Diane Payne

1999

The Unanswered Questions

She looks over my shoulder, my seven-year-old daughter,
catching me by surprise as I read the morning paper,
asking if those horrific photographs were from Yugoslavia.
I thought she was in bed, safe from these images, but there
she was, beginning a new day.  “You mean Yugoslavia is 
in Colorado now?”  I remained silent, feeling a loss that 
spread into so many depths of unfamiliar, yet painfully intimate
territory, I didn’t know where to begin.  It was like the day
she wanted to know about Yugoslavia, and why we were 
dropping bombs on the people, and if I had ever been there, when 
suddenly my earliest memory returned with a distant
familiarness, and all those letters from my first pen pal 
materialized, her descriptions of Yugoslavia, her stories
of coming to visit America, and the letters I wrote back 
about our dogs, and my questions wondering how close 
Yugoslavia was to Vietnam, wondering if it was close enough 
that she might know my cousins or neighbors, and if she was far 
enough away to be safe from the war.  I was relieved when my 
daughter then asked her next question, freeing me temporarily
from the past. “Your pen pal spoke English?” was the first of many, that 
finally ended with, “Is she still alive?”  Then wanting more answers 
about what happened in Colorado, the bombs dropping in Yugoslavia,  
all those questions answered with, I don’t know.  But I do know 
when my eleven-year-old student walked into school today in 
our 90 degree desert heat, wearing a long, black trench coat that’s
never been worn to school before, he was looking for more than his
coat to be taken away.  And I keep seeing images of that young body
in that oversized, long coat, arms stretched out at night, reaching 
into that world of too many questions answered the same way the bombs dropped and the letters ended.

Diane Payne