Don't Forget This - Jackie Davis-Martin

Uncle Andy had said this to Reni: You are Croatian. Don’t forget this.

Uncle Andy had said this to Reni: You must learn the language from your mother, from your grandmother. It’s a great thing to be bilingual.

Uncle Andy had said: You are going to play the accordion. It’s a beautiful instrument. Tell your mother I’ll buy you one, that she can arrange lessons.

Uncle Andy had said you will play the accordion and learn the dances and maybe you can go to Duquesne University and be a part of the great Tamburitzas.

Uncle Andy would have pulled the hassock toward the chair in Grandma’s living room where Reni might be reading and told her he wanted to give her advice because he loved her. He was the only adult who took the time to create advice and deliver it one on one. She was eight, then nine, then ten, and Uncle Andy, who lived upstairs from Grandma, didn’t have children. He lived with Aunt Helen who had lovely plastic jewelry that she allowed Reni to play with; she let her sit at her vanity, the square drawers on either side of the velvet bench bulging with plastic fruits on chains, dangling earrings, bracelets you could line your arm with. Then Aunt Helen moved out and Uncle Andy was going to get married again. He still had time for advice. You are Croatian; it’s your heritage. Don’t forget this.

Reni’s impression of Uncle Andy was the same as her mother’s: he was full of bull shit; he always thought he was Clark Gable just because he had the dark hair and moustache, the big ears; he freeloaded off Grandma, living in the apartment upstairs but seldom paying any rent. He thought he knew it all. Uncle Andy was Reni’s mother’s older brother.

“He’s not going to buy her any accordion!” her mother scoffed to her dad as they drove home.

“I don’t want to play the accordion,” Reni said. It was an instrument she hated. She told Uncle Andy she liked her clarinet just fine and he said she’d never get into the Tamburitzas with a clarinet.

“Well, don’t worry,” he mother called over the seat. “We are certainly not going to see any accordion from Andy.” Her mother turned to her dad. “That man is marrying a woman over twenty years younger than himself!” Reni leaned forward to hear more. She liked the new girlfriend, Lu; she was lively and pretty and laughed a lot. But all her mother added was, “What on earth does that girl Lu see in Andy? Besides a good time!”

Sometimes Uncle Andy would grab Reni by the hand and pull her to the kitchen linoleum. “Let’s do a little soft shoe, kid,” he’d say, and hum “Tea for Two.” He had a big bass fiddle downstairs that he’d take out of its canvas and strum, leaning around it, maybe singing, too. “See? When you learn the accordion, we can play together,” he told Reni.

She took piano lessons instead which her parents paid for. Uncle Andy thought those lessons were part of his plan. “She needs to learn the keys,” he said. “It’s a good start.”

Sometimes Andy would drive up to Reni’s house with Lu in his convertible, for a visit. “How’s the Croatian coming?” he’d ask Reni. “To be bilingual is something you will never regret.”

Reni said she didn’t know any Croatians. Uncle Andy snorted. What about her entire family—on both sides, he added, nodding to Reni’s dad. Reni said they all spoke English.

Lu sat on the arm of Andy’s chair then, impressed with his love for his family, leaning over him with love.

“Oh that girl!” Reni’s mother exclaimed later. “What she’s in for!”

Uncle Andy forgot about the heritage that Reni wasn’t to forget. Uncle Andy and Aunt Lu had a couple kids of their own. The kids spoke a little Croatian as toddlers because Grandma took care of them a lot, but then forgot it all. The kids never played the piano or accordion or bass or even the clarinet. Uncle Andy never gave his own kids, as far as Reni could tell, all the advice that they were never to forget.