That Drawer

Spawning Odds, Ends, and Palimpsests

I spent 90 minutes on my hands and knees tidying That Drawer. You know that drawer. You have one too.

That Drawer’s where we jam Ove Gloves with ragged thumbs. Where we slip chip clips after bestial 2 a.m. drunk munchies. That Drawer’s where takeout cutlery kits, demagnetized fridge art, scattered matchsticks, melted bottle caps, coffee-tinged decks of playing cards, assorted condiment packets, Carolina blue produce bands, childhood photos of Aunt Sophie, and malfunctioning emergency flashlights convene for the Scrapheap Accessory Olympic Games.

That Drawer is governed by no code, no mandate, or policy. It could be located anywhere in our homes. Mine, in the kitchen. Yours? The foyer, parlor, dining room, guest bath, the basement, an office — but preferably not the bedroom…

Sleeping near That Drawer can lead to disconcerting dreams.

There are no rules concerning how many drawers qualify as That Drawer in a single residence, either. If a That Drawer Census were conducted, the 132.7 million households in the United States would not necessarily correlate to an equivalent number of That Drawers.

It’s far more likely that the number of That Drawers would double, even triple our households, landing closer to the ≈343 million U.S. Census Bureau’s Population Clock estimate. Which means if you are a That Drawer in America, it’s likely, somewhere out there, you have a doppelganger.

Many households contain multiple That Drawers, but it’s as rare as hen’s teeth to find one without.

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So Sunday past, I was neck deep in our That Drawer, waging war with a pugnacious band of dried black beans. Yes, the vacuum’s cleaning wand — the crevice tool — would have tipped the scales, but that felt unsporting. Instead, I used a pair of takeout chopsticks I’d banished earlier — wood frangible as toothpicks — to shimmy each pulse over a Shakira Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran ticket stub and up the sharp ridge of That Drawer, wondering who it’d been that’d spilt the beans.

Weeding That Drawer is the burden of a solitary household member. But upping the number of annual antisepses is futile — flotsam and jetsam find their way — as if That Drawer self-generates. Ask your family’s That Drawer’s steward yourself: they’re inevitably flabbergasted by the diversity of objects that amass between each cleaning. A lot of it makes sense only after you’ve held it for a moment.

Reaching for a frosted Tupperware top, I recalled That Drawers from near and distant past. Wafts of white grape, White Owl guts, and white widow crumbs in Tallahassee’s. Unpaid parking violations, polyethylene pouch hand warmers, that vintage sterling silver money clip in Whitney Street’s. Ma’s bathroom drawer in my childhood home, flush with mummified sand dollars, sea biscuits, mermaid pouches; a conch shell, a mason jar of sea glass — I remembered meaning to tell her we should name it the Tidal Case, a contrivance swept away in undertows of memory.

I pinched the final black bean between my thumb and forefinger as my wife emerged from the bedroom, and somehow resisted the impetuous urge to flick the bean.

That Drawer’s biosphere was collapsing, its substratum nearly visible.

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I was a writer the last time I cleaned That Drawer (I first classified myself as a writer at age 11). I emptied my first drawer at 19. So I’ve been a writer every time I’ve scoured That Drawer. And yet, here I was again, knees on the floor, deciding what stayed and what didn’t.

My fingertips touched the melamine back of That Drawer — it came at a cost. I’d dragged my elbow through La Mancha Negra, an unidentified oil spill that stank of sesame oil and hot tar and clung to my arm hair like pine resin. As I excoriated my own skin with a bird’s nest of steel wool, a saffron wink caught my eye from That Drawer’s penetralia. When I registered what it was, I couldn’t subdue a sardonic smirk.

My grandfather’s self-winding Bulova wristwatch (circa 1967) with stainless steel naval dog tags looped through, our shared name: J*** C***** etched into the metal like a Lichtenberg figure.

Strange? Not really. It felt inevitable. Like I had found these artifacts many times before. Turned them over. Indexed the weight. Thought these should stay and returned them to the safest chaos I know.

That Drawer’s detritus clamored for my attention, but I ignored it. I weighed the tags, the watch in my palm — time and name united. Proof that some things don’t indicate presence until you’ve moved enough odds and sods out of the way.

I closed That Drawer.

Our arrangement is temporary.

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