The Spirit

Abstract

Growing up, I myself do not remember ever feeling like anything but an “outsider.” Something deep in my stomach told me, somewhere stretched across the ocean was a piece of myself. I do not remember the exact moment that my family’s history began to unravel. People always asked me if I was related to this Crane or that one, and I would smile and say No. As I grew older, it became more irritating, “No, none of my relatives live near here,” I would all but shout to the inquisitor. I wondered where all of my relatives were. I always knew my name was different from my grandmother’s, but I did not know why. Something was amiss, but when I attempted to ask my father, his face paled and I retreated. My paternal descendants, I discerned, were twilight zone people. I always felt as if I belonged in another place, that there was a dormant world embedded in me via my grandparents and father. Shreds of stories leaked out in whispers when I was young, until my grandmother started to toss out one story at a time, until she broke down and confessed to me that she had written a book. It took me some time to persuade her to retrieve the manuscript out of her basement, where it had been hidden away.

History took hold of me and never let me go thereafter.

—Simone de Beauvoir