“'Do you think it’s possible for an accountant to be romantic?' My little sister MinJae was sitting on the floor of my bedroom, sparkly and pink in one of the Sex-In-the-City tutus she’d recently started wearing. She was flipping through Vanity Fair and Rolling Stone, trying on careers the way she used to try on Mom’s costume jewels. MinJae was 22, just out of college, and whatever career MinJae chose for the rest of her life wouldn’t last too long, because MinJae had taken the DNA test for Huntington’s, and, like Mom, she had it. C-A-G, C-A-G, C-A-G – like a vinyl record with a scratch in it, MinJae’s fourth chromosome kept playing the same bad tune, 43 flat notes in a row.
Could accountants be romantic? From the time MinJae was born, she needed me to have the answers. Why is Mommy dancing naked in the back yard? Why did Mommy throw her soup bowl at the wall? I was eight years older than my little sister, and the one who had cared for her as our mother slipped into the solitary confinement of her own head. She didn’t even have gray hair. MinJae, Minjou, Minjae, MinJou! Mom would rock and cry against the kitchen sink, her pants soiled, repeating, over and over again, the only two words she could say when she couldn’t say the thing she meant: the names of her two daughters. For what it was worth, I had told MinJae not to take the test.
'Cathy’s an accountant,' I reminded my sister. Cathy was my first and only girlfriend. On those days when we’d come home from school to find all of our clothing tossed out the bedroom windows, Cathy would grab a Hefty and help me drag everything back into the house."
Hear the rest Monday, October 10, 7 p.m. at Dog Eared Books Castro, 489 Castro St., in San Francisco. www.facebook.com/events/1765349943718579/ AND, the magic word to win door prizes is debut.
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