To My Left

Everyone in the church is quiet except my mother to my left who is moaning softly. My father, to her left, is dry-eyed and straight-backed, a different man now. Two nights ago when the news came, he was slumped over the ktichen table, weeping long after my eldest sister switched off the lights, closed the curtains and shuffled me to bed. My mother smoked on the porch.

My sisters sit in the church pew to the left of my father in dark purple dresses, three plums in a row. To their left is Oscar, our yellow lab, and Simon, the stray who simply walked in the front door one day and never left. My sisters insisted we bring the goldfish, and the three of them bump against the glass in their tank to Simon's left. The ant farm is here too, with several dozen sugar ants tunneling, hauling dirt, ceaselessly moving. Farther down are the dolls, fourteen of them in their Sunday best, hair combed and bowed, cheeks rosy. Then there are my Lego-men, seated properly on a bench I made out of red bricks. Circular nubs stick in their would-be buttocks and would-be calf muscles.

There is a teddy bear, passed down from sister to sister; my mother's baby-blue bicylce; our favorite old Monopoly board; my bottlecap collection; a tin of paperclips; my father's pocket knife with worn Boy Scout insignia; an apple that had been rotting in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator for a month; the week's recycling, sorted correctly; a green canteen; a high school algebra test with a B+ on it; a college acceptance letter; a pair of red winter gloves; a toothbrush and half-tube of toothpaste; on and on and on to my left.

To my right, with his hands crossed on his chest and his camoflauge shirt neatly buttoned, is my brother resting in his black box, an American flag draped neatly on top. The preacher clears his throat into the microphone.