The MANY men in my family tried to raise me with indifference to gender, teaching me how to change a tire, throw a punch, build a fire, that sort of thing. I think they may have overshot though. No, I didn’t blossom into adulthood as a pyromaniacal auto mechanic with a penchant for getting into fights. First off because I’m not the type to blossom. But also, I am cursed with what some folks call “dainty wrists.” I do, however, have a closet full of men’s blue mechanics’ shirts complete with an embroidered name tag that says Sam – which happens to be my name. And these shirts comprise the majority of my wardrobe. 

I mean, I’m not a complete pine stump barbarian when it comes to fashion. I do accessorize them with various items as they fit my mood and/or weather. Plaid shorts or skirts, fish-net stockings, army boots, leather jackets, maybe a big blocky cardigan. It’s not a look you find in glossy magazines and I get glances from women as they pass me by. Especially young women who are my age – these denizens of fashion who regard the current trend of paint-splattered shirts, torn jeans, and all things neon as haute couture. Leg warmers? Come on. And yet I’m considered a fashion faux pas.

“You’re a pretty girl,” my mom always says in regards to my wardrobe. “I don’t know why you think you have to try to prove a point.”

“I’m not trying to prove a point,” I always respond, although I suspect she’s right. I probably am trying to prove a point. I just don’t know what it is yet. I’m 22 though. I reckon I have some time to figure it out. 

“You could go to college and start over,” she also always says, leaning in closer and staring into my eyes, like she’s certain college will solve all my wardrobe malfunctions. 

“Start over?” I always ask. “Start over what?” I’m not trying to be obtuse. I really don’t understand her line of reasoning.

She never gives me an answer though. She simply sighs and up into the air go her big burly hands – the kind that could effectively build fires, change tires, and throw punches – and which she did not pass down to me. Then she walks out of the room. 

It’s not a productive conversation, to say the least. But I guess productivity has never been our thing – my mom’s and mine. She has a much more productive relationship with her dog, Stanley. I suppose he’s easier to understand. Even though they don’t speak the same language. Though I’m not sure we do either.

The shirts – the ones I wear every day – belonged to my dad’s much younger brother, Sam. As a peacenik and a conscientious objector who managed to stave off shipment to Vietnam, he asked that I never refer to him as Uncle Sam. Fair enough. 

Throughout my childhood and adolescence, Sam was hands down my favorite family member. He took me on excursions from our small rural Illinois town to Chicago several times over those years. 

“Ya gotta see the bigger picture, Samantha,” he said the first time we went. I didn’t know what he meant, but Chicago was bigger than anything I’d seen up to that point. The biggest thing I’d seen in our sleepy town was the 1976 Bicentennial parade that went down Main Street when I was eleven – half my age now. Some of the girls in my school rode their bikes in that parade. I never understood girls. Even then. I’d preferred Matchbox cars to Barbies; insects to jewelry; mud to perfume. And with only two older brothers, I felt distinctly out of touch with my fellow uterus-bearers. I remember being taken that parade day though by the shiny red and blue streamers sparkling in the sunlight and the white ribbons in my classmates’ sun-kissed blonde hair and feeling a tinge of jealousy that I didn’t understand. 

“The small-minded folks with their narrow scope, they’ll eat you alive,” Sam said that day. “Chew you up and spit you out just as soon as they’d rat out your own mother for hanging the wash wrong.” I remember wondering what that meant, but assumed it was some brand of brilliance that required decoding I wasn’t yet sophisticated enough to possess. 

That may have been what made Sam my favorite. I sensed that he was different; that he also struggled with conventionality. He’d worked for years as a steady and reliable mechanic at Lloyd’s Body Shop. Then one day, he moved into a trailer outside of town and started taking on work as a shade tree mechanic. When I was fifteen, he began to disappear for weeks at a time – wandering off to California, northern Canada, and eventually Thailand. I was envious. I suppose at the time he thought that traveling to some far-flung place seemed like a good idea. I had no idea he was trying to get away from himself. 

When I was 17, he pulled me aside at our family’s annual July 4th reunion and began ranting about the inhumanity of man toward man, along with some other garden-variety rhetoric that had become all too common for him. “Ya know,” he paused. “Lennon said that nine is the highest number in the universe.” He smiled. 

“Yeah?” I said, unsure of the Lennon to whom he was referring. I wanted so much to understand his world and still thought that when I got older and grew up, I would get it. 

Sam nodded and a smile crossed his face. “Yeah. Cuz after that, Samantha,” he whispered, his eyes off in some dreamy place, “you go back to one.” He held up one finger, then twirled it a few times and tapped the tip of my nose. He got up and walked away. The Lennon to whom he was referring was, of course, John and not Vladimir, which is spelled differently anyhow.

I didn’t know it at the time, but that would be my last conversation with Sam. He disappeared a week later and his body was found two weeks after that. The coroner deemed it a suicide. It wasn’t until weeks later when leafing through one of his heavily illustrated journals that I learned about the voices. 

To this day, I wonder what the voices sounded like for Sam. If they were men or women. Or maybe both. I wonder if any of them sounded like me. Maybe that’s a weird thing to wonder. But my middle brother hears voices now. He tells people they sometimes sound like Sam, but won’t reveal whether it’s our uncle or me. 

And no matter how old or grown up I get, I’m not sure I’ll ever know what to make of that. 

*(modified excerpts from Crying in the H. Mart by Michelle Zauner)