Chicago Gothic

for my great-grandmother

All stockyard and iron. No white picket fences, no battles. And the fire that burnt everything clean. DuSable set up on the bend of the right river, and things stuck: a house, some trade, a vague stink in the air, and a city accumulated in the eddy’s swirl.

I can tell that part.

But when I get to the crazy aunt who killed my great-grandmother by pushing her down the stairs, it turns to tin.

My mother tells me at the hospital her grandmother tried to speak. Instead, her daughter shoved a banana in her mouth to silence her, while her grandchildren stood watching just as they had when she tumbled down the stairs.

Fifty years later, my mother laughs—all roof of the mouth and nose. Word choice—ge-ag, he-and, ae-nt. Two-syllable short a dragging detail along to make a story for me.

For my great-grandmother, death, sweet mush, grown somewhere warm and very far away.