Everything is Full of Holes

    "Why are you always so cynical?" I hear the tiredness in her voice. I hear my father's voice in my head as I begin.

    We're walking down Markey Avenue again, past the library on our way to the science museum, past the heat sink that steams and melts the snow.
    "Don't walk on the grass, Jalal." His voice. "You don't want to make your mother angry and get your good shoes all dirty."
    "Won't get dirty." I am nine. I am looking at the ground. I can feel him looking at me, still in the grass.
    "Get off the grass." There is heat rising in his voice. Almost there. I would love to obey, but the heat sink is just a little bit longer. If I can stall just a little bit longer, I can safely get back on the sidewalk. I'm stupid. I should have walked in the street instead.
    "Stop," he says.       
    I walk the two remaining steps past the rusted grating and step back onto the sidewalk. I stop.
    "Come back here," he says. His voice is completely changed now. You can almost never tell what will make it get like that, though I am getting better at guessing. I have done something wrong, but I am smarter this time. I step into the street to return.
    "No." His voice is heavy enough to weight me where I stand. Sudden inertia. "Walk across the sidewalk."
    “What sidewalk?”
    “Don't get smart. Walk across the grate.”
    I stand still.
    "There's no reason to be afraid." Coming from someone else the words might sound reassuring, but when this voice says them I only hear how stupid and superstitious I am for worrying. It's the same voice he uses to tell me that it shouldn't matter that he is black and Momma is white. He's right that it doesn't matter too much at home and doesn't seem to matter at all in the neighborhood, but at the private school it matters very much, no matter how respected he is at the university. It's the same voice that refuses to let me go to school with my friends from the neighborhood. "Those schools are gutters, you can't learn anything in a gutter." I am stupid for asking.
    "Why are you afraid?"
    He makes me say it, even though he already knows. "Not safe," I manage. I am standing in the gutter.
    "Why."
    "The grate is full of holes."
    "Come here."
    I can't.
    "Come here."
    I make myself. I go as fast as I can without running but it still takes too long. I can feel each edge of the slats of the grate through the soles of my good shoes. I can feel the steam snaking up my pant legs. I can see down into the darkness. So far. The grate creaks just a little bit at the edge, but I make it. I am in his arms. He is holding me. I am almost crying, but it would be stupid to cry, I have no reason to cry, and since I do not, I am forgiven.
    "It can't break," he tells me. "You can't fall through."     But I can't yet believe him. The grate is full of holes. "Everything is full of holes," he tells me. I am to learn something from this experience. He tells me again about matter. Everything is composed of tiny particles that are very far apart. In between the tiny particles is nothing, but forces of attraction keep them together. The tiny particles are composed of even tinier particles that are very far apart, in between which is nothing. The biggest part of everything is nothing. Everything is full of holes. This is what matter is. This is important to know because it is science. This is what matters.

    She is looking at me, waiting for an answer. She loves me but has a hard time understanding.

    As we mount the museum steps we hear a sharp, explosive sound. "Just a car backfiring," he tells me as he hurries me inside. He explains that, too.
    At night I hear his voice arguing with Momma, but she's not hearing it.
    "Bullshit," she says. "I saw the news. You can't lie to me. The city just isn't safe anymore. This isn't any kind of place to raise a child."
    He tells her that he has lived in the city his whole life and that he's not about to leave it now. He tells her that she's being irrational, there is nothing to be afraid of.

    She just can't see it. Can't believe it.   

    For once it is okay to cry because he is crying. She is crying. I am ten. His voice is telling me that they don't love each other any more but they still love me very much. Momma is going to move away and he is going to stay in the neighborhood, and I can choose to live with whoever I want, and if I should choose Momma and not Daddy or Daddy and not Momma, Daddy and Momma both would still love me very much and everything would be perfectly okay. But his explanation is full of holes.

    Because you can't see a voice, you can only hear it, but a voice can make you look. I am always hearing his voice. It is always making me look back, to see nothing but futility.

    He is killed walking to the university one day. He would not give the men the money because he had lived in the city his whole life and he had nothing to be afraid of. I am fifteen. I am in the funeral parlor looking down at him, wearing a suit. Underneath it I know that his body is full of holes.

    But you can't see through nothing, so you have to look away to see anything. Now I am looking back at her.

    I fall into the holes. I fall out of high school. I fall into trouble. I fall into night school. I fall into double shifts at jobs that he would think stupid because they are. I keep falling. I fall up and I fall down. Just when I think I'll never hit bottom, but I fall in love with a woman.


    She has asked me a question. I swallow, and in my own voice, do my best to explain.