There was only one black man in our white county, and though we knew that Selma and Johannesburg were a universe away (and that we were not oppressed beyond class and sex) none of us knew the loneliness or caution of his life. The notion that one may need to flee at a given moment. Our past was clean, even our parents didn't know of the massacres, deep in the canyons. It took years to clear up the misunderstanding, that our ancestors had not waved farewell and good luck to Chief Joseph or that men from China had not simply gone missing, and some- where their gold waited to be found. I know my uncle disappeared there, left my cousins and a note; his brothers sent to find him. I still don't know the mystery of that search. He came back, packed the kids and faded into Alaska's coast. Now my father simmers in twenty-four years of silence. No matter, I know now the history, have hidden his ambiguity like a third thumb. I have found that the parallels he sees between my life and what he imagined is as faulty as our collected history. Still, like others, in the barn, I keep a canvas bag that holds a can of dried beans, some caked-flour, and a jar of matches, safe from the rain.
—MEHope
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