Number 52: There’s Something About Charles Bivona

The Memory

I think about these things all the time. The doctors call it traumatic stress—a gut memory of stabbing danger. The shock that flash-wired my childhood brain: always be on alert! My father was given this same traumatic disease by my government. They drafted him into their stupid Vietnam War. Some hick named Lyndon Johnson lied about an attack—that sounds familiar—and off my daddy went. His platoon killed more peasant farmers than any other that year! He wore a necklace of human ears as a trophy. He told me once, when I was twenty-five, the ears were on a thin steel wire—like a really thin coat hanger. The ear blood dripped on his chest when he walked. He told me other things without saying them. And he passed his American disease onto me when he almost strangled my mother to death on our living room floor. She was screaming in short quick bursts—a shrill shriek: get the fuck off me! I never heard my mother’s voice make that sound before. Somehow—I don’t remember how—I stopped him. I was only nine years old. I can’t fully remember what happened. I keep trying. But I only think about these things in fragments. [2010]

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