Look for the receipt, I said to no one. Look for the medical bill, I said to the air. I stared blankly at my adoptive mother’s desk for a long time, almost as if I had stepped outside of time itself, until I opened the desk drawer and finally saw the receipt or perhaps I should say my brain registered the image of the receipt, as if it were some kind of holy and miraculous object, either way the receipt materialized. It was a page-long hospital bill with a name, DR JONATHAN ABE, address, and phone number in the upper-right-hand corner along with a list of charges for various examinations in some kind of billing code. The date was May 3, 2013. It seemed all of the charges were covered by the insurance. In my hands was a harmless medical bill, which a few months ago meant nothing to anyone, and now it’s full of possibility. Meaning accumulates over time, I thought, who could say why?
I picked up the household phone and called the number: a pleasant, automated voice message instructed me to choose from five different options, I pressed “0,” hoping to reach a human operator, and the system sent me back to the original message, I pressed “1,” which took me to an outgoing message for the pharmacy, I pressed “0” and returned to the original menu. I kept looping back and forth until I had exhausted all five options. No human answered the phone even after pressing “0” multiple times. I hung up the phone. Everything in the house was silent. I stared at the medical bill with its alien code and useless phone number; I wanted to rip it up with great precision because it told me nothing about how he lived, it told me nothing about why he died.
19
I left the house for a walk. It was brighter outside. No one rushed about with errands. The houses were empty. I liked to utilize walking as a head-clearing apparatus. I wore a large man’s Carhartt sweatshirt with the hood up, jeans, and a pair of Adidas Sambas I found two years ago in Central Park next to a garbage can; each shoe was a different size. I continued past a lawn with a black lawn jockey set out like a warning. For a block I stared at the sidewalk, and almost got hit by a car. I looked up when I heard an SUV honking, the honk stretched out for ten angry seconds. Through the windshield, a woman’s face flashed, outraged and terrified. I waved to let the woman know I was okay.
I told myself I would try to literally follow in his footsteps, to see if he had left any clues. I was searching, searching, searching. I went up the hill to the pharmacy. Above the pharmacy was the former home of a child pornographer, right in the middle of town.
I took a picture of it on my phone. My phone pinged. It was a message from my supervisor. He asked me a few questions about particular dates and what I did with the troubled young people. He apologized for asking, he knew I was in the middle of a difficult time.
Down the tree-shaded railroad tracks there was a gourmet grocery store that used to sell a tiny can of tomato paste for ten dollars. He walked the dog along the tracks, when he and the dog were alive, I thought. I tried to see the path through his eyes; I tried to imagine what he thought about. The last time he came here, was he covering his mouth? What did that detail mean?
There were no traces of him or the dog, except perhaps the dog’s shit absorbed into the dirt. I crunched across the grass covered over with leaves next to the tracks and pursued the railroad as it snaked past the church parking lot, which made me shiver with disgust. I remembered immediately how I had refused to wear the veil for my First Communion. I wore a bejeweled headband whereas all of the girls in my class put on their veils; none of them had had the courage or strength then to refuse or question what we were constantly forced to do. Stupid white bitches getting married to God!
Most of my childhood memories were situated around acts of refusal, I thought as I walked along the railroad, first refusing the veil, then refusing to go to church and do confession, then refusing to stay in Milwaukee. After refusing to be in Milwaukee, I refused to stay away from Milwaukee and came back, only to go away again. Each act of refusal led me further away from my adoptive family, yet somehow increased my communication with my adoptive brother. As an adult I spoke less to my adoptive parents and more to my adoptive brother. As an adult I learned to accept things as they were, this was another great talent of mine. Some people might call it resignation, but that’s not the way I saw it. I understood that it was a very humble and ethical position, perfect for receiving bad news or being deeply disappointed.
I must have taken a wrong turn somewhere, because I was in the middle of an unfamiliar neighborhood. The houses were the size of three houses. I walked on the sidewalk, freshly swept, leaf-free. This street would have made him very uncomfortable. He never said anything about wanting to move out of our childhood home, for him the goal of home ownership would have been impossible since he never had a job or credit. He took a career aptitude test in high school, he told me, and the result was manager. Manager of what? When the guidance counselor asked him what kind of occupation he envisioned for himself, he said lifeguard. At times, he had a sense of humor.
He frequently wrote me letters of complaint about our adoptive parents, and I found it easy to be in relation to him, I enjoyed them even, but as his letters turned to the frustration he was having in locating his biological mother in Korea, I began to feel burdened. You’ll never find her, I wrote back to him, because she doesn’t want to be found, give it up!
I have always been a great dispenser of advice and was surprised more people didn’t consult me or seek me out. Why was I always seeking others out and no one comes to look for me anymore?