G I L K E S    (  j  /  ILL  /  k  / ss  )

 

–          That’s Welsh, isn’t it?

–          You must be able to sing.

My mother laughs, melodic, two dollars and eighty cents in change jangling   into   her  open  palm.  Yes 

and no, she says.

 

Call her Jan. Never “Mrs.” and never, ever “Mrs. Nim.”

 

–                           Why does your  

mother have a different last name?  Because paternity is stronger than phonetics, I say.

 

My mother’s maiden name is the closest thing I’ve ever had to home, but she sold it for a marriage license and a promise of ever after. She paid in  full,   exact   change,  no  hyphens 

left over jangling back into her 

palm.

                     We are not Welsh, at least,  not  really.  One  man  married 

in decades ago and now  here we are.

 

We lost my birth certificate in the last move.

     Now the only thing relating us is the slight bend of our nose. I haven’t seen my father in more than a year, and yet

                               I get his

chin, his jaw, his name. Perpetually tethered in phonetics.

 

Decades from now, will they remember her? Will they find her in the old, jangling bottle of change? How will they know that, at one point, we were just a little bit Welsh? How will they know where we learned to sing?