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Jesse Lee Kercheval

JFK

by Jesse Lee Kercheval | Sibling rivalry.

Short Reads

Short Reads

— 2 min read
JFK
When Elvis died, my sister said, “Good. Now you won‘t talk about him anymore. No one will.”
Elvis was not the first time she was wrong about how other people felt.
Seventeen years before, when we‘d watched the Kennedy-Nixon debate, I fell in love with Kennedy.
“Don‘t be silly,” she said. Nixon was better looking. “Handsome,” she called him.
But after he was elected, she took my color photo of JFK and hung it over her bed. “You can have Johnson.”
One day my dad picked me up to take me to the dentist. “The president is in surgery,” he said. “Someone shot him.”
When the announcement came over the radio the president was dead, the dentist stabbed the dental pick into my gum.
After the funeral, I drew sad horses. But on the day of the assassination, I got my dad to drive home as fast as he could. I wanted to be the one to tell my sister Kennedy was dead.
I wanted to be the one to break her heart.

Jesse Lee Kercheval is a poet, writer, and visual artist. Her memoir, Space, was a winner of the Alex Award from the American Library Association. Her graphic memoir, French Girl, was just published by Fieldmouse Press. More at jlkercheval.com.    

This essay is a Short Reads original.

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