My first memory of being back in the U.S. is pulling my carry-on suitcase through Terminal 5 of O’Hare. I was woozy and my tongue felt swollen. The terminal reeked of cinnamon and french fries. A red plastic wallet held my driver’s license, $500 in cash, and a U.S. Bank debit card. On the back was a sticky note bearing a four-digit number I assumed was the PIN. I recognized my cell phone—it had a faded Save the Whales decal on the back. But the phone had been wiped—no record of calls or texts, no internet history. There were only two numbers under Contacts. One was labeled Mom&Dad. The one labeled Home had the local area code—312.
I sat at an empty gate and opened my suitcase. I sorted the items into piles, one for the things I didn’t recognize at all and another for things I sensed were mine: white cotton panties, a brown linen skirt, an embroidered peasant blouse, several cotton T-shirts in different shades of blue, and a pair of jeans.
My name, Margo Webster; my age, fifty-two; my phone; and the simple fabric of the clothing—at that moment this was all I knew about myself. The crooks of both my arms held fading bruises. Two small, round scars marked the top of my left hand.
I sat there for a while longer until the gate began to fill for a flight to Lisbon. I ate a raspberry yogurt and drank two bottles of water. I felt both eagerness and anxiety before calling the Home number. The North Carolina driver’s license, issued three years before in 2006, showed an address in Durham. Had I moved to Chicago? Was anyone anywhere expecting me?
The woman who answered, Deborah, was confused by my confusion, and wary. She officiously explained that I had booked and prepaid a three-month stay at the studio apartment above her garage in Evanston. There were no refunds, did I understand that? Once I assured her that I did, she relaxed a bit. She recited the address very slowly as if sensing my infirmity.
~
I slept. I walked the neighborhood. The apartment was a few blocks from Northwestern, less than a mile from the beach—a place I was drawn to. The names of the shops and restaurants meant nothing to me. It didn’t seem possible that I had made these living arrangements for myself.
I visited the public library almost every day. I worked on the library computers, making sure to delete my search history before logging off. I read for hours, hiding my books-in-progress on seldom-visited shelves.
I compared the scars on my hand to photos I found on the web. My scars were similar to the marks left by venomous snakes, but they could have resulted from spider bites or insect stings.
Many of my original complaints had disappeared or abated, except it appeared I was experiencing retrograde amnesia, although as far as I knew, I hadn’t suffered a traumatic brain injury, severe trauma, or repeated concussions—the typical causes listed for the condition.
~
My most vivid memory was the smell of my grandparents’ basement in Milwaukee—bleach and Tide and flowery fabric softener and mildew. I remembered riding a blue tricycle as far as I dared into the dim empty corners while Grandma did laundry. I remembered walking to the grocery store with Grandpa and the yellow wagon we took turns pulling.
I remembered that I lived with them because my parents were in Peru doing missionary work. From bits of overheard conversations, I learned that my parents hadn’t intended to have children. They owed fealty to God alone. My mother gave me a Bible each May when they visited for two weeks. My mother told me that God had a plan for me and cried when I told her I didn’t pray. During one visit she hectored me until I’d memorized John 1:1–5. In the beginning was the Word. Her bushy black eyebrows swooped and plummeted as she read scripture. My father had a bristly red mustache and kept his distance.
On the weekends, Grandma, Grandpa, and I sometimes went to Veterans’ Park or McKinley Park. We beachcombed and flew kites, and I learned to swim. Grandpa smelled like cigarettes and Ivory soap. He collected postage stamps. Grandma wore Cashmere Bouquet Talcum Powder. She kept twenty-dollar bills rolled up inside the body of a battery-less flashlight beneath the bathroom sink.
I recalled details about my grade school classrooms and teachers. I remember my lips aching when I began playing the trumpet and the fierce burn of strep throat when I was ten.
I knew the name of my high school and college and the university I attended for graduate school, but I had very few clear memories after about the age of eleven. There was only absence—an echoey, empty closet—where my life should have been.
I knew I had studied public health and environmental science and taught for some time. I believed I had gone to Africa to work on a water safety project focused on establishing piped water connections. I could summon up facts and procedures related to water contamination and chlorination and waterborne diseases like typhoid fever and cholera, and the statistics were horrifying, but the knowledge didn’t feel connected to me. I knew that my grandparents were dead and that my parents remained in South America. I had no reason to think we had grown closer. Whoever I had been, I no longer was.
I began assembling a self from the things I’d enjoyed as a kid—British mysteries I’d read with Grandma, picking up intriguing stones on a Lake Michigan beach, and eating chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream, cinnamon toast, and apple slices dipped in peanut butter. My favorite color was blue. I sat cross-legged. I liked cats and marching bands.
It was hard to think of myself as an adult.
From Expedition. Used with permission of the publisher, University of Tampa Press. Copyright © 2025 by Valerie Vogrin.
