My Father’s Spine

They cut muscle from the bone. They tear away the flesh. They remove parts of the body that are broken and no longer alive. Skin is stretched. Skin is pulled apart. Organs are moved around. Sometimes, they never return to where they once were. They reach into the body. And they cut and tear and strip and burn the muscle, the flesh, the bone, the nerve, before putting it all back together again. The muscle remembers. The bone remembers. The body does too.

The spine remembers most of all. The spine remembers the nights when the neck fell asleep funny, the days when the back carried too much weight, the weeks when bones inside the body became slowly crushed, compressed, compacted, broken. My father’s spine had nights like that, underwater, sleeping in a small submarine bed. My father’s spine had days like that, standing too tall in a place where there wasn’t any room to stand. My father’s spine had weeks, months, years like that, slowly crushed, slowly broken in an underwater place that liked to break everything. My father’s spine, cut and changed and made more broken before becoming more fixed, remembers it all. 

～

My sister is in medical school, so she told me how it would go. The first cut would be on the back, over one of the vertebrae. Black marker sketched onto flesh might guide the surgeon’s hands, but it might not. The muscle and fat would need to be moved away, torn apart from bone and ligament, sinew and nerve. Cold metal clamps would split the back in two. And the bone would be white, under red blood and orange fat. A scalpel would remove the lamina, a kind of organic tissue. Then parts of the spine would be removed, milk bone taken from the body. 

Our father would be placed in a bowl, a basin, a bag all sealed up. Outside of the body, our father was only medical waste. Outside of the body, the spine was only collagen and compacted mineral. Our father’s stolen spine was only bone, already changing into dust. Those bones would be taken away, and gloved hands would replace stolen father with cold metal and stranger-hip. The gloved hands would screw in rods where calcified, shattered disk used to be. The gloved hands would soak up the blood and sew up the muscle and stitch up the skin. 

Hours later, the needles would be taken out, the anesthesiologist’s timecard would be punched, and the penny-sized holes wouldn’t close up for days. Hours later, the father-pieces would be long gone, crammed into red-plastic sealed-shut bags, and incinerated. Alongside a grandmother’s liver tumor and a child’s severed leg, the father-pieces would be made into ash. The bone would become dust much too soon. And on a windy day in the middle of March, cars on I-35 would smell burning plastic, pieces of our father melting in blue flame.

Once the gloved hands stitched up our father’s back, the body would begin to heal. The blood would clot, and the nerves would kiss. His skin would slowly rejoin, puckered and mad. But there would always be a scar. My sister told me it would fade, but it would never go away. I tried to picture it, in those terms, bloody and red and raw, as my sister spoke. I couldn’t. 

～

When I was younger, I used to go through my father’s closet. I don’t know what I expected to find then, but I do know what was always there. His old Navy uniforms, hanging straight, sullen in their neat rows. The white one he wore to marry our mother, next to the faded blues. Medals stitched onto the fabric. Patches of color I had no meanings for. 

I used to ask what they meant. But he would never really answer. 

“Where I’ve been,” he’d say. “What I’ve done. Who I used to be.” 

I’d nod, not really knowing what that meant either. Sometimes I’d pause or walk away. I had to be content with nothing, content with his frown. 

But sometimes I’d try again. 

“Where have you been?” I’d ask. “What have you done? Who did you used to be?” 

“It’s not important,” he’d say. And then, if I hadn’t already run off in the way children do, “I’ll tell you when you’re older.”

～

Before they took him to the operating room, before they wheeled his bed away, there was no joy in his face. The thin gown he wore barely covered his shoulders as he rested on his stomach. The black marker drawn along his spine bled through its seams. The gown was closed with white string, and he said goodbye to us like he used to. He said goodbye to us like he was about to go underwater for months, instead of under anesthesia for hours. 

For a second, we were back in early morning airports and liminal color. He stood tall and straight, and his curled, dark hair was cut down to the skin. Our mother still smiled then—our mother wasn’t drunk and angry then—and we still held onto her legs and onto her skirts. For a second, we were back in easy childhoods, before any hard falls. He said goodbye like he meant it. He said goodbye like it was something we had to hold onto—hold onto tight—before saying it back or before letting it go. 

～

There are things in hospitals that I’ve never heard or tasted or smelled anywhere else. Strange noises in a room full of strange people. You have never seen them before, and you will never see them again. Antiseptic and cold coffee and stale food. Unwrapped and half-sipped and never thrown away. Magazine pages flipped from a few chairs over. The pages are from years ago, and they are never really read. Automatic sliding doors and yells from outside. Automatic sliding doors, now shut, and those yells now from the halls. Everything is white or beige or gray or pale yellow. Everything is sterile and stinking of soap and sad people and death. When the yells begin and the automatic sliding doors open, close, my sister stops talking. It isn’t our father’s yells, our father’s spine then, but she stops talking all the same. 

My sister stops talking, and I stop listening. We stare at nothing. We stare at plastic wall and sterilized window. We stare at each other, unsmiling sisters with twin frowns. We stare at the grainy television, playing reruns of some shitty show. Until the automatic doors open again, and the yelling fades and completely stops, we stare at nothing. We stare at wall.

I think of hospitals. I think of submarines. I think of strange noises in a strange place, full of strange people. I think that submarines and hospitals must be sort of the same. I think that my father must be feeling sort of the same now, just as he did then. I tell my sister this. I ask her if she thinks these things too. She says that she tries not to think of it at all.

 The same day, after surgery, we leave. Our father is half-asleep, high on pain medication, and a nurse helps him to the car, giving us instructions on how to take care of him for the few days he’d need help after. My sister is driving and talking again, about x-ray photographs and spine memories and submarine hollows. And I am daydreaming on the ride back to our childhood home. Red brick and grass now dead, we wouldn’t hear yells. We wouldn’t taste cherry licorice, medicine thick and hot. We wouldn’t smell cold coffee and orange-scented floors, not anymore. 

～

I walked through the front door, and nobody was there. Outside, it was spring, muted pinks and orange sky. But inside, the windows were closed, and it was easy to see that my mother had been gone a long time. Cobwebs floated down around high-ceiling corners. My father couldn’t reach them. Stained glasses sat untouched and unclean. Our father could barely walk. 

Outside, my sister helped our father walk slowly—I could see them through back door slats—and I tried not to imagine metal inside of the body. I tried not to picture how the bone was taken from the flesh. I tried to forget shattered vertebrae and the harsh lines on an x-ray page. The images my sister talked of were bloody and red and haunting. The images my sister talked of were orange-scented and stank of automatic sliding doors and ugly yellow walls. 

I tried not to think of my father going under—underwater then, under now. And I tried not to think of the spine with all that remembering, with all that memory. Instead, I tried to think of the weeks to come, the weeks where I would work and go to school online from my childhood home, the weeks where my sister would help clean up the cobwebs until our father could reach dusty corners again, the weeks where our father would heal, the weeks where we all might start to heal.

～

Days later, he walked through the front door. It wasn’t raining then, but it could have been. How easy a memory can be changed. How quick it can be gone—how fast it can be made new. He carried grocery bags to the kitchen, and the limp that was there before was almost gone. I could almost imagine that it was never there. 

I watched his body stand tall, taller than it used to—his spine changed and unbent. His smile was back then, and I thought about all the cobwebs that would soon be gone. I thought about all the glasses that would soon be washed, changed in their small way too. 

“Are you okay?” 

It’s the only thing anyone could ask. It’s the only thing anyone had asked for weeks, months. 

“I’m fine.” 

My sister didn’t look convinced. 

“Are you sure?” I don’t think I was either. 

“I’ll tell you when you’re older.”

～

Years ago, I asked him what it was like under the ocean. I asked him what it was like when he lived with only a few others aboard a submarine. I asked him what happened, down where it was dark and blue. I asked him what they spoke of, down where it was only cold and blank. I asked him what he felt when he first went down. I asked what he felt when he first came up. I asked him why he ever left, why he decided to never go back, why he decided to stay and go and allow his body to break easy like a child’s, even though it would never heal like it might have when he actually was one.

I asked him these things as a child. Sometimes, my older sister listened. Sometimes, our mother listened too. Back then, I thought they knew everything—more than me, more than anyone. They never asked all the questions I did. They never asked anything. I thought they knew everything. But, they did listen. And now, looking back, I remember how they would lean in, move closer, hold their breaths, and wait for my father’s slow reply.

～

Now, I ask him if I am older. I ask him if I am old enough. He has a thousand stories. A million rememberings. He has a body that breaks much too easily, a spine that remembers it all. I ask if I am older, and he says that I am. My sister asks if he wants to remember, if he wants to go back. She says my questions and his stories can wait if he doesn’t. 

But he says that he does. He says that doctors have taken pieces of him away. He says that he wants to answer all of my questions, give us all of his stories, before they take away any more. 

～

You know you’re breathing. You’re breathing air. You’re feeling air go into your lungs, go out. You know you’re breathing. You breathe in,then breathe out. But the moment you go down, the moment everyone and everything goes under, it feels like you’ve taken a big breath, a huge breath, and it sits there. You take a huge breath, and it sits there, trapped in your lungs.

You’re underwater for thirty days, sixty days, ninety days and it’s hard to exhale. You’ve been underwater for ninety days, and you know you’re breathing. You know you’ve been breathing this whole time. You know because you’re the person who makes sure everyone can breathe. You know because you’re the one who makes sure everything works. You’re the one who makes sure everyone can exhale. But still, it feels like you’ve taken a big breath, a huge breath, and you’re holding it until you come back up, come back up from all that dark and all that blue. It feels like the pressure might make you explode. 

You don’t think about the sun until days after you’ve first gone under. You think light bulbs are fine. You think blue light and artificial stars will be okay. You think and think and think—it’s your job to think, it’s your job to solve problems—but after you’re under, after you’ve been under for weeks, you miss the sun. But suns aren’t there. When you’re that low, when you go underwater like that, when you go so deep where only inhuman eyes can see, the sun doesn’t reach you. There are only light bulbs.

You don’t think about the night sky until you first come up too. Down below, there are too many men and too many fake suns and not enough space for it all. Underwater, you know it’s breakfast time when the cook gives you pancakes on your plate. You only know the stars are out when you’re eating leftovers from lunch. When you first come up, all those breaths, all the pressure, all the time spent underwater in a strange place, in a strange world, collapses. And there are too many stars in the sky when before there was only dull metal ceiling holding out tons of ocean water and death. 

I tell him that humans aren’t meant to hold a breath for so long. I tell him that humans aren’t meant to be in the dark for so long. I tell him that humans aren’t meant to look at dull ceilings when stars are in the sky. And I tell him that he didn’t talk about missing me or my sister or our mother. 

I tell him that I think hospitals and submarines are sort of the same. I tell him that he went under again, and I tell him that we were scared. I tell him that he’s not in a submarine underwater anymore and he’s not in charge of making sure everyone can breathe anymore but he is still making everything work and we’re still here and we still need him to come back up, we still need him to help us make everything work. As I tell him these things, I am a young girl again. As I tell him these things, my sister and I are back in the airport—we are the same, except there is no mother to say everything will be okay. There is only our father, constant as always. 

He doesn’t answer for a long time. I have not asked any questions. He stretches out his legs. He flexes his feet. He rolls his neck to one side. Then the other. He massages his back, and his hands press into father-spine and stranger-hip. His hands press into healing scar tissue. And I think that bodies heal so easily. I think of all the other stuff, all the stuff that is so much harder to stitch up, and cover with a bandage. 

I have not asked any questions, but he speaks.

You don’t think about that kind of stuff at all.  Once you go down, you don’t think about what you’re leaving behind if you never come back up. 

You don’t think about your daughters, four and nine, waving goodbye. You don’t think about your wife, leaving her all alone, leaving your best friend. You don’t think about making sure everything works at home because you have to think about making sure everything works hundreds of feet down.

You signed up for this. You signed up for this when you were young and you may not like it all the time and you may have some regrets but you have always done the things you signed up for and you will do this too. You will do this, and you will try not to think of your wife, your daughters, four and nine. You will do this, and you will think of stars instead. 

Our father stops speaking. Our father, constant as always. I ask him if suns are easier to miss. My sister leans in. We are children. He says yes.