Andrea Vassallo

My dad tells us about the Hindenburg while we’re following the Goodyear blimp on our way to the dump. We’re in the back seat of the old red Saab, my brother and me, strapped into our super-duper seatbelt contraptions, the ones my dad bought at Sears, the ones that crisscross over our chests and pin us there to the cracked vinyl seats, the seats that smell of my dad’s Vantage cigarette smoke, cut with the spice of the pink Canada mints he keeps up near the emergency brake.

Hugo Chavez is sitting on the side of the tub, watching my father as he takes a bath, his last one, as it turns out. My brother and I have limped him here to the tub with the built-in rails; rails it turns out he’ll never need because his time, from diagnosis to departure from