The jersey was a gift from my Grandmother. Navy blue with gold seams. She said I looked handsome just like my father. I’m named after my father. He served in the Navy. He was in the Mediterranean when I was born. When I close my eyes and imagine my father in the Mediterranean, it’s no different than when I imagined it at ten. Gold-coin sun—rainbow sails flapping—blue-blanket ocean. And my father in a bar veiled in thick smoke, throwing back shots of Jack Daniels, a woman from Turkey or Italy on his lap. Or maybe he paced in the lobby of an inn. Marveled at streets littered with dusty sunlight. Thought of teaching me baseball. Wondered if I would be gay or straight. Considered how he’d pay for my schooling. Hoped I would not know depression like him. Or he might have waited in the belly of a battleship and imagined me being born and cutting the umbilical cord and holding me to his chest as his lips peeled back to a smile and joked about my red hair. All these possibilities are possibilities, but I’ve never asked. I only know many things between us are oceans apart.  

I am driving down North Ocean Boulevard. Driving slow. I am new to Myrtle Beach. The sky is wide and dark like a big yawn. The moon is a silver coin. Ocean lies like a blue windowpane. Rollercoasters, Ferris wheels, and light bulb laced signs slap pancakes of light on the windshield. My sister, in the backseat, points out the window, says, “Look how these boardwalks just a-pier out of nowhere.” Bad joke. My mom massages her forehead. “Good thing you’re not going to school to be a comedian.”

But the bad joke reminds me how my hunger suddenly appeared out of nowhere. My stomach growls. More like a roar. I change the radio station from America’s Top 20. Block out the growling. My mom dials it back. Lady Gaga, once again, commences to let me know about her p-p-p-p-p-poker face. My mom enters a time machine and returns with an ill-perfected replication of “The Twist”. Ignoring rhythm, my sister croons. I shut the radio off. I say, “I am hungry.” My mother and sister touch chin to chest, examining their navels, and conclude that they, also, are hungry.

Our heads circle. Chinese? No. Mexican? No. Italian…Olive Garden? That’s not Italian, but still, no. Seafood? Absolutely, positively, fuck no. At the stoplight, we see it. And I mean, it, pulsing, pulses with warmth, smiles, and love. The red sign “HOT NOW!” divides the words (blasphemy!) that brings my stomach to its knees: Krispy Kreme.

My stomach grabs the wheel, pulls us in. Waiting in line, I imagine my coronary arteries bathing in the sweet, thick glaze, lathering, clogging. A lack of oxygen to the myocardium precipitating myocardial infarction and sweet, sweet death. “Nine dollars,” the cashier says. For a baker’s dozen, I would give you my car. Go ahead, take my house. Take my dogs. My kids if I had any. Nine dollars is a particle of dust, a grain of sand, a raindrop in the ocean, etc.

In the car, the red glow of Krispy Kreme silhouettes the icing dripping from our fingers, our chins. Five minutes, three doughnuts in, I realize the lack of a necessary component. Milk. We search grocery stores on the GPS. A Piggly Wiggly is two blocks away.

 I would rather find an Aldi’s. Always in the parking lot of Piggly Wiggly my throat dries, hands sweat. It is strange, but I feel like I’m waiting, waiting. Piggly Wiggly is the closest, though, and I need milk.

I maneuver through traffic and swing into the parking lot. Hands perspire. The “Pig” greets us with a grin under a white paper hat. Throat tightens. Door slides open. Air blasts us in the vestibule. In the freezer section, my sister wants skim milk. She says, “It’s healthier for you.” I tell her this is ridiculous, to just get 2% milk. I tell her I’d rather not drink milk-flavored water.

 My mom grabs a ½ gallon of 2% milk, “You’re eating doughnuts. Healthy doesn’t matter.” We carry the conversation with us to the checkout. “2.39 the lady says,” we argue more, “2.39,” she says a little louder. Mom unzips her pocketbook. My sister grips my mom’s wrist. “Wait!” Eyes wide, breath quickening she pulls down a black shirt with neon pink designs. “I need this.” She raises the shirt. The “Pig’s” face grins, with a motto beneath it “I Dig the Pig”. I, however, do not “dig the pig”. I tell her it is stupid. Twenty dollars and stupid. She has always been prone to impulse buys. But this t-shirt is too much. For no reason, should anyone ever “dig the pig”. Ignoring me, she tosses the shirt on the checkout. I am angry. Mad. Furious.

I gaze out the window panes, tall and big like two whales mating. Three kids, in bathing suits, are crossing the busy intersection to the beach. How dangerous, how idiotic, I think. I say, “Those people have no sense.”

The cash register beeps in the spaces between my thoughts.

I watch the bald head of my Uncle Jeff bob through traffic to the Clancy’s Car Wash. A leprechaun heel kicks above the “C”. I am nine, visiting family in Athens, Tennessee.  He returns from scavenging for coins people lost. Holding my hand as we walk, his pockets jingle. At home, we sit under the shade of a tree. His hand dives in his pocket and produces coins. He pinches the silver from the coppers and drops them in my hands. A smile peeks from under his moustache. A smile that means an impending joke. “You know, when these people get home I reckon they’ll realize they lost all their cents.” I watch his stomach roll with laughter. I don’t get the joke, but I laugh. “Hey sis’,” Uncle Jeff hugs my mom, “you guys going back to Indiana already?”

“Yeah, we better get going. We have to stop at Piggly Wiggly to get some snacks for the road,” my mom says.

Uncle Jeff stands, “Mind if I come along? God, I love their chicken.”

We pile in the car. As my mom sits, my Uncle Jeff releases a fart sound through his hands. I get the joke, and double over laughing. My mom grimaces and starts the car. Driving, Piggly Wiggly appears upon a hill. My sister and I follow my mom into the store. Uncle Jeff goes his own way, saying he will meet us at the car. We purchase Doritos, Twizzlers, Coke and wait outside. He emerges from the sliding doors, a box of chicken in one hand, and a plastic bag in the other hand. My mom says, “Let’s go.”

“No, no I’ll walk back,” he pats his stomach, “I need the exercise.”

“Sure?”

“Yeah.”

“We’ll be back in the summer.”

“Yeah, oh I almost forgot.” He reaches into his plastic bag and hands me a small plastic toilet. I stare at the toilet, wondering what it is. He fingers the handle and a black flap disappears at the base of the bowl. The toilet flushes, he smiles, “It’s a toilet bank. So you don’t lose any of your cents.” Laughing, he tells me he will take us fishing when we come back. He says, “You won’t have to wait that long.”  I watch him shrink in the rear window, under the smirking face of the “Pig”.

Two months later, and I am rolling my sister in the large rug of our front room. We call it fruit rollup. She is complaining. She says she feels sick. Dizzy. I politely tell her to grow up and continue to roll her. The front door crashes open like an orchestra of thirty tsunamis. My mother is weeping. My dad cradles her in his arms. Leads her to the bedroom. Slams the door. I stand at the bedroom door. My sister whines to let her out of the rug. I wait, ten, fifteen, twenty, thirty minutes. My sister wiggles out. The door opens, I see my mom on the bed, silent. Dad closes the door, inhales, then kneels. “Your Uncle Jeff died this morning.” My eyes are warm. I ask him how, and he says tumor.

Tumor. The word is heavy, obtuse. I think it’s a white mass of light that resides at the base of the brain. Beams of light must have shot from his eyes and mouth. This is how they knew he was dead. But, no. I know what the tumor is. It is shaped like a pig. A pig that gnaws at the brain stem, burrows in the corpus callosum. It defecates in the amygdala, gorges on the parietal lobe, moist snout snorting. After it has had its fill, it leaves when you are sleeping and forgets to close the skull.

And now, I know why I am angry. I yank the “I Dig the Pig” t-shirt from my sister and sprint across the busy intersection. My mom and sister scream after me. I slide on the hood of a Honda Civic. I zigzag between an Oldsmobile and Cadillac. I hurdle a VW bug. I propel myself from a bench over the fence blocking the beach. Eyes wild, heart shaking, I stop at the shore.

The sky is wide and dark like an open casket. The moon is a dirty copper coin. I tear at the shirt. Pulling thread from thread. Dig the pig. Dig the pig. Dig the pig. Fuck the pig. Fuck the pig. And I have lost all sense. It’s not in the bank. I don’t know where it went. I hurl the shirt into the ocean. With my face, I break the glass of the ocean. I scream. Fish flee in terror. I am frightening, large. I can resurrect the dead. I can breathe life. Spin hurricanes with my breath. And when I look up Uncle Jeff is standing in the ocean making fart sounds with his hand under his armpit…

…but, in reality, I do none of these things. I am unable. My sister dons the shirt. I hand my mom the keys. I sit in the backseat, unscrew the milk lid and drink, looking in the rearview window waiting and waiting.