My father was three gnomes in a trench coat. One of them was always shouting, âRead the Summa Theologica!â One of them liked to make a banjo out of a dried mushroom cap and play it, and one, I think, was asleep. (The middle one was the one that was asleep. He had a little sword strapped to his side, about the size of a letter opener. I think he was supposed to do something with it, but I never learned what.)
It was very difficult, having three gnomes in a trench coat for a father. For one, my mom hated gnomes. Just the sight of one would send her into a terrified rage. If she caught one in the house, she would take her broom and beat him into a bloody pulp, and then set the dog loose to clean up the messâunless of course the gnome was fast enough to scurry out of the way of her broom.
So my dad had to be very, very careful not to let her catch him being three gnomes. He would tiptoe across the house, very sneaky-like, and quietly close the door to his office. Then, I would hear the sounds of soft banjo music echo through the house. Some of my favorite memories are from when I would slip through his office door and sit down on the floor, hugging my knees. Then the bottom gnome (he was the banjo gnome. I didnât get to see him very often, because he was usually busy being the legs) would take out his little mushroom-cap instrument and play for me. It wasnât like any music that Iâve heard anywhere else, before or since. The bottom gnome wasnât big on talking, but one time, I asked him what the music was, and he called it a lullaby. Years later, he slipped me a few bills under the corner of his trench coat so I could go and buy a banjo of my very own, but try as I might, I could never get it to sound right. Some kind of gnome magic, probably.
The gnome that I had to deal with the most was the top gnome, though. He had a lot of ideas about what everyone else should do. (Thatâs why he was the gnome on top.) He would hide in his office mostly, but when he came out for meals, he would talk on and on about God and gay people and degenerates and hell. I donât know if he believed it, really. I think he just liked to hear himself talk, liked to play-act at being a family man.
My mom hated and was afraid of him, too. She was always saying things like, âDonât upset your father!â which was silly, because he was secretly three gnomes in a trench coat. But I couldnât exactly tell her that. She would run herself in circles, trying to clean up the house and make it look nice for him, though I donât think he ever once noticed, or would have cared if he did. Gnomes are from the forest, you know. In the wild, they sleep on dirt and leaves.
But my mom didnât know that, and so if she saw a single spec of dirt on me or my brotherâs clothes, she would fly off the handle, yelling at us to clean up, because what would our father think? I tried time and time again to explain to her that I didnât really think he would care, but since I couldnât exactly say that he was three gnomes, I didnât get very far.
One time, I wanted to really rattle him, so I told him I was gay. (I am gay, but that wasnât really the point.) He started hopping up and down on the middle gnomeâs head, swearing and shouting and telling me that I would never see the coming of Christâs glory. The bottom gnome cracked open the trench coat to peer out at me, shaking his head in disappointment. Gay people canât be brought into the magical gnome kingdom, he told me. I donât know why.
The last meal I had with him was supper. My mom had made spaghetti, with meatballs and parmesan cheese. Now, as you can imagine, this was a difficult and complicated kind of meal to eat, if you were secretly three gnomes. They had to keep on rolling up forkfuls of spaghetti and sauce-splattered meatballs and passing them down their coat. One of the meatballs slipped and got loose, and the gnome on top dove for it and overbalanced. He fell, and all three gnomes came tumbling out.
They lay, wriggling, on the kitchen floor beside the empty trench coat, and that was when my mother started to scream. The dog barked. My brother yelled out in surprise (he didnât know about the gnomes), and we all watched as the gnomes all picked themselves up off the ground and went scampering off. Before my mom even had the chance to pick up her broom, they had run all the way out the door and vanished into the trees. All he left behind was the trench coat, and one mushroom-cap banjo tucked inside.
I miss him, sometimes. Especially the banjo gnome. I picked up his little banjo and tried to play it, but my fingers were too big.
Sometimes I feel a calling, like a prickling in my feet or the sound of soft banjo music in the air. I feel like Iâd like to run off after him, barefoot into the trees.
But gay people canât get into the magical gnome kingdom. So I guess Iâm just stuck here, outside.
