Sjohnna McCray

When I wake, this is what I tell myself: I belong to this, to all the ghosts present in the DNA. Diabetes, an ancient Greek consort, sweeps through the halls of my body. It seems the proper gift from my father, memory locked down in the cells of my bladder. Frequent urination is a hard nag to beat. My body is my father's complaint. He rings at two in the morning. A piss in the pot, a shot in the dark. He's never too far away.

—Cincinnati, Ohio, 1972 Dear Sister, America. Late nights, we lie under the spread and listen to the stereo jazz sounds of WTKO on the FM station. He says I am so fine in my tight, pulled-back and strapless bed-sheet gown. Imagine, the polyester with sequins. A sultry Dinah Washington. Turn. He puts a pillow on his stomach, a finger to his lips and blows — he can do a Louis like nobody else. Turn, to the Golden Oldies. Sometimes, he calls me his favorite Supreme or his one and only Apollo showgirl. With the switch of a dial, we move in unison. In the infinite dark, our flickering stations turn.

—Cincinnati, Ohio, 1987 Rage is the language of men, layers of particulates fused. Rage is the wine father pours to the ground for men whose time has passed. Rage is gripped in the hands like the neck of a broom held tight. Rage gets stuck in the throat, suppressed. Rage is a promise kept.

It's not about the sex, really, it's not the ache of the bruised nipple or the burn left by his two-day-old beard in the crook of my neck where the pulse is taken, it's his breathing when asleep that draws me near. When I was seventeen, I'd check beside me, hope I hadn't rolled and squashed flat my one-year-old brother. His sigh on my ear, the rise and fall of air beneath his ribs, was a miracle to me. The nightly surprise of what I saw under the bulb's dim glow: I saw the small heart beating like wings unfolding in the body. Here, with this man, ideas of flight return.

—an Ode to Bob Ross When I was younger, I watched the world blend on PBS. The painter with the Jewfro hypnotized me. With a thumb hooked through the palette, he painted forward from the base coat like a god might use a blueprint. Behind the image is always the word: light. On top came tiny crisscross strokes of phthalo blue. A rapturous pinwheel of words unveiled sky. Two sharp strokes of titanium white slashed with gray from the master's knife became wings, gulls taking flight. I begged for nothing but paints that summer. Already equipped -with an afro, I sat before the paper and the cakes of color and tried to figure out the path to cerulean, the wrist twist to evergreens and the motion for clouds. The oversaturated paper dried and cracked with the fine lines of lightning. The worlds he reproduced might as well have been Asgard or Olympus. How I longed for a visit. Might he come armed with a fan brush and dressed in a button down? To be soothed by his voice and taken, lured from the dining-room table and shown the suburb's majesty. Look son, he might say, at the pile of autumn leaves, the shade on that forest-green trash bag. Using his two-inch brush he'd blend the prefab homes on the hill until they seemed mysterious, folded hues of Prussian blue, Van Dyke brown, and a blaze of alizarin crimson.

—Seoul, Korea 1971 Father gave her a little extra. How could she not fall for him? He was handsome but still a boy. In the depot where soldiers took such women, his skinny body clung too close to hers and his narrow ass still belonged to his mother. The other men knew the routine and how much to pay. She loathed their accent and American swagger. The sweat would barely cool and dry before another shook the cot and bucked his hips out of rhythm—in some other time zone. However, he began to offer other things besides money. He brought sweets from the base and the minute he touched his pocket the face she reserved for his English crumbled like sweet toffee. Because he didn't know how to say what he wanted to say, no time was spent on uneasiness. Chocolate, caramel and peanuts spoke best, secured his place. He hooked his arms through hers as if they could stroll the lane like an ordinary couple: the unassuming black and the Korean whore in the middle of the Vietnam War.