Roger Rabid, we called him. Jabbertalky. Evermore. But mostly we called him Gunner–Gunner Summers. And it wasn’t just the Asian Americans. It was pretty much all his fellow 1-Ls–the immigrants from Azerbaijan and Poland and Brazil.
I was born in silence at the Saint-Eugène clinic, at 8 p.m. on the day of Mouloud. I didn’t cry. The midwife shook my legs vigorously until the cry came. Fireworks in honor of the Prophet’s birthday crackled in the night.
We were sitting in the plane, waiting to back out from the gate, while the flight attendants prepared the cabin for takeoff. Perplexing airplane sounds arose from unknown locations–inside the plane, out on the tarmac, in the air. It was afternoon–through the small window the sky appeared blue and clear in a way that was both joyful and aggressive.
Ernst Barbakoff went to the Cambridge Public Library, the branch on Pearl Street, every weekday morning as soon as the doors were open. Also Saturday afternoons. That was where the librarian, whom everybody called Miss Virginia, had posted his advertisement for piano lessons . . .
Papa’s hands are in my mouth. The pliers are frigging deep. He always starts at the back. That makes it worse at the end, which is the front. All confusing, but he’s that kind of bastard, my Papa. He twists the pliers.
The last time I saw Professor Keigetsu Ōmachi was in 1924, on New Year’s Day, when we went duck hunting in Shinagawa Bay with a group of friends, Misei Kosugi, Taneaki Shindai, and Torayoshi Ichikawa.
Isidoro Acevedo has not been back to Olive Street in decades. The first thing he notices is that the tabby lingering by the front door of Apartment 1 floats in the air in the recessed alcove of a small patio.
