Nostalgia for the Light

by Fulla Abdul-Jabbar

I wish the telescopes didn’t just look into the sky but could see through the earth also so that we could find them…We would sweep the desert with a telescope downwards and give thanks to the stars for helping us find them. Violeta Berrios

The window was thin and wide. It was placed high on the wall of the lab so that all I could see out of it were the tops of trees and the bulbous birds which often rested in them.

I looked out of that window one afternoon during a five-minute period in which

I waited for ethanol to dry off twelve plasmid DNA pellets. It is difficult to use DNA that contains residual ethanol that was first necessary to precipitate it out of solution. Ethanol inhibits certain reactions that amplify and cut DNA. It is also less dense than water, so, if too much remains, you will find your dyed-blue sample slowly floating out of the agarose well in which you neatly deposited it into with your pipette tip.

Each small, white pellet of DNA rests at the corner of the bottom of the point of a 1.5 mL Eppendorf tube. The pellet is so small and so stuck to the side of the tube, that its location does not change after I pour out the milliliter of ethanol. As I inverted the twelve tubes and arranged them into two even rows on the folded paper towel, I watched the rings of liquid drop down and quickly dry. But still there remained too much ethanol clinging to the edges of the tube. I used to spend tens of minutes waiting for it to evaporate, but then a friend in the lab taught me a trick that everyone knew. If you throw your tubes into the microcentrifuge for about ten seconds, you can push back down the remaining ethanol to then more easily lift it away with your pipette. Then you’ll only need to wait a few minutes with the tubes open and inverted on the paper towel before you can call them dry.

I spent this time with the window, trying to connect the sky’s shade of blue with what the weather might feel like. When my eyes drifted down to a rusting toaster that sat beneath it, I heard a quiet succession of taps and noticed that I had knocked all of my tubes over. The neat rows now sat in a pile. Although the tubes were numbered and I could easily rearrange them, I felt that I had somehow failed them.

QUESTIONS

I worried that the science thing was drying up.

You seemed intrigued by the diagram that I had drawn, and you started to ask me questions. This embarrassed me. Later you described the feeling of reading something which stops you. Which makes you say, I didn’t know it could be this way.

I worried that I wouldn’t be able to listen to you as you sat in a chair doing nothing except reading from a book that did this to you. I recalled something my elementary-school principal had told us: Always look at the speaker’s mouth. Doing so will help you to hear the words, she said. Especially if you’re far away. Watching you, I noticed the way your fingers framed the paragraphs you read aloud, and something came into focus. It did not have to do exactly with vision but rather with a feeling that sat directly behind the eyes and pressed against them. I could hear the words better because I allowed myself to see the speaker. To notice you.

I am trying to say something about the feeling I had when you asked me those questions. When you asked what the double arrows in the diagram meant. And, when I told you that they indicated reactions which were reversible, you asked how it could ever all go in one direction. I pointed to the two forward-pointing arrows and mentioned the net loss of energy. Oh, you realized, the drawing is folded in on itself. At that point, I wanted to leave my own chair, grab the marker, and teach you. I was becoming that way again. I couldn’t help it. *

I miss working with my hands, I told her as we drove to drop off the TVs from the exhibition.

Was that satisfied by your work in the lab? she asked.

I missed the skill it required to steady your hand to allow the deposit of extra liquid into the agarose well. I missed being able to coordinate one protocol with four others—staggering waiting times so that I could always be pushing something forward. I missed the kind of work that I could do while listening to music or holding a conversation.

Yes, I said, curiously. But maybe it was satisfied by drawing too.

Or by getting up, grabbing the marker, and teaching you.

MISTER SUN

We took our shoes off and crawled into the large gray dome which we called a turtle. It was dark inside there, and, when he turned on a light, it became night. We sat on the floor and looked at the stars and gave names to groups of them. Some stars were special enough to have their own names. Then it was time for a new activity. The teacher—who was not our teacher, but one that traveled with the dome—passed out a sheet of paper which contained lyrics to a song. You probably know it, he said. We had a practice round, and then we sang, and then he pushed a button. We sang to the sun, calling it Mister, and asked him to please shine down on us. As we sang, I watched the sun move through the sky, erasing the stars we had named and revealing a bright, empty blue sky.

They had decided on a name for a girl. To start with the letter H so that it could go along with a sister whose name had also started with the letter H. Hers was one syllable. Hers would be two. They were satisfied with this name and whispered it to each other at night. And when he was gone, she whispered it to herself. Her mother did not like this name—her mother preferred a name that she felt was regal, with age and with weight—a two-syllable name starting with a B. The day when they were to give their daughter her name, he was gone. She looked at her daughter’s eyes—she would later call them eyes that looked—and the name sounded ugly.

*

She took me home nameless. For ten days she could not make a decision.

*

There’s a photograph of three of us children standing in the sun. We are wearing thick sweaters.

We are standing from oldest to youngest from tallest to shortest from right to left.

My mother enjoys narrating this picture.

Look at him, standing straight as a pencil, like he’s in school.

Look at her crossing her arms, big smile, posing.

And you. That’s definitely you. Just look at you.

I’m not looking at the camera, but my face is tilted up towards and washed out by the sun. My eyes seem closed, and I wear an expression of a stupid joy. My sweater is too big and the beaded yellow fabric dangles off my arms.

LIGHT

It was still dark the very early morning my mom drove me to the train station. It was the confusing journey from Home to home where it is impossible to determine the direction in which I am travelling.

Remember when you took me to work with you at Michigan State? I asked her. When you were a nutritionist for a while?

I couldn’t remember if it was for take-your-daughter-to-work day or if it was because I was sick.

She did not remember, and I could not remember why I had thought of it.

I took all of you to work, she said.

It was hard for me then.

I was concerned about myself and about you three. Remember the woman who stole you?

Of course, I said. She bought me juice.

I remembered the sour taste of the yellow pineapple juice the innocent woman bought me from the market near my mom’s OB/GYN clinic. I remembered my mom’s eyes when the woman returned me. I was four years old.

The next day, I quit, she said. I was scared.

But I was lucky with all of you—you were all well-behaved.

I rested my head against the window, felt the cool glass flat against my scalp, and closed my eyes.

She continued speaking.

In my office, I had a chair for you, and you would sit quietly and watch me. I gave you a little job to help me. Whenever I went into the room to do a pelvic exam, you used to turn on the light.

NOTES
This essay borrows its title from the Patricio Gúzman 2010 documentary of the same name.

1. Ozui,  “Still tied to the world I cool off and lose my form.”

2. Orfeo, Richard Powers
“Mad[dy]? Before I met you, I thought I was going to be a chemist. That’s what I studied in college. I know this, Peter. I was your wife, you know.

I’m sorry, I’m rambling.

So, what are you saying? That this was all some kind of vicarious fantasy? The road not taken?

In a way. I was…I was trying…

Oh, shit. Her hand rose and her eyes widened. You were composing. In DNA?”

Fulla Abdul-Jabbar is a writer, artist, and editor living in New York. She teaches in the Department of Writing at the Pratt Institute where she was awarded an AICAD Postgraduate Teaching Fellowship and is editor and curator at the Green Lantern Press. She has performed, screened, or exhibited throughout the US and abroad including at the Electronic Literature Organization, the Brussels Independent Film Festival, and the Ann Arbor Film Festival. Her writing has appeared in the Northwest Review, DIAGRAM, Bombay Gin, Jellyfish Review, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere.