Thursday, July 14, 2005

Tattoo


Before his hand shook, my father drew perfect eyelashes, sailor’s anchors and hearts pierced with cupid's bow, all on a face he adored.

A clown face. A face mismatched with tears and laughter. My brother would later tell me about an old Mexican tattoo tradition. “Laugh now, cry later” is the phrase. He has my name stitched in blue-black on his forearm, a pretty senorita looking a bit to the side, the hint of clown's makeup on her profile, my telltale birthmark above her left eye.

In prison the tradition is to tattoo a tear below the eye, a badge of sorts. Proof of suffering, bearing witness and a way to bypass the real thing. I don’t know when the shaking began, but like many second children, my brother was not graced with my lashes, my heart and arrow. When our hands meet, mine holds his steady for a fleeting moment, but my father taught us to always let go. The two of them tremble like leaves and stand like Oaks.

Until recently, I believed I too might inherit my father’s tremor. His mother, my sweet grandmother who denied the damp backs of her forefathers with perfect English, also writes shaky earthquake letters, a gift of blood. But now I’m reading, reading too much too long. Reading about this war, trying so hard to blur the lines. But my eyes don't fail me and I'm learning shaking hands come from other places. Tremors, they say, are not always simply a gift of genetics. While sweet grandmothers may inherit them by birth, fathers often come by them through a fine mist rained down on foreign lands.

Now I’m seeing the faint outline of grease paint on my father. He mocks my brother's badges, calls him less than a man. But the truth is slowly emerging, like the secret agent ink we used to grapple over out of cereal boxes. My mothers lemons always coaxed out the messages, like omens and whispers, tart and irresistible.