bow in her hair—fierce, I knew first hand of her intense hopscotch competitions at recess. On the blue triangle to my right: Bradley Donahue, a large, milky boy who parted his hair. I figure I'll have to make up for his noodle arms so when we're all holding the parachute off the ground and the coach tosses the balls—a soccer ball, 3 Nerf balls, and a few tennis balls—into the center, I shoot my section high over my head and they go flying up in the air. Immediately the children start flapping their arms, the balls soaring higher and higher. The movement of the parachute is jerky at first, some of us wave it violently while others let their arms go limp and hold on to their sections' handles delicately as you would a piece of toast—I fire all of these children piercing looks, you need to carry your own fucking weight. My arms are burning but I keep moving them up and down and up and down and up and down harder and faster because I want those goddamn balls to touch the ceiling. And they do.
***
For about a month, I truly believed that I would see the parachute before I died. I thought a lot about the last few moments. About how each second would be stretched like taffy, the breaths expanding inside my chest, my stomach, my arms, growing, and then vanishing through my nostrils, taking my last kernels of life with it. I imagined the parachute there, behind the breathing, waving, fluid. I thought about the gusts sweeping bangs from my small freckled forehead, my face glowing, light shining through the gaps in my tiny teeth, and before the undulations could fill with air, the dazzling blues and purples swelling like blisters, they would collapse on one another in heaps of deflated kaleidoscopic skin. And there would be air but no breath.
Or so I thought. Until even the parachute didn't seem like enough and I had to start over again in my mind, combing through the heaps of memories, looking for another. It was becoming exhausting. I felt a sense of urgency as the city thawed and dripped, like time was running out. I was forced to delve further into my mind, into the back, where I hadn't been in years. The memories were dusty, had been stuffed quickly into small spaces where they wouldn't be recalled, not intentionally. But now I picked my way through them desperately.
There was a singing contest with my brother. He was 11 and I was 8 and we cued up videotapes to play our favorite Disney songs over the living room's large wooden speakers. He fast-forwarded through The Lion King to the song "I Just Can't Wait to be King." He was in choir at school and he leapt up the stairs, craning his chest over the banister, I'm gonna be the mane event / Like no king was before, he was beaming. He was Simba. My dad clapped when he finished on one knee, his arms outstretched above his head. And then it was my turn and I put in Aladdin, cued up the song "A Whole New World", and froze. I stood there in front of my father and brother who were both perched in anticipation on the futon. I waited for the words to start and when they did, I sat on the fireplace hearth behind me. I looked at my hands. I picked up a miniature set of screwdrivers that were next to me and opening the small box, I parted my lips slightly and mumbled along with the song. I didn't look up, didn't want to see my father's expectant face. When it was over he lied. He said we tied. I remember knowing that night that my brother was better. I was proud of him and I hated him. When I was a teenager suffering from devastating stage fright, I sporadically recalled this night and felt embarrassed. I imagined my dad's thoughts. Imagined him feeling sorry for his daughter, her being so shy with such an outgoing brother, realizing that she was closing herself off.
There was a flood of memories after that.
***
When I was twelve I had a black Labrador who could jump over fences. Tall fences. We thought she was magic. I found her and brought her home one afternoon. My brother and I tortured my mother night and day until she agreed to let us keep her. We called her Brownie because her fir wasn't black when we first got her. It was brown. I loved her the way most children love their dogs: enough to cry when she chose to sleep in my brother's bed instead of mine, but not enough to walk her without my mother's repeated orders. I fed her too many hotdogs and taught her to sit and come, but she only came and sat when I had hotdogs. After a while I pretended to have hotdogs but she figured it out soon and stopped coming. "Brownie, come!" I would demand. She would lick her ass. "Bad Brownie! COME Brownie!" She would chase a fly, chomping at the air.
My brother and I were confused for a long time as to how she managed to escape from our backyard. After being dropped off by the buss, we would walk the two blocks to our house and find Brownie there, trotting up and down the street, waiting for us. We liked that she was there for us, liked thinking that she had magically broken out of the fence because she couldn't wait to see us. There were no holes in the ground, no gaps in the fence—we were baffled. Until one day when we were leaving for school but had to come back when I forgot my lunch box. Just as we turned the corner we see Brownie. In the air. Her eyes wide and manic, her mouth open, tongue flailing to the side, small ears flopping backward in the breeze of flight. We were stunned. For a split second we did not think she was going to come down. But she did. She landed heavily on the driveway and dashed towards us, licking our faces. "Good Dog!!" we exclaimed not knowing better. Later that night, after we told my mom about what had happened, we went to the store and bought a chain. The chain was attached to a three-foot stake, which we watched my mother hammer into the dry earth in our backyard. I cried. I thought it was cruel to put Brownie on a chain, thought that's what bad owners did, owners with dirty dogs and brown lawns. But my mother told me that we had to, for safety's sake, for Brownie's sake. So we did.
That's why we were so shocked when a few weeks later, we came home and Brownie was gone. We called for her in the backyard. We called for her in the street. We rang doorbells and asked our neighbors, "Have you seen Brownie?" They said no, they hadn't seen her in a few weeks, how was she? We said she was good. Was she good? We didn't know. We started to worry. That evening, my brother and I sat in our mother's bed, asking questions and sniffling, our heads heavy on her breasts. While my brother explains to us his three-step plan for finding Brownie—flyers, newspaper ad, hotdogs on the porch, the telephone rings. My mother answers.
"Hello," a pause, "yes,"
A very long pause. My brother and I are pulling at her sleeves and climbing in her lap trying to push our ears against the receiver, "What is it Mom? What is it?"
She shushes us.
"Oh my goodness…Okay, we'll be there soon."
She turns to us and takes our hands in hers. Our eyes are big and brown and not blinking. It's Brownie. Somebody found her. She's been hit by a car. There are tears on my cheeks now but I continue to listen for good news. We're going to go to the Vet and say goodbye.
The ride to the Vet is strangely quiet. My brother looks out the window and bites his fingernails. My eyes repeatedly well up and overflow and I rub at them and wipe my nose which is also dripping. I touch the plastic baggie in my hand, it's filled with a sliced up hotdog. We are both in our pajamas.
We arrive at the office and the nurse frowns at us and clucks and turns away, clipboard in hand. We are led to a room full of glass jars and metal tables and cages. There is Brownie. We start over but a man in a white coat extends his arm and stops us. He tells us that Brownie is heavily sedated, that she is in no pain, and that she isn't conscious of her surroundings. We don't understand these words until we get closer to our dog. He opens the large wire door and we both stand with our slippered toes touching the cage. She is very large, larger than normal, and breathing very slowly. I remove a piece of hotdog from the baggie and we crawl in, careful not to bump her. On our elbows, we touch her fur and tell her that we love her and offer her slivers of hotdog. She does not seem to notice them. We tell her that we're very sorry for not buying a longer stake and that we love her. We sob, the two of us, our faces hovering above hers. Tears fall on her snout and she doesn't blink. Her eyes are half open and very red. And then my mother touches our ankles, which are hanging outside of the cage, and tells us its time to go. And we beg no. We want to hold on to Brownie, to squeeze her, but we are afraid of breaking her more. So we crawl back out of the cage, squishing hotdog slivers with our knees, and bury our faces in my mother's stomach, tears and snot and saliva dampening her t-shirt.
***
After a few more weeks of searching, I grow disenchanted with the memories. I worry that I am trying too hard, that I am forcing things that should not be forced. And so I step back. I figure that perhaps I haven't experienced my one memory that tops all others yet, I figure that maybe I never will, I figure that all I will ever have is these contenders and that no one will top another because they're not supposed to. They're not supposed to be gauged separately, but rather as a whole group, each part occurring independently of another, but ultimately coming together to form a tangled, magnificent ring of existence that is too bright and too devastating and too fantastic to see. Except for right before the end."