Ghost Factory

It’s Thanksgiving dinner and my grandfather, the Iguana, has a cotton ball stuffed up his right nostril. He’s tried to plug his nosebleed with several napkins, which now sit gory and crumpled on his empty plate. Eventually, he settles on the cotton ball method, which seems to do the trick, but makes it harder for us to chew our food. My grandmother, slightly embarrassed with her husband’s recent turn in health, is smiling at us, weakly and without much resolve, as if to say, “that is not a wad of cotton in your grandfather’s nose, it is a magic marshmallow.”

Unfortunately for her, no one believes it. Instead, we shovel forkfuls of stuffing into our mouths and chuckle intermittently while we eat. It’s not like we’re laughing at him—we’re embarrassed—it’s awkward for us to watch him deteriorate in front of us. He looks so defeated with his nose all-bulging with white fluff. His wrinkled hands are folded in front of him, and his eyes roll back into his head. Then, the thought occurs to him that he should eat some more, and his eyes pop open from those creased, drooping lids.

“I want seconds,” he says. His words are muffled into the napkin he’s tucked into the collar of his shirt like a bib, and we’re not entirely sure if he’s talking to himself.

“Oh, but Phillip,” says my grandmother. “You must not make yourself too full my darling.” He narrows his dark bushy eyebrows; they curl like two exotic caterpillars perched beneath his forehead. He rants, and when he does, this something seeps back into his voice—it’s a rabid vitality that could only belong to the man whom we all know is living inside this person at our table. The person who right now resembles a scaly, taxidermied subject in a zoology exhibit. My grandmother cowers in her seat at the force of his yell. She knows not to be afraid of my grandfather, the Iguana, but that’s never detracted from the power of his words.

“LEEZI. GOD DAMNIT TO HELL. I WOULD LIKE SOME MORE OF THE TURKEY FILLINGS. MY NOSE IS BLEEDING, THERE ARE HEMM-A-ROIDS ON MY ASS—AND I CANNOT TOLERATE ANY MORE OF THIS FOOLISHNESS.”

* * *

My grandfather, the Iguana, is the type who eats everything on his plate. Not just every bit of food, but every insignificant scrap of mush that you’d be tempted to scrape into the garbage. For example, if he’s just finished eating spaghetti, he will lift his plate to his face and slurp up all the red sauce with his quick reptilian tongue. The taste of food is never a big concern for him. My Grandfather the Iguana once ate cat food from a tin canister. He denies it when I ask him about it, but I know that he swallowed every last bite.

“What a marvelous fish paste!” is what he’s rumored to have said.

This constant eating has been his tradition since the Second World War, when my Grandfather the Iguana spent four straight months in a German POW camp—fed on nothing but a watery cabbage stew. When I was a boy, I used to imagine him, starving and imprisoned by goose-stepping officers. In my daydream, he would stick his emaciated head through the bars of his cell and catch flies on the slimy end of his tongue. One, two, maybe three, whole flies per day—he could have stirred them into the stew and lived off those for protein.

All throughout my formative years as a child, his stories were the same. Nazi prison, Adolf Hitler, cabbage stew. You’d think that might have gotten old after a while but it really didn’t, not most of the time anyway, because he would get so invigorated when he told these stories that his whole leathered face would shake, and the dangling skin on his neck would flap, his eyes would water up and then his voice would rock the foundation of the room. Back then he sounded to me like a Shakespearean actor, some hellspawn soldier from the army of Macbeth, with spit that coated the filmy corners of his mouth.

“It is monstrous,” he would tell me. “Can you imagine, having nothing to eat for four months? I mean, by God, I was just about ready to eat my damned leg. When the Americans came to liberate us, I knew ahead of time because I’d heard it on the radio. The Germans would tell us that we were losing, but I knew better. I was a translator you see, because we are Austrian, you and I. Anyway, when the bastards knew the camp was in jeopardy, they started to march us. I made a hell of a fuss and spoke right to the commandant. Look, I told him. The United States troops are going to be here any minute and if you want to save your own asses, you’d might as well surrender right now. And then what did the sonofabitch do? He surrendered!”

Sometimes, my Grandfather the Iguana would not talk about the war, but instead choose to focus on the topics of Politics and Religion. As he liked to remind me, individual people were smart, while groups of people did stupid things. This was as true of the Nazis as it was of the Christians. In fact, my Grandfather the Iguana, a fearsome anti-fascist, didn’t believe in religion. As a child, my father never attended Hebrew School, because my Grandfather the Iguana thinks that Judaism is a crock of shit.

“There are two rules in life,” he’d often whisper in my ear. We’d be sitting in his study, looking over the old black and white photos of him in uniform. He looked less like an Iguana then. He was tall, dark and handsome—like Humphrey Bogart.

“Firstly, you must always remember that Adolf Hitler was a madman. Anyone who tells you otherwise is full of nonsense. Secondly, you must also remember, that all religion is rubbish. And we must beware of religious people because they are all extremely stupid.”

Other days, when he retained his sense of humor we might be serenaded with one of his British army ballads. My grandfather the Iguana is quite fond of nasty limericks, and while I’m not sure if Iguanas like to copulate, he can sure tell a great dirty joke. I still remember the first time he let me know about The Good Ship Venus. I couldn’t have been more than nine years old, which is around the age that he deems it appropriate to let all the children in on his favorite little song. I was sitting at the breakfast table in my grandparents’ house, looking at the cheap Picasso prints that hung on their wall. My grandfather the Iguana was dressed in his flannel pajamas, the light blue color of hospital scrubs, pouring honey on a stale slice of rye bread, which is just about his favorite thing to eat for breakfast.

“You absolutely must learn this song, my little friend,” he told me between large mouthfuls of bread crumbs. “I used to sing it with my chums, when we were marching, and now you will go and teach it to your friends at school.” Then from the coarse pit of his stomach came the deep base of his voice. It was sort of like listening to a lizard’s claws scraping across a blackboard. The tune has a terrible legacy and it goes like this:

“We sailed on the Good Ship Venus
You really should have seen us
The figurehead was a whore in bed
And the mast was a rampant penis

The Captain’s wife was Mabel
Whenever she was able
She’d fornicate with the Second Mate
Upon the Chartroom table

The Captain’s little Pipper
He was fearful nipper
He stuffed his ass with broken glass
And circumcised the Skipper

The Captain’s little Daughter
She fell into the water
Delighted squeals revealed that eels
Had found her sexual quarter.”

Just as soon as my Grandfather the Iguana had finished with his song, I made him sing it again. I grabbed a magic marker and wrote the whole thing down on a napkin. He had to help me with some of the spelling, which in retrospect seems a little strange, but he was passing on a family tradition. Unfortunately, I never got to sing the song to any of my friends at school. I sang it to my younger sister first, and then my mother grounded me for a week.

* * *

My Aunt Tina is the one who nicknamed my grandfather: the Iguana. My aunt is an organic farmer, and quite the dope smoker, but you wouldn’t need to be stoned in order to get a good idea of how my grandfather resembles this particular lizard. Aside from his purple lips and that slimy, darting tongue, the man has always struck our entire family as cold-blooded. This is not to say that he’s heartless, though he can be awfully mean when he wants to be. When we joke that he’s cold blooded, we mean precisely that. Like any reptile, he does not seem to shiver in freezing temperature.

One of my earliest memories is standing with my sister beside the swimming pool at my grandparents’ house—we are wearing our bathing suits but we won’t get in. This swimming pool is a legendary pit of sub thermal terror. Somewhat akin to Dante’s Ice Hell. My grandfather, the Iguana seldom takes the time to clean it, and so it’s floating with algae and muddy brown leaves. Every morning he swims the breaststroke through the frigid, murky waters. He’ll pop up every now and again, with soaking strands of gray hair. A questioning stillness forms in his filmy, bloodshot eyes, and then he will scream and curse at us.

“YOU SISSIES! GET INTO THE WATER THIS INSTANT! STOP BEHAVING LIKE IDIOTS! WHAT IS THIS FOOLISHNESS, KIDS? IT’S FUCKING WARM!”

Like frightened ants we scurry away from his wrath, out from the gate surrounding the pool, across the tiny wooden bridge and into their backyard—looking for safety in the arms of my mother. She links hands with both of us, one of us on either side of her, and marches us back to scold her father in law. She tells him we’re not sissies, and then he stubbornly agrees to adjust the heating in the swimming pool. They’ve been making this same agreement for the last ten years.

* * *

My grandfather the Iguana had to have a hip replaced. Now he can’t go hiking. While he was in the hospital, he got bedsores, which turned into hemorrhoids, and now he can’t do much of anything. At age eighty-seven, he still liked to hike, so his mood has greatly deteriorated. These days, he mostly sits in his cluttered office, writing checks to charity organizations. He’ll scream at my grandmother for a cup of coffee, then make one out to UNICEF for a hundred dollars. He’ll berate her for burning the meat loaf, and then mail fifty to the Children’s Cancer Foundation. Just the other day he sent three hundred to a woman on death row who says she’s wrongfully accused. He received a letter in the mail about it and became outraged at the judicial system. My grandfather the Iguana is outraged even more easily than normal, because he likes to stay active. My father wishes that he would try to actively save some money for the future college students in our family, maybe even for my grad school. I don’t much care about that, I’d just rather he save some for himself and my grandmother.

My grandfather the Iguana doesn’t keep track of his finances and there will be a great need for money in their future. Soon they will be moving from their house in Maryland, the one that they’ve owned since their marriage, and the one in which they raised our family. They’ll be living in an apartment complex for the elderly, dependent solely on the retirement fund, until it’s time for the nursing home. My mother and I are helping my Grandfather the Iguana to clean out his office. The move is still a year off, but he has so many different books and pamphlets horded into his room that we need to get started now. My mother opens his desk to find three drawers full of AAA roadmaps—the fold-up kind with titles like, “How to drive from Maryland to Florida”.

“DON’T THROW THOSE OUT!” cries my Grandfather the Iguana. “DON’T YOU DARE THROW THOSE AWAY. SOME OF THOSE MAPS ARE EXTREMELY USEFUL TO ME.” Most of the maps in the drawers are from 1990 or even older. The routes have changed, plus he doesn’t drive. My Grandfather the Iguana refuses to shed his skin. I think that I can understand his predicament. An iguana sheds in pieces, and it sheds throughout its entire life.

My grandfather, nearing the end of his time here with us, would rather not forfeit the last pieces he still holds dear. All the money can go to groups, groups of hardworking individuals like himself. Meanwhile, he’ll cherish his remaining layers, until they all flake away, like chips of paint on an aging fencepost. He does not need us to pick at any of his rough spots. He can strip them off, himself.

My grandmother shuffles silently into the office, carrying a tray with three cans of soda. Increasingly, she reminds me of little old women that I saw on the street in Prague. Her back is hunched over, like she’s carrying a boulder on top of it, and her head is cast down toward our feet.

“I thought that maybe you would all like some Ginger Ale,” she says.

My Grandfather the Iguana turns to her and scowls. “LEEZEE! THEY ARE TRYING TO MAKE ME THROW AWAY ALL OF MY THINGS. PLEASE TELL THEM TO STOP BEING SO FOOLISH.”

“Maybe we should go,” says my mother. “We’ll come back and help you guys later. It looks like Phillip knows what he wants to do with the stuff in his desk.”

“Yes perhaps,” says my grandmother. “Phillip has a lot of important memories in here.” I can feel her watching us as we leave the office and descend the staircase, to exit the house. She will not outlive him. Instead, she will aid him by sweeping up the tissue that accumulates on the carpet. In the course of shedding, an Iguana loses everything save for its’ eyeballs.

* * *

It’s springtime and I’m in New Orleans. I was sitting earlier in a restaurant when the waitress attending me recommended a drink special called swamp water. I didn’t know exactly what was in it, I’m not sure that she even knew, but it was really potent and I had three of them. Two frozen margaritas later, I am wandering around the French Quarter. It seems like most everyone in New Orleans owns a reptile, or two or three. I have a drunken tarot reading with a Voodoo Priest named John. He keeps a nest of Pythons in the top level of his pink stucco town house. He calls them his babies. After the tarot reading I walk down Rue Dumaine to the intersection between Royal and Bourbon Streets. That’s where I see it, and it’s not the sort of thing I’m accustomed to. A man is walking an Iguana. That’s right, he is walking it—much like one would a dog. The poor guy has a leash around his scaly neck. Of course, the owner is friendly, and he lets your cousin Iggy walk around while he drags the leash behind him. Kind of a gesture of good faith you might say.

When I first notice the Iguana, and I know you’ll appreciate this, he is shitting on the sidewalk. Yup. Just squatting and letting it go, while all these red-faced tourists crowd around to take pictures. I hope you don’t find it offensive but this is the part when I think of you. I know you’ve felt like folks are crowding you lately and believe me, so does this gentleman. Iggy stares up at all the tourists with his beady black eyes and it looks to me like he’s scolding everybody. I can almost hear him open his snout and tell them something that you would say, “You’re all behaving foolishly”, or “You’re all a bunch of fools!” Then he goes waddling quickly down the street, his claws click- clacking on the pavement, his sharp tail chopping through the air. He walks fast but feebly, just like you do when you’re in a huff, and his owner has to chase him to catch up.

It’s during the course of this chase that the drunken lady almost steps on him. Your friend Iggy is weaving through the crowds, and the cracks in the sidewalk, when this big homeless redneck woman almost stomps him with her boot.

“Whooa,” she cries, and teeters on one foot, nearly spilling her paper bagged King Cobra down the front of her Donald Duck t-shirt. She quickly collects herself and cackles so hard that her fatty tits flop. Before I know what’s happening, she’s removed her cell phone. I didn’t even know that homeless people use cell phones, but apparently in New Orleans they do. Before I can even count all the blackened bruises on her arms and neck, she has the phone up to her ear, and she’s walking side by side next to your cousin Iggy, who looks even more irritable than he did moments ago. He’s trying to whip the homeless woman in her legs with his tail, but I guess her calves are too thick to feel the sting.

“Amos, Amos you won’t believe it, but guess what? I am walking right next to a Komodo Dragon. A KOMODO DRAGON, silly. Yeah, I almost stepped on the little feller!”

As the woman slurs into her phone about the Komodo dragon, it occurs to me that I don’t ever call you any more. I’m sure you think that I’m being kind of a sissy, and I suppose your right. It’s just this state your in, with the butt sores and the bum hip and all, it doesn’t seem like you want to talk. During my tarot reading, John the Voodoo guy told me that I’m supposed to lose an older male family member who had a great influence on me as a child. That could be a gimmicky thing he says to all young, impressionable tourists. But, lets face it your time is coming around and I don’t know what to do. I would ring you this instant, but I’m nervous you’ll ignore me like I’m the drunken lady, and abruptly hang up.

Also, I almost forgot to tell you but I grabbed some of the skin from your cousin Iggy. I can still see him receding down the block, the screaming fat lady and the owner in tow. Anyway, Iggy made the whole shedding thing look really easy. The dead skin just fell away from his back like peeled string cheese while he walked. I am holding a piece that I found to my face. Its plated green with little white stripes running through it, like an alternate pattern on a carpet. When I hold it up to the sun it’s transparent, and the light shines through all the way to the soft underside.

When you are gone, I am wondering what you’ll leave behind. If you go dry up on me like a voodoo relic, or a fleshless corpse with a pair of eyeballs, I hope you’ll at least consider handing me something memorable. I want to put it beside the skin I’ve found today and keep it somewhere safe. Hitler won’t get it I promise, and neither will the Jews for Jesus. Once the house is sold, and your pool is empty, when your non-religious dollars have placed children in good Catholic schools, and the death penalty is finally abolished, when all of this has come to pass and you are just a tall tale--how will I know to look for your peelings?

Can I find them somewhere in your books? I’m not supposed to tell you, but my parents have already promised me your collection. Will your skin be grafted into the binding on the jackets? Is it the frayed yellow color of old photos— or the sickly green of cabbage stew? Can I find it in a can of cat food, or stuffed inside of your nostril? I am looking for the Good Ship Venus and much more. Papery wisps of you that hover in the air like pieces of a dandelion clock. A folded map that leads to nowhere and back again.