Family History

It is Rotterdam, barely the nineteenth century, and they
are two children in a family of twenty-three. A brother,
Arie, and a sister, beautiful. We do not know
but let us make them youngest children, each others' caretakers.
In due course the sister marries. Her husband
is frightened of her beauty. He keeps her always in reach
of a sudden lunge. Daily she sits cramped behind him
in his gondola, her knees clamped together. His fares
take in the matter at a glance, businessmen with wet eyes,
escorted ladies drawing their thick veils lower. The sister
lets her long and tapered fingers slip into the soft water,
run along the slick green walls of the canals.
On the day Arie sails for America, the sister begs
to see him down to the docks. The quay
is waving with arms in puffed sleeves, awash
with eyes under the upturned brims of hats.
In the press and clang her brother draws her
apart. Slips her aboard.
Below deck she feels the ship rock, slap
against the pylons, then weigh anchor like a woman
wrenching free her wrist. She stands, balances, goes
to pay her passage. The brother will become my grandfather's
great-grandfather, will homestead in Iowa, be remembered
in our genealogy. The sister's beauty will be lost, her fingers
will become my fingers, her name
will vanish into history.