Temple of My Familiar Read Online Free PDF Page B

taking off his tortoiseshell glasses and stroking the ridge of his generous and somewhat shiny nose. For all their activism and political development during the sixties, all their understanding of the pervasiveness of oppression, for most men, the preferred place for women had remained the home; the preferred position for women, wherever they were, supine.
    He threw the book aside; then picked it up again as he thought to ask himself what it was really about. It was about a robbery, the trial of the accused man, the hero, his conviction and execution (because all witnesses to the crime had been killed), and the realization by the town, later, that the man executed was innocent.
    But he wasn’t innocent entirely, Suwelo thought. He had violated Jackie, even if, as Suwelo now saw, on the last page there was a note from the hero to the grieving Jackie reminding her of all the good times they’d had and of how happy he was to have had her as “his woman.”
    Suwelo yawned. Then smiled wryly as he thought of his own failed attempts to make “his woman” out of either Fanny or Carlotta.
    His great-uncle Rafe had already been cremated when Suwelo arrived at the house. There was a short, quiet ceremony that remembered Rafe as unobtrusive, helpful to the community, a man of peace. Looking about the small room, Suwelo was startled to see mostly women, old, bent, pale, and powdered women, a dozen or so of them, and only a couple of men, in the moss-green and snuff-colored suits peculiar to old colored men, leaning on their canes and appearing to wonder whether they were next. His great-uncle’s ashes were presented to him in a fake antique apothecary jar that looked familiar; he thought he might have seen the original in a museum. After the friends left, Suwelo remained alone in the house, which Uncle Rafe had left to him. It was a small row house, typical of old Baltimore, on a street that had been, over the past few years, ruthlessly gentrified. His uncle’s place had been gentrified on the outside, presumably to placate the new yuppie neighbors, but inside, it was the same as it had been when Suwelo was a boy. Tall ceilings, dark wood, mote-filled parlors, heavy old furniture, a huge scratched dining-room table with lion-paw base. There was still a working dumbwaiter, which for years his uncle had used to haul coal up from the cellar.
    As he walked through the house, spotlessly clean, its white antimacassars and starchy doilies fairly glowing under the soft light of the antique chandeliers, Suwelo realized it was not so small, after all. He began to climb, to investigate its three stories. The banister had been recently oiled; it gleamed under his hand. There were pictures everywhere, the faces so vivid he found himself stopped by them as if by the arresting faces of strangers on the street. He recognized other relatives: his grandfather, his other great-uncles, his aunts. There was his cousin Rena. Her husband, Mose. His own mother, sitting with a daunted, disillusioned look in a lawn swing, beside which his father stood. His father. His father had lost an arm in World War II. In the photograph, his sleeve pinned up, his cap at a cocky angle, he was still proud of this. But he wouldn’t be for long. Suwelo sighed, deeply and wearily, as he read the inscription: “To Unk, love, Louis and Marcia.” And, sighing, he passed his father’s brash look, his mother’s air of helpless captivity, and moved up the stairs. He could not, would not think of them; he wanted to be happy. It was strange and pleasant owning a house, even though he intended to sell it right away. The money Uncle Rafe had also left him would last about a year, long enough, with the money from the sale of the house and the time it bought, for him to sort himself out.
    With all the space, which, because it was so quiet and empty of life, seemed really very large, Suwelo was amused to discover Uncle Rafe had chosen as his own bedroom the smallest room in the