Patrick Cottrell

I pictured in my mind the house at the bottom of the hill, a dark house I had not set foot inside for many years, a house as large and spacious as a medieval fortress, with enough square footage for at least one or two more Catholic families. It was not a cheaply built house, as my adoptive father liked to say. It did not come cheaply built. My parents are somewhat rich, but, like most Midwesterners, they are the cheapest people I have ever known. Despite their lack of financial stress, they are extravagant in their cheapness, their discount-hunting, their coupon-scissoring, their manuals on how to save. It was important, they said, to think about the catastrophic future, to always have a backup account filled with hundreds of thousands of dollars. To think about it too much depressed me. My entire existence was infected by this cheapness, this so-called frugality. Of course, it would be wrong not to acknowledge that these values of cheapness or frugality were what allowed once-orphans like myself and my now-dead adoptive brother to grow up, and to thrive even, in the comfort and security of the not cheaply built house. But there would be no more thriving for us, as one of us was dead.

I hadn’t expected to have such a visceral reaction to his door, only a few hours ago I thought I would rip it open. I surprised myself; I shuddered as I walked past, and went downstairs and into the living room and kitchen, where I looked around. I noted that some knickknacks from my memory were missing, and that they had been replaced with new knickknacks, but the overall arrangement of the house had stayed the same. Old knickknacks had not been removed without being replaced with fresh, new knickknacks. The wicker replaced the leather, I said to no one.

            What I needed to do was gather clues like some kind of gigantic clue-collecting agent and then put them into an overarching single theory-idea and perhaps this would answer the question of what led my adoptive brother to take his own life. Was I crying? One might have asked me, but no one was there.

I stared at his photo; he didn’t even look that

Korean, he looked Chinese, and every time

we went to a Chinese restaurant, the waitress

would ask if he was Chinese, but I would

never be asked, because it was very obvious

to everyone that I was Korean or possibly

Tibetan. Growing up, we both admitted to one

another that we wanted to be white. As little

children we were told that if we prayed to

Jesus Christ, if we spoke to Jesus Christ as if

he were our friend, if we told him the deepest

desires in our hearts, he would answer our

prayers and grant us our wishes, as long as

we believed in him with a pure abiding faith.

            I want to be white, he said to me once.

            I want to be white, too, I said to him.

Sometimes at night I pray to God that I

will wake up and be white, he said.

            I too have spent nights in prayer to our

lord Jesus Christ that I would become white, I

said.