It was October. I was eight years old. I sat inside St. John’s Church of Christ with my mother and my sister. There were many people in the church that came from far away. Some of the people had white skin and white hair. I liked to look at their skin and their hair. I had never seen anything like it.
I remember a fat woman at the organ. I remember music. A man and a woman were getting married. The reverend talked and talked. He spoke about the love God had for people who got married. He said that nothing made God happier than seeing his children in wedded bliss. The groom was my Uncle Tom. I knew him through photographs that sat on my grandmother’s mantel. Uncle Tom was about to marry a beautiful woman. The woman had a name the reverend couldn’t pronounce. He tried, once, twice, and grew embarrassed. Some people laughed. Not everyone laughed. The woman had to help him. She had white skin and white hair.
Then there was a party. The party was at the American Legion Hall. Everyone had dinner. There was ham, chicken, mashed potatoes, baked beans, egg salad, black olives, and green pickles sliced longways. The people with white skin and white hair all sat together. They spoke a language different from the rest of us. Before they ate, they looked at the food and laughed about it with those around them. Sometimes, they laughed for what seemed to be no reason at all. It wasn’t like the table I sat at. We were only allowed to laugh when Uncle Joe told a joke. Uncle Joe knew a lot of jokes. They took a long time to tell. Many of the jokes began
“A nigger, a chinaman, and a pollack are all sitting in a rowboat.”
Uncle Joe’s photograph was on grandmother’s mantel too. Uncle Joe was always visiting grandmother and eating all of her food. When grandmother made cookies, Uncle Joe would stuff three in his mouth and hide another six in his pockets. No one ever said anything because Uncle Joe was rich. He owned a mansion and a swimming pool. His money and his possessions somehow gave him immunity from being labeled a thief. And every Christmas, he gave out jars of expensive jam, one per household. The previous year, our family got boysenberry.
After dinner, a band played music. There was a girl with white skin and white hair who was the same age as me. She was the bride’s younger sister. We were told to dance together. She was so pretty in her blue dress.
“Where are you from?” I asked.
The little girl didn’t answer. She smiled and laughed. Her teeth were like a string of pearls in her mouth.
“What’s your name?”
“Inger.”
“I’m John.”
The song ended. I didn’t want to stop dancing. The band played a fast number. My Uncle Joe got up to dance. Someone in the crowd yelled “Big Joe!” Inger went back to her table. I went back to mine. The band played two more fast songs, then the dollar dance, then a slow number. I walked over to the table where Inger sat.
“Let’s dance some more.”
We went back to the dance floor and held on to each other and shuffled our feet in slow circles together. She felt so light in my arms, I thought I could lift her up and carry her out.
“I want to marry you,” I said.
“Yes,” said Inger. “Tomorrow I go airplane house.”
“That’s OK. I’ll come and visit. Where do you live?”
Inger took me by the hand and led me out of the American Legion Hall. There was a door near the restroom that opened into a short hallway. At the end of the hallway was an office. There was a lot of red velvet and antique oak inside. Inger was still holding my hand when she opened the door and led me in. It was the office of the Commander-In-Chief. There was a picture of him on a desk, next to an expensive looking globe. He wore a red fez and black-framed glasses. I thought he was a very silly looking man, yet there he was, Commander-In-Chief.
Inger laid a hand upon the globe and set it spinning. The lands and seas went round and round. They stopped suddenly when her finger lit upon something. I looked to where she was pointing.
N O R W A Y
She tapped the globe, then herself.
“What’s in Norway?” I asked.
“Dog.”
“Dog?”
“Dog, cat, hat, box, one two four six ten. I am happy, I am sad, thank you very much.”
The office door swung open. A woman’s head appeared. I didn’t know who the woman was. “Inger!” she said. Inger had to go. I didn’t want her to go. We had more things to talk about. When I looked at Inger, I saw that she didn’t want to go either. The woman took hold of Inger’s hand and pulled her out from behind the Commander-In-Chief’s oak desk. Was she Inger’s mother? Another sister? What right did she have interfering? Inger gave the globe a beautiful parting shot and left it spinning.
“Bye-bye,” she said.
“Bye.”
I raised my finger to the globe. Wherever it stopped would be where I was destined to live. I pressed down on the smooth surface and looked to the spot where my finger pointed. I was destined to live in the ocean.
Back in the reception hall, many couples and families were putting their coats on. I saw my mother, purse in hand, looking around for me. I lay low. I didn’t want to be found. I saw my Uncle Joe heading for the beer table, and it was easy to stay out of my mother’s sight by walking alongside him. The plan might have worked if Uncle Joe hadn’t drunk so much. Sober, he wouldn’t have taken an interest in me at all. He could at least ask my other cousins about baseball or hockey. It was all dead air when it came to me. In fact, the only connection we had was the “Indian Joe” handshake he liked to pull. Basically, he would squeeze his victim's hand until the knuckles pinched the skin and a white light flashed before the eyes. It hurt so much it was hard not to cry. All the kids in the family had to suffer through one, even the girls. Afterwards, Uncle Joe would drop a quarter into the sore hand. I never heard him say “There!” but he didn’t have to. It was in his eyes. “There! Don’t you go sissy on me now. Maybe next time you’ll get fifty cents!”
Uncle Joe held that large hand out before me. “Hey, Johnny, how about an Indian Joe handshake?”
I knew from past experience that he wouldn’t ease his grip until I was down on my knees begging. Quarter or no quarter, I took a step backwards. Uncle Joe took a step forward. Then the bartender yelled out a last call for drinks and rang a bell to let everyone know he was serious. Uncle Joe shooed me off. I was saved from his handshake. I ducked into the shadow of a bearded man I didn’t recognize and stayed with him all the way to the newlywed’s table. It was the first time I had seen the bride and groom’s faces up close. They looked very happy together.
“Are you my Uncle Tom?” I asked.
No one heard me. No one was listening.
“Hey! Uncle Tom!”
Tom’s wife elbowed him in the ribs and pointed in my direction.
“Yeah, kid?” Uncle Tom no longer looked like the young man in the photograph. He now had a receding hairline and dark rings around his eyes. His upper lids hung low, as though he purposely kept them closed to half the world. What I could see of his eyes looked like small, shining diamonds. I stood there for nearly a minute just looking at those eyes.
“You’re Frank and Linda’s kid, aren’t you?” said Uncle Tom. His wife smiled at me.
“I want to live where you do.”
Maybe it was a lot to ask. Tom’s wife laughed. “We live here now,” she said. I thought about walking away until Uncle Tom waved me over. He dug into the pocket of his pants and brought out a silver coin.
“There’s a krøner,” he said. “That’s the kind of money you can spend in Norway. Don’t go trying to spend it in this town. People will think you’re a damn fool!”
I took the coin from his hand, looked at it, then tried to give it back.
“Go ahead,” said Uncle Tom. “You keep it.”
“Aren’t you going back? I mean, to take her home?”
“I am home,” said his wife.
Uncle Tom took hold of his wife’s hand and squeezed it. They seemed so horribly out of place there in the American Legion Hall, among all the paper tablecloths and plastic punch bowls and rotten music. I felt as if I should tell them, but I didn’t know how. All I could do was hold the silver coin in my hand, squeeze it tight, and wish for it to turn into a diamond or a key or Inger’s small, painted fingernail.
§
Later that evening, I sat watching lines in the road swoosh by from the backseat of my mother’s car.
“Your Uncle Joe was so funny this evening,” said my mother. “The way he made fun of the Swedish people’s accents.”
“They’re Norweigish,” I told her. “They’re not from Sweden, they’re from Norway.”
“Norweigish. I meant to say Norweigish.”
“And Uncle Joe is an asshole.”
My mother ignored the swear word and said with her mind made up, “Well, he’s not like your Uncle Tom.”
There was a strange emphasis on her “not.” I didn’t know whether she meant it as a compliment or an insult. My sister switched on the radio and found a song she liked. No one said anything for the rest of the way home.
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