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I don’t remember the story very well,
I don’t even know if it was real,
maybe it was one of the ones I made up and told
so many times, that it became real to me.
In the story
someone came to the front door of my grandmother’s house,
asking if I was home,
asking to see me,
and my mom told my grandmother
to keep me in the kitchen
hidden from view.

That story got mixed up in my mind
with one I know was true,
the one my mother told me happened before I was born,
the one where men came to the front door of my grandmother’s house,
asking for my father
and my mother saying
he wasn’t there,
he was gone,
and she didn’t know where.

That’s what she told
those important men in suits
who needed to find my father,
needed to find him fast,
because of something he had done wrong.

All she had to give them was a list
of the people they invited to their wedding
less than a year before,
the only record she had, names and addresses of
my father’s friends, my father’s family
his mother, my grandmother
his sister, my aunt
his family, my family.

By the time I was old enough
to ask important questions
it was too late,
she couldn’t remember where anyone lived
where he might have gone
and my father,
his family
my family,
was nowhere to be found.

@copyright Susan Taylor Brown 2010
All Rights Reserved