Where There  is Smoke There is More Smoke

Jena Gessaman

My dad’s breathing machine is loud. A green tube trails after him all over the house. It slithers down the dank hallway up his shirt and sits lodged in his flared nostrils pushing life saving oxygen into his wilted black lungs. He still craves the nicotine, so he dips cheap ass swill Kodiak. He spits stringy black saliva into cute little pill bottles, opening and closing the safety proof lids after each dollop is served. On the two-foot diameter side table next to his couch/chair covered in a sunset colored afghan his mother made sit many of these cute little bottles. While we talk I watch in horror as the green colored Sprite bottle fills with his brown snotty liquid. I stifle vomit from the look and smell of it all while the constant hum of the breathing machine repetitively chicken pecks me in the chest. I hear the loud humming sound when I’m smoking in a dream or when I dream in waking that I could ever start again.

My daddy, like my granddaddy before him, gurgles thick yellow gloopy saliva rich egg yolk colored loogies. They hang from esophagus to lung and cause one to do what my mother calls, “play with it.” It sounds as if someone half-swallowed some thick oatmeal shake. I would find myself clearing my throat, “Aheem, Aheeem” to try and cheer them on: “You can do it, hock that puppy up!” When it would hang…that’s when I felt like vomiting.

When I was a little girl around 6 or 7 years old we would visit Dallas for Christmas. One of my favorite Christmas memories is of my mom bitching at my dad about how her hair was going to smell after visiting his parents. My sister, brother and I would sit silently contemplating the future visit understanding that we would be breathing stale, smoky air in a small apartment for at least 4 hours. Everything in that apartment smelled and tasted of smoke. The ham, the green bean casserole, the rolls, the tea, the divinity. The bathroom mirror appeared to be aged with a bronze wash. Everything was covered in a greasy film, even the brown furry toilet seat cover.

My Gan Gan had huge fucking ears. I would stretch my hand and measure them from thumb tip to fingertip. His smile was large bearing golden teeth and bar at 2:15 breath. He had greased back hair and a Humpty-Dumpty body. He wore an undershirt and a gentleman’s white button-up shirt with a pocket full of smokes. He sat on an autumn colored floral couch with a green tube up his nose smoking Pall Mall unfiltereds. I sat on his lap and realized while looking at our hands together that they were exactly the same. I held my hand next to his in awe noticing the slope in the nails, the strength and the creases. I squeaked, “look Gan Gan, our pointer fingers are exactly the same.” He began to laugh a phlegmy eruption so I hurried back to my sister and brother –all of us in matching pants suits, huddled next to a crack in the sliding glass door. My mom would throw just enough stares at dad and then we’d have to go.

Mom and dad slept in separate bedrooms for the last 10 years of their marriage. When they tried to spend the night together mom would end up screaming at the top of her lungs, “Mickey! Stop gurgling!” and he would trudge obediently down the hallway to my sister’s room she left abandoned for college. I wished she were there to yell back at them, to punch them. She was always so strong, but now, even she and my baby brother smoke. I tried my first cigarette when I was 12 on church choir tour. I started smoking regularly at 15. I quit for both my pregnancies and always started again. I know one thing about cigarettes: if you smoke them –you will continue to smoke them, you cannot part-time quit.

Jena Gessaman electrifies her audiences, whether reciting poetry or teaching eager young students the magic of creative writing. When not scribbling away on a random scrap of paper, Jena likes to rollerblade, kayak, hike, and practice yoga. For upcoming workshops and shows check out www.digthatnoise.com