Friday Feature: Jā. R. Macki

Jā. R. Macki is the author of Linus Baby (Pie Face Child Press, 2023). Her writing and visual art have appeared in midnight & indigo, The Spectacle, Skink Beat Review, RipRap46, and forthcoming from Brown Sugar Lit. She is from Chicago and holds an MFA in writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts.

He and I

after Natalia Ginzburg

for Jasminum

When the samaras parachute from the branches, I take spring walks to the good parks with my father. He picks up the winged ends from the ground and turns them into helicopters with his bare hands to amuse then shows me how.

In summer, when Chicago is at its best, he takes me to 7-Eleven for suicide Slurpees. He takes me to Toys R Us on his paydays for whatever I want. I want white Barbie dolls. I want the Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle. I want the moist rubber squish of neon green Gak.

In winter months, he can grease a small child’s face with Vaseline better than most mamas. He does not speak any language other than English. And I speak and understand a decent amount of French. He navigates Chicago streets well; I do not navigate the city’s streets well without GPS. He travels to new cities. I travel to new cities. I do not know if he moves about those cities like a thoughtless butterfly because I do not travel with him to cities. I learned he has traveled to cities in other people’s armchair conversations about him.

He likes crossword puzzles, Montblanc pens, and music, especially music. I like music, crossword puzzles don’t mean much to me, and I like the glide of a Zebra F-301 on canary yellow legal paper. He likes James Brown. I like Michael Jackson. Surprise! I learned that, besides having a passion for basketball, he also likes bowling and is good at it. I do not bowl often, but I’ve known strikes.

I love and understand one thing in the world, and that is feelings.

He likes the Mister Shop, and I will go with him willingly with curiosity and admiration to the North Riverside Mall through the second-floor entrance right next to the Sears and down the escalator to watch him try on Mauri’s. He has a distinguished sense of style. He adorns himself with jewelry and keeps his nails clean. His attire is that of a man you’d want to sweep you off your feet, while my style is inspired by his through the lens of a woman we both love. He buys underwear and socks at Burlington. And I follow him to the gun and jewelry stores, a pawn shop. He is well-dressed, even in casual clothes. Right hand to God. And I am dressed well enough most days, but will wear a faded, oil-stained Misfits t-shirt to run errands.

He is not shy. He is quiet. His quietness does not make him standoffish. He’s laid back. Kool as his cigarettes. And I am quiet until my observations are complete. He likes precision and order. He washes his car and cleans the vents and crevices with Q-tips. He is meticulous. And I find order in the chaos I create.

He loves from a distance.                                                                He teaches me how. 

And I am loved becomes a problem I want to solve.

He orders a combination beef from Portillo’s, dipped with sweet and hot peppers, fries, and a strawberry shake. I order a jumbo chili cheese dog or a grilled chicken sandwich on croissant with extra mayo and American cheese, fries, and chocolate malt. I fill the paper cups with ketchup for him. Then we squeeze across the red vinyl booth seats. He orders Hi-C orange no matter what his McDonald’s order is. And I order Hi-C orange and remember him.

He does not have brothers, but he ensured I had a secret one. He is tall, and I am short. He is funny, and I am told I’m funny too, though I am often in disbelief. He is charming, chivalrous, and women give him attention. I am charming and chivalrous, and women give me attention. He has a name spelled with two capital “M’s.” I have a name spelled with two capital “M’s.”

He has a small two-bedroom house in his name, 35 miles away, I never lived in. I had a home in my mother’s name I lived in all the time. He doesn’t like to talk on the phone when he’s home, but I can call him at work. He writes me letters like he lives out of state. And I write him back. He tells me my penmanship has improved. In exchange for being born, I get to be the reason why he’s not home when he’s not home, even though he’s not with me. 

He inspects luxury items for their authenticity. He turns his palms into scales that weigh gold. He stretches his toes down the scaled throats of crocodiles, gators, and snakes. He rubs the tanned skins, discerning the suppleness beneath his fingertips before inhaling the mild, slightly sweet, earthy smell of a natural good. Like a spirit conjured at a séance, He tells me he got married through my mother’s voice across the kitchen table, and I find it curious his sudden preoccupation with knockoffs. He is missed before death because he died when I was eight, and I buried him when I was thirty-three. He is missed before death, and I am the one who does the missing, always. He makes promises a tight knot, then loosens them like party balloons ascending into the deep blue sky of my soul. He picks a bouquet of forget-me-nots, and every petal is stuck on he loves me.

He knows how to change a tire roadside. And I am stranded roadside for things he did not teach me. He played baseball in his youth and was good. I played basketball in my youth and wasn’t. When I take interest in his sports acumen, he tells me I know nothing. 

He has an incredible number of tools because he doesn’t believe in paying someone else to do what he can do for himself. He sews a patch of himself into a new family. And my needs turn into ghosts that don’t haunt him. He leaves his blood unfinished. And I have drafts on him that are unfinished, too. 

At the show, he likes to sit wherever I want to. We do not go with others, and he often falls asleep and snores to the Addams Family Values, Candyman, and Tank Girl, but not Friday After Next.

         He tells me I know nothing (about him), but this is not true. I am curious about a few, a very few things, namely, the amount of writing about him it will take to patch a hole. He is handsome, especially when he smiles with teeth, which he rarely does. He is the type of handsome that will make a funeral director seek an immediate manicure in anticipation of seeing him again.

Everything I do is done laboriously, with great difficulty and uncertainty, like my relationship with him. If I want to finish anything important, I procrastinate because I cling to a mountain of inadequacy I scale every time I advance a step on my intended path. The goodness is a menacing giant reaching down the beanstalk. “Congratulations” is a phantom. He doesn’t understand his impact, and He and I are on season 33.

He tells me

had he died first, I 

wouldn’t be so sad. And I 

feel guilty when I think he’s right.

He is handy. And I am not. He finds time for minor repairs on my mother’s home. He patches some piece of our relationship that lifts and falls from an unfinished wall down to the concrete basement floor.

He is reactive when I tell the woman he shares his life with about the importance of my phone calls. The authority in his voice is ineffective, a foreign language I don’t understand. And I regret calling him.

He doesn’t know how to type, though I taught him to text. But I do not receive his texts often. I don’t know how to use a gun, and he does. If I suggest that he take me to the gun range, he scoffs at the idea and says I’m too sensitive, though I’ve witnessed him at Thanksgiving saying that every woman should have a gun; I am not a woman to him.

He is a doorman. When I want to elevate who he is at work, I say he’s a concierge. I see him as a successful man. When I fail at things, I remember he’s not.

He tells me he loves me. And I am suspicious of I love you.

He is prideful and will decline lunch invitations if I’m paying. Some of his pride sticks to me and creates a barrier between me and those left to love me. He doesn’t cry. He maintains that if a man has to cry, he better not do it in front of his woman. He insists the man must go somewhere else. Take a walk to cry. And I cry whenever my heart is moved. I cry openly and without shame. I cry loudly on benches in front of beautiful fountains. I cry until I cannot breathe through my nose. I cry until my voice sounds like it’s stuck in a bag of water. My sensitivity is a consciousness he sees as a blind spot. When I cry around him, he tries to stop it immediately. I used to think he couldn’t stand to witness my tears, but now I wonder who taught him to banish/outlaw/suppress them if every cigarette smoked was an unshed tear.  He doesn’t cry, but he took the opportunity at my mother’s funeral. And I sat there beside him, stunned by the state of branches.

In the splintered memory of my childhood, it is morning, and he is still in his towel, curly black hairs scattered across his chest, brushing his teeth at the bathroom sink behind a thin curtain of shower steam vanishing through the doorway, scenting the hall of our large one-bedroom apartment with the masculine and high end scent of Photo by Karl Lagerfeld.

He likes Barq’s root beer with sausage and cheese pizza from Home Run Inn on 31st Street. He likes a fresh Chicago mix and good cigars. He adorns his ears with diamond studs clear as water.

The greatest thing he ever achieved was this hole to the left of my sternum where I keep his eight-year-old daughter. He does not help her get over how she hesitates before doing anything, or her love for him. And so, more than ever, I feel. But behind my smile, I am quieting a rage.

at post burial GoFundMes and an unmarked grave 

3287 days and counting.

Every time I walk this cemetery

on the occasion of death

I hope to see the mark

of your final resting place

but there is none

and I wonder if you ever

Existed

He can be silly and fun to be around. He has a hearty laugh that gets stuck in his throat and sounds like air released from a balloon for half a sec before it fills the room. When he’s around, I forget my feelings before and ask him no questions about time, though I burn for ancient answers.

He has a heart tattoo on his arm with his daughter’s name inked across its ribbon. He keeps her kindergarten graduation picture in his locker at work for more than 25 years. He is proud of someone he made. I think.

He takes her to Lincoln Park Zoo and the Museum of Science and Industry, but she likes the museum the best. She asks him to take her to the coal miner’s exhibit because she likes the rush and rumble of the metal elevator ride in the dark. She learns the important role of canaries in mines and how they warned of toxic gas. [...]

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