Uncle Fernando’s Garbage Triptych

When you’re angry with someone, Fernando insists, never call him garbage. Anger is nothing to garbage: garbage eats anger for breakfast. It eats all of us in the end. And we’ll be lucky if anyone remembers us as well as the earth remembers our garbage. You Go to the Movies Three times Uncle Fernando’s neighbors have called the police to report him. When they go to the movies, he goes through their garbage. How is this a crime? he argues. The stuff is right here, out on the street. I don’t steal it. I just look. It’s my job. The police eye him warily (Fernando is a big man with large eyes and cancer scars, and a certified garbage expert), let him go with another warning. My fellow creatures have no idea the service I’m providing, he assures me, as I note down the contents as he calls them. You learn much about the world from its garbage. I nod, plug my nose. I know he is highly respected in his field, but this is not the way I imagined my vacation. Pronto! he cries. Soon they’ll be back from the movies with all kinds of strange talk and ideas in their heads. My Uncle Parachutes into Garbage This is the funniest family video I have ever seen. Grandmother sits quietly, sipping watermelon juice while Aunt Victoria serves tiramisu and tea, and outside a monkey swings from the tree. One Two Three Uncle drops out of the sky like a giant fly. Long arms and legs extend out against the shiny window of the clouds. On his back, Daffy Duck gives us all the finger, and I laugh, but no one else does. Grandmother shrugs; Victoria confers with the servants. Why Daffy Duck? I ask. Palotino, my uncle replies, in Portuguese. Daffy’s like me. Like how I wish to be. No wife. No children. No family. Now his wife laughs. And my cousin Fernanda. Loco, his wife announces. It’s the first word she’s said to me since I’ve been here. This is my family. The Brazilian family that I haven’t seen in over twenty years. My DNA is in that airplane. My past dangles on that branch. My death might be curdling on the milk. The screen wiggles for a second. Then— blank. My uncle shrugs. I landed right in there—right in the middle of the trash— I couldn’t have planned it any better. He snags the video out of the machine, sits down for ice cream. But my mind is still flying with him, dropping out of sight, and past all known geography into a future family photograph on Aunt Victoria’s mantel beside her porcelain bells and liqueur glasses and a bright orange broken bird’s beak. 2007-09-07T12:38:14-07:00 Priscila Uppal Image by Ilona Staples 7 /images/trash/staples.jpg true

uncle-fernando-s-garbage-triptych This is my family. The Brazilian family that I haven’t seen in over twenty years. My DNA is in that airplane. My past dangles on that branch. My death might be curdling on the milk. /images/trash/staples_thumb.jpg Uncle Fernando’s Garbage Triptych

2007-09-10T15:13:09-07:00

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