My Dead Parents by Anya Yurchyshyn

Author:Anya Yurchyshyn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Crown/Archetype
Published: 2018-03-27T04:00:00+00:00

When my mother was twelve, she went to visit her father. My grandfather Roman had left my grandmother Helen a second time, for good, after my mother was born. My mother and her family stayed in Chicago while Roman moved to the suburbs with his new wife, Josephine.

My mother didn’t tell anyone she was going. There was nowhere she was expected to be after school; no one would worry or wonder where she was unless she missed dinner. She was fluent enough in public transportation that she could get herself into the suburbs by bus and find his home, though she’d never been to it.

Like every other house on the block, her father’s had a narrow patch of lawn. She rang the bell and waited.

Roman opened the front door.

“Hi, Dad!” she said. She spoke with an announcer’s boom and cheer to play up the surprise.

His tight face went slack when he saw her. Before he could say anything, Josephine came up behind him in a dress from a nice store.

My mother said, “Hello, Josephine.”

Josephine nodded, whispered in her husband’s ear, and disappeared. Roman brought his face to the screen. “You can’t be here.”

My mother held his gaze.

“We have company, and they don’t know about you. You have to go.” He didn’t wait for her to respond. He shut the door, trusting she would leave.

She did.

My mother needed to tell this story at least once a year. “My own father!” she’d rage to me, my sister, whoever her audience was that time. “His own daughter!”

I met Roman and Josephine only once, when I was about ten. My mother and I and were visiting Aunt Arlene, who then lived in the Chicago suburbs, during the summer. Arlene had managed to create some sort of relationship with Roman and he knew my older cousins, though not well. My mom didn’t ask me if I wanted to meet him, she just told me I was going to one morning as I ate breakfast. I slumped in my chair. “I don’t want to.”

“You have to,” she said coolly. “They’re picking you up this afternoon.”

“Are you coming?”

She took a small sip of coffee, then shook her head.

“Why do I have to meet him?” I wanted to hang out with my teenage cousin Susie, play in the backyard, read, do anything else. I pushed my cereal bowl away.

“Because it’s important,” she said, and nudged the bowl back. Perhaps she’d surprised him by insisting that we meet. As she had when she was young, she was forcing him to acknowledge her, and her daughter as well.

My mother and I waited for Roman and Josephine in front of Arlene’s house. Tension locked her body when they arrived, and it rushed into mine as her hand gripped my shoulder. She greeted them from her position on the stoop, then shoved me toward their car.

Roman was small and grumbly, Josephine pretty and polite. As he drove, Roman asked me short questions about school. I gave him short answers. I

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