Photo by Jack Blueberry on Unsplash
1. A racoon that screeched but didn’t bite. He wore a headlamp in the mornings after that, stuck to his forehead before the first streaks of dawn, or when a deluge arrived and his rain jacket wasn’t enough to keep him dry.
2. Gwyneth Paltrow on the set of a film. Or so he said. This was before the exploding vagina candles, vagina steaming, and necklaces that are also vibrators. Or is it vibrators that are also necklaces? Wait. Not her, my father said. Uma. Uma Thurman.
3. Beats Studio Headphones in metallic purple. He fixed the ear covers—the reason they were thrown out. Left them with no trace of old DNA with alcohol and a towel. Left them shiny in my right hand.
4. A poster of a bullfight, all the words in Spanish, the splatters of blood gushing out, the year it was printed long before I was born.
5. A Céline purse, compressed brown satchel, leather heavier than it looked.
Note: It flew from Connecticut to Ecuador with me, where a man fixed the clink that couldn’t close, and many years later it traveled back to the state it had been found in. I’ve vowed to never sell it. A reminder of where I’ve been, where I’ll go, and what I’ll come back to.
6. A fake gold arrow necklace my mother kept.
7. A blue and white owl necklace I kept.
8. A Cartier bracelet I think is real but I’d prefer not to know.
9. The iPod Nano (2nd generation), iPod Shuffle (? generation), iPod (5th generation). One of the most played songs: Enjoy the Silence. iPods, never bought.
10. Nudes. Too many—especially during the 90s. Photographs of bachelorette parties or maybe, quite possibly, blackmail. Most of them would lie on the top of the bin, uncovered, as if the garbage man was a robot, as if his cheeks didn’t stain red when he threw them all away.
11. A gun that he held for a few moments, feeling the cold ridges, trying to connect with its history, realizing it could have been used to kill someone. Leaving it for the landfill, for the earth to swallow up.
12. A silver Tag Heuer watch that lingers in my bedside cabinet with the hands frozen in the past.
13. Nothing he sold, but that he gifted, with the forewarning of where it was found.
13a. A vacuum I took when I got married.
13ab. The same vacuum we didn’t need and gave to a friend years later.
Note: Please recycle. Or donate, for fuck’s sake.
14. Heels, sandals, boots, wedges. Mostly size nine. Always my mother’s fit. Never size six or six and a half. We all joked they were all from former wannabe-models’ feet who work at Kate Spade in Greenwich on Greenwich Avenue to pass the time because they have nothing more to do while their husbands work on Ponzi schemes in the city.
15. A 19__ World Series Finale pamphlet my father asked me to sell on eBay, but I was too lazy to post.
16. Red Ray-Bans that—after years of use—peeled on the lens, the way a thin layer of snow becomes ice on the window shield, flecks rising. They sit gathering heat and cold in my Honda, and I have no will to throw them away.
17. A lava lamp my brother remembers but that I don’t.
18. Three plastic Christmas trees we used before we switched to live ones. The smell of pine new, the task of feeding it water a hassle, the tiny leaves remaining in our apartment weeks after it was thrown on the curb. Sometimes I miss the ease of that former plastic.
19. A recorder the size of a brick I threw away in secret because I accidentally recorded myself saying bullshit when I was ten.
20. Films on DVD that hadn’t hit theaters or stores. It wasn’t until later that I realized these were the first dibs for Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences members.
21. School supplies
21a. pink breast cancer awareness pens
21b. hardbound folders I kept for school, scribbling over the previous owners’ names
21c. erasers that did nothing but stain white sheets
21d. erasers that crumbled into themselves after one graze
21e. white-out in strips and in liquid
21f. SAT books I needed, universe sent
22. Whatever I wanted. My dad told me to wish for it and that he’d find it.
23. Marijuana.
24. Grills. My father would force the old grease out, repaint, fix the lid, and call up the friends who had yards, parting with it with the promise we would be invited to the carne asada, to eat maduro con queso, and well-done hamburgers.
25. A portable charger that someone at the New York Times Travel Show asked me where I got. The garbage, I said.
26. Books. There was a time I only asked him for books as long as they were legible. He’d deliver.
27. Cellphones
27a. earphones for cellphones
27b. cases for cellphones
27c. extra batteries for cellphones
27d. unlocked cellphones we sent to Ecuador
27e. cracked cellphones
27f. unscathed flip phones
27g. unblockable cellphones we threw in the trash again
28. A wooden television that my father placed on the floor of the room we all shared, and on which he was forced to place a pink and purple blanket hastened with tape when my three-year-old brother refused to sleep at night, flipping the knob, watching cartoons through a neon hue while in mute.
29. Laptops. One with photos of a fluffy dog with tight curls for fur. My task was to delete its past—history made by strangers—swipe clean others’ lives.
30. A Yeezus sweatshirt my mom thought referred to Jesus.
31. Too many things that if they had been bought wouldn’t have led us into the same chitchat at our kitchen table while my father cleaned whatever he hauled home that day.
Victoria Buitron is a writer and translator with an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Fairfield University. Her work has been featured or is upcoming in The Citron Review, Bending Genres, Lost Balloon, and other literary magazines.