Excerpt from Festivals

I am not inclined to call Pops’s death foul play although his widow, Zylina Buczek, was a master illusionist. I’ve known this since the summer I turned twelve. That year, Pops fell hard for Zylina like he was under some sort of dumb spell. He loaded what little crap we owned onto the bed of his El Camino and drove us out to Commerce Township, which was mostly fields and tire shops back then. Zylina lived in one of the older neighborhoods that dotted the area’s southwest side. She met us in her driveway, a ham-sized fist planted on either hip.

“Brock, honey, back out!” she yelled. “Turn her ‘round so’s we can unload from the rear.”

Pops did as Zylina instructed him. As he backed into her driveway, I leaned through my open window to get a better look at the woman he called Z. She stood right behind our car. It was the third week of July 1992 and hot as the devil’s piss. Zylina had on running shorts and a poly sports tee that clung to her belly making her sweat. She stood with her big hands on her hips, her feet in athletic slides and I remember thinking that she resembled a prizefighter. She looked the way our Joe Louis monument might’ve, had the commissioned artist imagined a whole body instead of just an 18-foot fist. The black fist is the first thing you see exiting the Lodge Freeway into downtown Detroit. Growing up, I’d heard that white people hated this monument, but Pops told me that wasn’t true. He said Zylina, his magician-girlfriend from work, loved that Joe Louis monument.

“A little more, keep coming back,” Zylina directed.

She motioned as if reeling caught fish. When she shouted for Pops to brake, he did. Zylina then walked to my side of the car. She bent into my window and raked her fingers through my hair.

“Y’all must be tired,” she said. “Sammy, why don’t you go in and get a snack? I got donuts on the counter and there’s Pepsi in the fridge on the bottom shelf. Help yourself to whatever you want. When you’re done, sweetie, come back out and give us a hand, okay?”

I nodded.

I would not help them unload that day. Instead I nosed around Zylina’s kitchen, taking inventory. Pops and I had been living in a rental unit behind a K-Mart and what space we had for a kitchen was just enough for one of us to stand in at a time. A shotgun kitchen, it had a sink and stove, but no refrigerator ‘cause we didn’t own one. Zylina’s kitchen and house, though modest, seemed extravagant by comparison. She had a George Foreman grill, a toaster oven, a Juiceman, and a food processor. Bagged chips perched gently on top of her refrigerator. My eyes wandered from the snacks down to the refrigerator’s water dispenser. Next to it, Zylina had placed a photo of herself and Pops secured with a poker chip magnet. In the picture, she sat facing the camera, back straight, taut smile—a showbiz pose—and stood behind her with his hand propped stiffly on her shoulder. A blue background hung behind them.          

I devoured two donuts as I stood staring at the photo. Then I sat at Zylina’s kitchen table and flaked donut glaze from my fingers. Whatever this lady intended by moving us to her house did not seem so bad after all.