Bathroom Monologue: Son of Pherson

We left Ireland because were starving and getting bombed by anarchists. We came to New York and went from McPherson to Pherson, because Irishmen could still get killed in the land of prosperity. We washed our clothes and shaved off the red hairs. But God said, “Not so easy.” Recessive albinism came back. The family could not run away from that. My father could, could dump me and my mom. Sometimes lay awake at night imagining he tried to hide in some colony of the nocturnal blind who couldn’t see me, and a new complication was waiting for him. Maybe he and all the rest of his spawn went deaf. I imagine that’s waiting for me, if I ever try to escape what I am.