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Executive Times |
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2006 Book Reviews |
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Perishable
by Dirk Jamison |
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Rating: |
*** |
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(Recommended) |
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Click on
title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Abuse Dirk Jamison’s
memoir, Perishable,
presents fine writing about a sad childhood. Dirk’s
father avoids all parental and adult responsibilities. He finds a way to feed
the family for free by dumpster diving for food just past expiration dates. Dirk’s
Mormon mother neglects the children while withdrawing into overeating and
spending her time on the phone from their Mother likes to invite ten-speed missionaries into the house for
lunch, so Dad taught us to scatter like deer when the doorbell rings. Dad wants a no-chore policy, to give his children a feeling of
“agency,” so Mother turned bed making and dishwashing into contests with pie
as reward. Mother wanted me to attend kindergarten, so Dad encouraged me to play
permanent hooky “I want you kids to be free,” he elbowed me. “But your mother
wants you to conform.” For my first day of school, Mother prepared me a week in advance by
gradually cutting my blankie into extinction with
quilting scissors. The first few cuts were subtle. Just the decorative
fringe. I figured she was making modifications so I would sneeze less. The
tassels were kind of itchy But then she went right down the center, and I
found what looked like an oversized restaurant napkin on my pillow. The next
day it was a sheet of paper. And finally I was snuggling with a greeting
card. I figured she thought an oldest male child should do without what could
be construed by those pimply missionaries as feminine comfort, so I tossed
it myself, to give her the chance of feeling temporarily wise. “It worked
wonders,” she told a sister in Then she assembled a homemade yellow outfit for my first day Half
Chinese waiter, half golf caddie. The large kids would not be lacking a dork
to hurl off the monkey bars. Dad drove me in his truck. We parked across from the school, and he
said it was completely my decision. I was in charge. Go to school. Don’t go
to school. Whatever I wanted. “I wanna go home.” He nodded for a while, then started the
truck. Mother wasn’t impressed. I’d been deprived of a landmark. My first day
of school. Dad said, “Tomorrow will be his first.” But tomorrow was the same. Rather than sit in the truck, we went to a
small asphalt playground and watched through a rusted fence topped with
barbed wire. Dad said, “Doesn’t that look fun?” It looked like a dog pound filled with mental patients. Kids were
running and screaming and grabbing things from each other. A blonde girl came over to ask what we were doing. Dad said, “My son’s deciding if he wants to go to school. Do you like it in there?” “Yes.” “You hear that?” The girl told me, “You get to play” I whispered to Dad, “I don’t wanna play” He nodded longer this time, over how upset Mother would be, and she
didn’t disappoint. She was waiting on the porch. They argued in the bedroom for a while, then
Mother came out and gripped my arm. She led me to the front door. “You
remember what brave is, honey? It’s when you don’t want to do something, but
you do it anyway” I was
hoping Dad would step up and hit a freedom homer,
but he only said, “God, don’t tell him that.” Mother didn’t talk during the drive. She took me to a classroom
doorway and motioned an elderly woman out into the corridor. She said, “I’m
sorry he’s late,” and walked away. “Mom?” She didn’t look back. I figured it was a
mix-up. This couldn’t be it. “Mom?” There had to be some kind of
misunderstanding, so I decided to yell a little. But this only prompted the
old woman to grab my arm.What the hell is going on,
and who is this hag pulling on me? I decided it was time to scream bloody
murder and flop around like a catfish, but that was one strong hag. She held
on, and Mother still wouldn’t look back. She rounded the corner and
disappeared. So I finally shut up. Mother designs and sews most of my clothes, but nothing has zippers. To
pee, I have to drop my pants and underwear to my ankles. So when three older
kids came into the restroom, they saw a kid dressed like a French surrealist
standing at an adult-sized urinal with his ass hanging out. Missing the first
day had given Mother a chance to change my outfit. Now it was a flowery
short-sleeved blouse with a nearly transparent white scarf, secured in front
with what looked like a wooden napkin ring. But the big kids took care of it
for me. The urinal went all the way to the floor, They taught me about
zippers by pinning me in it and counting out twenty-five flushes. During recess, I fell in love with the blonde girl who had talked to
Dad and me through the fence. It was a horrible feeling. She wore overalls. I
wrote a note—Can we be friends?—and planned to slip it into one of her overall pockets. But a little
karate expert showed up during my move. He’d been making threatening gestures
all day He wanted everybody to know he could kick our heads off. As I eased
the note in, this random bastard planted a full-steam heel in my back,
sending me plowing into my girlfriend. She turned to see a red-faced imbecile on the ground. Croaking for
air. Holding up a scrap of paper that she couldn’t read. None of the kids, it
turned out, could read yet. She walked away, looking irritated, and I didn’t
try again. My sister had taught me enough about kicking to know that it was
rarely happenstance. Mother was cuddling a bucket of fried chicken at home. I startled
her, so she blew the usual shame fuse. A grimace meant to look like a big smile.
Grease like lip gloss. She set the bucket behind her chair. Look, no chicken.
No National Enquirer on her lap. Relax, Mother, I’m just coming home from my first day of school. I
didn’t see anything, and I don’t remember what I saw. “Congratulations, son. You’re on the road to college.” My sister had already passed on everything she learned during her
first years of school.When she wasn’t stomping me,
she tutored me. Often she combined the two. So really, since I was the only
student who could read and write, I was on the road to looking out the window
a lot. Mother said, “I was just reading the news. They’re saying now that
eighty percent of fires are started by fire department captains.” “What?” “They did a nationwide investigation.” “That doesn’t sound right.” “It surprised me too. And it’s not just firefighters. It’s the
captains doing it now.” “How is that possible?” “It’s true. So how was school?” “You’re telling me eighty percent of fires are started by fire
captains?” “Don’t give me that look. It’s true! So how was school?” “Fine.” Mother rarely eats out in the open. But knock on her door after dinner
and she shouts “Hold on!” from a throat jammed with private fudge. She
refuses many family meals with the phrase “Not until I take some
of this weight off.” The wording bothers Dad. “She makes it sound like she’s carrying
around someone else’s corporate freight.” Dad thinks she’s the one having the “midlife,” countering his journey
with a crisis of her own. Dedicating herself to the
consumption of three to four times more food than necessary. If her husband
is going to be dissatisfied with the life they’ve built, she will avenge her
honor by eating everything in sight. But she can’t seem to eat enough, so she’s been supplementing with
pointless lying. At first, it was simply an effort to seem optimistic. If I
crept in to console her, she instantly stopped blubbering. “Hi there, hon.
Everything’s fine.” I usually went in only because nobody else seemed to
notice her slinking off to cry with slabs of chocolate. When I mentioned it
to Dad, he said I shouldn’t worry about it. “Your mother is a victim, and
that’s what victims do.” So I just added it to my list of chores. Go in and
fix it. We love you, Mother, don’t be devastated. Don’t cry three times a day
I’ll do the dishes and take out the trash. I’ll get Dad to show respect. But once the lying kicked in, hope was somewhat lost. Empowerment
slogans—”Life is short, honey so make it a great day!”—quickly mutated into
habitual fibbing: “I had such a great day!” She has become what Dad now calls
“the biggest liar on the planet, depending on how you define intentional.” If we ask
for money, she says, “I don’t have a penny,” then slips the pizza man a
twenty. But she also scrambles things in ways that seem involuntary. It’s
like that telephone game. A phrase gets whispered down a line of people, and
when the final person speaks out loud, “If I had a hammer” has become “Border
monkey please don’t bite.” Mother accomplishes this without the whispering,
or the other people. At a Mormon
fellowship potluck, someone told a story about something that happened to
someone’s car. When Mother passed the
story along
five minutes later, not only did it now
include several alligators, but she failed to recognize that one of the
people listening was the man who had originally told the story. “Ma’am, are
you insane?” is the question that nobody ever asks. But I can see that
question in their eyes, and it’s a misdiagnosis I’m always grateful for. Much
preferable to the actual problem, which appears to be
staggering stupidity. No matter how good or bad your
childhood was, you’ll be amazed by the story of Dirk
Jamison’s childhood as told on the pages of Perishable.
One of the most amazing aspects of the memoir is the impression of
objectivity and a gentleness that, given the experiences described, is
admirable. Steve Hopkins,
September 25, 2006 |
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The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the October 2006
issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/Perishable.htm For Reprint Permission,
Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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