Yellow and Red Corduroy Pants
Dominique Coleman
North East School of the Arts
Word Count : 887
Supposedly, my Grandad was a hero. Thats what all the medals and men had said.
Although at my adolescent age, what was to know about the mirages of war? I thought our
battles were fought with words and negotiations. I didn't realize people died when war was on
the rise. I discovered this as I uncovered my Grandad’s past in an attic I wasn’t supposed to be
in.
My father, Lincoln Haus was a tailor. He made me my first corduroy jeans in the year
1940 after the war had begun. They were red, with yellow stripes. I hadn’t like them very much,
however Poppa had used the last of our cloths to stitch them up for me. So I wore them the day
Poppa asked me to get the suitcases from the attic. Only for a minute, he said he’d be gone. He
wanted to get some books before we left to the train. He needed something to take his mind
away.
“ La Rejouissance, remember that, my son. Tell the captain your Poppa’s name. He will
sit you in the cabin. “
“Don’t you mean us, ,Poppa ?” I asked.
He smiled.
Only for a minute, he said he’d be gone.
But he never came back.
However, he left a single train ticket on my wooden bed.
I stared at the ticket for a long time. My bare feet became red and bruised, and wobbled
until I fell onto the cold wooden panels. There, I felt weak. My Poppa would’ve hit me with the
back of his hand if he had seen me like this. I lifted myself up off of the floor and dusted off my
corduroy pants. I grabbed the ticket and slipped it inside of my pocket.
I walked down the narrow hallway of the townhouse. It felt cold and bare, and ghosts
began to rubble. I heard them as they walked, the creaking, the moaning, the silence. Smoke
from my Poppa’s pipe rose to the ceiling. I closed my eyes tightly, and when I opened them the
smoke had vanished. I was relieved the visions were gone, but the emptiness inside me begged
for the smoke to fill it.
I stood still for a minute, and noticed a faint line bordering the sunlights horizon. A string
strung high from the ceiling. It taunted me, white threads frazzled, and urged me to pull the attic
ladder down. Father asked me to bring down the suitcases, I reasoned.
I reached for the string wholeheartedly. As if doing so would bring back Poppa in
anyway. If I just listened…
My Grandfather’s name was Eisenhauer Haus. He joined the war willingly, and looked at
Hitler the way Christians looked to God. My Grandad had told me that I was the ideal child in
Hitler’s image. Blue eyes, blonde hair. We were the perfect breed.
I asked my Apa, how did we fix those not like us?
My Grandads eyes darkened.
His words were short.
“We dont.”
I pulled. The wooden ladder slid down before me with a thud. Each wooden step
was faulted. The wood was pale, and broken like rib cages. I took caution with each step, but
marched willingly into the darkness and dust of the attic. A small window shone a ray of
sunlight on metal chest. An engraved symbol shone bright in the sunlight, it was dressed in the
red of blood.
Tears filled my once innocence eyes. I opened the chest.
I lifted the pictures of my Grandad, his broad shoulders and arm extended to the sky. His
feet on top of a bare chested child with a swastika drawn in blood on his forehead. The same
symbol was engraved on the chest itself. I sunk into the wooden boards like they were a blanket.
The symbol was engraved in my blood. The same blood that coursed through my veins coursed
through the man who shed blood. I lifted the picture frames of newspaper clippings and body
counts. Propaganda, and medals. And a pretty emerald necklace that was broken.
A picture lay at the bottom of the chest, crumpled and burned on the sides. On the back,
said in tiny print, he alone who owns the youth gains the future.
A picture of a beautiful woman in front of a rose bush crumpled in my hands. She wore
sundress, and the emerald necklace around her neck. Next to her, a man who had wrinkled hands.
The hands of a tailor.
She wore a coat with a yellow star stitched to the sleeve . He only used that
yellow thread once, so when I needed pants he made me yellow and red corduroy with the
thread he had only used once before.
I reached my hand for the discarded necklace. I clenched it in my palm and let my tears
fall into my hands.
I collected my Momma’s things into a suitcase.
The same blood that killed coursed through me.
The same blood that has been shed, coursed through me as well.
My Poppa knew this, and left me a train ticket, and a the La Rejouissance to the
Americas.
He couldn’t come with me, so he made me a good pair of pants.
Corduroy pants with yellow stitches.