A Short History by Number
695.4 is the Dewey Decimal Classification for Roof coverings, Metal.
The only time I live under a tin roof is in my first apartment. This is also the only time I ever live alone, the first year after I finished college: living room, bedroom, and bathroom with a clawfoot tub to myself. It is $600 a month. The fridge and kitchen are outside the rest of the living quarters, in the hallway that gives out onto other apartments. This is an arrangement I’d call a dealbreaker from the safety of my early thirties — if I used words like “dealbreaker” — but my neighbors never steal from my fridge or rifle my small kitchen pantry. My landlord offers me a lock for the fridge, but this idea only reminds me of Prader-Willi syndrome, a genetic disorder that prevents you from feeling satiety, causing parents of children with it to lock up their fridges and cupboards. Besides, I have no food worth stealing. I eat a lot of white bread toasted with Parmesan and garlic powder. I drink Cynar, a bizarre artichoke liqueur that I pour over ice with soda water, which looks repellant enough to discourage anyone from dipping into my supply.
I was 20. I waited tables, so I was paid in cash and used cash to pay for everything. After each shift I’d stash a pile of twenties in the drawer of my jewelry box. There was no one to make me eat, and so I didn’t. I recommend all the horrible choices I made — poor nutrition, too much to drink, writing very bad poetry. It was an apogee or perigee of living: free, starving, alone. I went to the library on my day off. When the library shut, I would buy myself dinner at a Greek restaurant and read a library book as I ate.
Feeling the softness of an aged Mylar hardcover novel published in the 80s has some emotional resonance and comfort to me. A book is held open with the edge of a dinner plate and my ankles are similarly hooked over the edge of a stool, sitting at a marble counter on a very hot evening. The waitresses are nice to me. I get pie for dessert to remind myself that there are people who not only eat, but eat dessert. Then I bike home to lie, alone, or not, beneath a tin roof.
Gene number 6954, also known as TCP11, is positioned on chromosome 6. This gene may be responsible for coding sperm tail morphology and motility.
In fifth grade we are made to watch a movie, the classic documentary The Miracle of Life. The film, which originally aired on the PBS show NOVA, is part of sex ed; showcasing the mechanics of reproduction more than anything you might actually want to know about sex. If you want to visualize the vas deferens and/or the sight of a distended cervix every time you fuck for the next 60 years, this is the documentary for you. In the film we are treated to our first look at semen under the microscope; as fifth graders, this is also presumably our first look at semen ever. The magnification shows sperm whipping their tails with a frightening and alien fury. Like bats, they scare me: anything without eyes has a kind of uncanniness. The speed and strange whiskery antennae of house centipedes will later remind me of the sight of these sperm.
(For the week or so we do sex ed, the teacher accepts and answers anonymous questions written on index cards from a box at the front of the room. The only one I can recall is “What is anal sex?” When answering, my blonde and slightly plump fifth grade teacher wrinkles her nose, involuntarily, I think, and says inscrutably, redundantly, and not a little incorrectly: “It’s having sex with your anus.”)
I don’t think about sperm or semen much again until I’m 14 and the president is in trouble for getting some of his on a young woman’s dress. In my innocence and love of science at that age, I remark to a classmate that semen is, like blood, a protein stain and will come out with cold water and a color-safe enzyme bleach.
Entry 695.4 in A Treasury of Jewish Quotations is from Ben-Sira’s Ecclesiasticus (not to be confused with Ecclesiastes): Hidden wisdom and concealed treasure, what profit is there in either?
The story goes that when my mother’s father died, my aunt was going through the papers in his desk. In it, she found a memoir, written by my great-grandfather, one page with reference to his religion. She finds what looks like a marriage certificate. This marriage certificate is written in Hebrew. It’s a ketubah, actually. She finds two yarmulkes. My mother’s family is Episcopalian. Does this come as a surprise after decades of being asked at parties, “Salinger? Isn’t that a Jewish name?” (Answer: “No, German.”)
Confronted with the obvious evidence that my grandfather was Jewish, my grandmother promptly denies it, snatches the pertinent page from the memoir and runs into the bathroom, locking the door. We hear the sound of a toilet, flushing. My grandmother emerges sans paper, smirking, I like to imagine. End of discussion. Points: Nana, 1; Aunt, 0. My aunt goes into the bathroom and sure enough, because my grandmother is a complete simp, the page is crumpled up, in the laundry hamper, right on top. This story will always make me think about Jesus’ injunction not to hide your light under a bushel basket.
695.4 is the ICD-9-CM diagnostic code for lupus erythematosus.
When I’m 22 I live in Western Massachusetts and I’m planning to become a doctor, taking post-bac pre-med courses. A chemistry class that meets at 8:30 is my doom. After bravely making it through a semester, I quit the science classes and take creative writing — a poetry workshop and a creative non-fiction class. I wait out my first New England winter reading New Yorker profiles and trying my hand at essays, writing villanelles the world does not want.
My father is sick, dying actually, of leukemia. He dies in April. Two weeks after the funeral I find a small red spot on my right cheek, like a pimple, like a strawberry birthmark. I ignore it. I rub it with jojoba oil. It gets bigger. I ignore it more. I try not to think about the word “cancer.” On a visit to a kindly Iranian gynecologist at the free clinic, once my exam has concluded, he asks me, “What’s that on your cheek?” (In all the years and dozens of doctors since, he is the only one who looked at my whole person, the only one to do more than just his job. He looked for a clue.) I told him I had an appointment with a dermatologist. “Good,” he says. “Make sure you have someone take a proper look at that.”
But I skip the appointment. At 22, this is when I first understand why women don’t leave their abusers, why adoptees don’t look for their birth parents, why people don’t go to the doctor when something is obviously wrong. It is easier to pretend there is nothing wrong, to forget, to shut out knowledge, to stay safe for as long as you can.
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