A SHORT STORY “You’re here.”
Just two words. That’s all I get after 17 years of silence. Not a hug, not even a smile.
I just stare at him, trying and failing to conjure a past memory of him. In my entire life he’s only ever been a character in my childhood fantasies, a person made of words. But every fantasy must end some day and as soon as I grew old enough to learn that lesson, he became nothing more than a figure without a body or a soul, present in the corner of my mind but never acknowledged.
I quietly unpack my suitcase while listening to the faint whisper of the gramophone playing in the background.
The house is quiet. Dad left with his family to go to an auction. He asked me whether I wanted to join them, his attempt at making me feel like I belonged. But I saw past those words, I noticed the discomfort that he was trying so hard to hide. I saw the unfamiliarity in his eyes — the look one gives to a stranger. I recognized that look instantly because it’s the same one I’ve been giving him since I arrived.
I told him I was not up to it. Giving him the answer that I knew he subconsciously wanted me to give.
Once I put my belongings in my new room I make my way towards the balcony. Leaning against the railing, the view presents the setting sun.
I’ve always welcomed the quiet, it has always brought me comfort but today it’s different. Today the silence which has been my friend for all my life doesn’t give me the same peace. I feel the thoughts which I had so desperately suppressed, stir. I feel them force their way out of the mist and I have no choice but to acknowledge them.
………………………Mom wasn’t suppose to die, not so soon anyway.
I still remember the day she came in my room right before I was about to sleep. She wasn’t smiling which was not unusual but when I saw that her cheeks were glistening with dry tears I knew that something was wrong. She didn’t say a word, just looked at me. When our eyes met we just stared at each other. We stood there for God knows how long. The heaviness in my chest growing with each passing minute. I remember feeling my heartbeat go erratic. I remember a voice at the back of my head telling me to go back to sleep as if trying to protect me from the unspoken words. I don’t know for how long the silence stretched, for me it felt like hours, but at last she broke it.
“I have cancer,” she said, her voice, devoid of any emotion, a little more than a whisper and if it wasn’t so quiet I doubt I would have heard her.
That was it. No mincing of words. No ‘I have something to tell you’ like most parents would have said to prepare their child for any news. No kind of false assurance that everything would be fine. Not that I was surprised considering I knew that beating around the bush was never her style. I continued to look at her face as if trying to find any difference in it. Any sign that she might be death’s next prey but all I saw was the woman I had known for all of my 17 years of existence. I saw the woman whose husband had left her right after I became old enough to walk, who worked two jobs in order to keep our tiny house working and who never spent time with me like I had grown up seeing my friends’ parents’ do.
After that she just quietly left without uttering a single word as if telling me was just another obligation to her. Not that ‘goodnight’ would change the fact that the night was anything but that. I slid into my bed, draping the old worn out cloth over my head. Not willing to think about what was going to happen next, I willed for sleep to return but of course it was to no avail.
After that things changed. She became more distant- which wouldn’t be all that different since we were never truly close to one another, but this time it was more than that. She was never at home anymore. I only caught glimpses of her on the weekend nights. When I would hear the slam of the door, followed by the noises of her clumsy movements, I would tip toe down the stairs and hide behind the shelve near the sofa, where she would lay, with her bare feet resting on the tiny table infront of her. I would watch her stare at the ceiling for hours while swinging the bottle in her hand from one side to another. Sometimes she would fall asleep like that, sometimes she would stay awake all night just staring at that ceiling as if she were demanding it—with her drunken tired eyes—to give her all the answers she never found in this lifetime. Those were the nights I could never take my eyes off her no matter how tired I was. There was something about that time where, for once, I felt that we had a connection; even if that connection was one that was only woven by an invisible tread of loneliness and the quiet.
Not long after that I overheard some of my neighbors—who worked as waitresses with mom at the small diner downtown—speaking about how mom recently quit her job. This made me visit Miss Susan’s house—an old lady, who mom used to do the household chores for. Going there it became apparent that mom had quit.
For some reason I wasn’t even shocked.
Then came that day, whose every moment, every second would forever be engraved in my mind.
I had just returned home from school. The house was quiet as usual but I felt rather than saw something different as I passed through the main door. When I entered the living room, I was surprised to see her sitting on the couch since it wasn’t a weekend. She wasn’t holding a bottle as usual. She was just sitting there with her back perched against the couch seat, staring with unblinking eyes straight ahead. I just stood there staring at her side profile waiting for her snap out of her trance. After what felt like hours but actually were just a moment of mere minutes, she finally did.
“At that time I thought I would get away with it,” she began, her voice eerily sturdy, “I never even considered the possibility of being caught by him.”
Just as I was about to intervene to ask her who ‘he’ was, she continued, “Derek, didn’t deserve all the things that I put him through. He was a good man, maybe too good for this world.”
I remember feeling my insides freeze at her admission.
She never spoke about dad any longer. She used to when I was younger, but even then she only gave me minor details about him; just enough for me to know that he did infact exist.
“It just wasn’t enough, we weren’t enough. There was a time when we were, but it’s true when people say it’s easier to fall in love than to stay in it.’’ She stopped for a moment to sigh heavily, her posture exerting fatigue.
“I’m not even sure when things changed. To this day I try to think back to figure out exactly where things went wrong. I’m starting to realize I won’t ever find the exact answer to my question, all I can predict are possibilities. Maybe we were just too young and naïve to believe that just being in love was enough and never even stopped to consider what would happen when we no longer weren’t.
“The thing about having the taste of something that gave you so much happiness is that, once it’s gone you try and look for it else where. So that’s what I did. I found solace in another.”
I never imagined I would see the day where I would be hearing mom confess such a thing to me. I always thought that my parents separated because dad used to work overseas a lot, so they grew distant. I never considered the possibility of something like infidelity being the catalyst that drove their marriage to the cliff.
“I think he knew,” she continued, her voice taking on a nostalgic tone, eyes growing foggy and I knew at that moment she was only physically present in that room.
“Even though he was hardly ever home, when he did return the atmosphere would always be heavy as if it were waiting anxiously for one of us to break and confess. I knew he felt guilty for leaving me alone for such long periods of time, I think that’s the reason why he never confronted me about his suspicious. Why he always turned a blind eye to the pieces of obvious destruction—in the form of our marriage— that were right in front of him.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she said laughing lightly, her tone almost mocking, “that I was the bad one. I can’t even deny that now can I. The guilt was there, it was always there. It never went away. Not even after he left. Believe me when I say I never wanted to do the things that I did. I never wanted to be the bad person. I just didn’t know what else to do. I tried to save us. But even I knew that our marriage was too far gone that it could no longer be fixed. I grew tired of running in a race that I knew didn’t have a finish line. So I gave up. I gave up trying to honour the vows that we had once made to one another.
“After that we grew more and more distant as time passed by. Each time he was back, we hardly ever spoke. An uncomfortable silence falling between us, with neither of us willing to accept that they was no longer an ‘us’ in the picture. Things went on like this. Soon days turned into months and months into years, with me living two different lives—one where I pretended to be a shell of the person that I used to and one where I had found something close to resembling the happiness that I had once experienced. I soon grew comfortable with playing each of these roles.”
She closed her eyelids shut, her hand moving to twirl a tread that had come loose from the couch. “I guess I should say too comfortable, since I forgot a very important lesson that my own mother had once taught me. That everything has a limit, even happiness. Forever is an illusion. Everything comes in phases. That’s the reality of life.
“So that’s what happened. The peace in my life reached it’s limit but what I never expected was the reason why it reached it’s limit. I was always careful when I did it, even going as far as too put myself on the pill. But I guess those things are never hundred percent preventive because the next thing I know, I was standing with a pregnancy test flashing positive back at me.
“I might have been the bad person in this story. But even I’m not so cold hearted that I would kill an innocent for the mistakes that I made. So I kept it. But that very decision caused me to lose everything. When I finally revealed to Derek that I was pregnant, knowing that it was no use hiding it because the signs were beginning to show anyways. He lost it because he knew it wasn’t his. We fought for hours before he left the house angrily.
“By then the emptiness that I had once felt, was back again. Even the one who had helped to pull me out of the darkness that first time was gone, refusing to take responsibility of me and his baby.
“I was alone once again. But this time it was a different kind of loneliness; one where I knew for certain that no one was coming to help me. I welcomed this loneliness knowing that this was God’s way to make me repent for my sins. I allowed it to wrap its claws around my neck; always tight enough to make me feel suffocated but never enough to kill me.
“However after two months, Derek showed up on the doorstep. To say I was surprised would be an understatement, I never imagined seeing him again. I still remember the way he just stood there staring at me, taking in my disheveled hair, bloodshot eyes and mismatched clothes. Then without uttering a single word to me he made his way past me and entered the house. He stayed. We fell back into the pattern that we used to follow before he had left. The only differences now were that I no longer had another lover, Derek no longer worked overseas like he used to—quitting that job in favour of taking up a work from home routine—and the nature of our relationship had changed. There were still moments of uncomfortable silence between us but now it was accompanied by a sense of acceptance. We were friends before we ever became lovers, and now that we were no longer lovers we were still friends.
“The day you were born, instead of feeling happiness like I know I should have, I felt conflicted. Even though I knew it wasn’t fair to you, I couldn’t look at you for long without remembering all the things I had lost. Not long after that, Derek left once again, after you were a few months older. This time I knew he wouldn’t return. I knew that looking at you, reminded him of pain that I made him suffer through. We knew that we could never be together again but this time I made sure to end things on a good note, thanking him for always being there and wishing him happiness for the future.
“That was the last time I saw him,” she said, a single tear escaping through her still shut eyelids, “I sometimes wish we had never fallen in love rather chosen to have remained friends instead. He didn’t deserve someone like me. He deserved someone far more better. I didn’t deserve his support during my pregnancy months but he gave it anyway. I hope that now that I’m no longer in his life, he has finally got what he deserved from the very beginning.
“Once he left, it was just you and me. I never told you about your real dad because in my mind I never imagined having a child with anyone other than Derek. Even during my affair I never considered having my lover’s children. It was always Derek’s. So you became a constant reminder of the life me and Derek never had.
“With time I realized that God had never intended to punish me through loneliness, it was always intended to be through you. Having your very existence in my life was how I was always supposed to repent for my sins,” she spoke, her voice fading into a whisper.
I left after that, leaving her with her thoughts. I spent the rest of the day in a horse ranch that was near our house—a place which had become my secret hideaway for when I wanted to escape. I just sat there staring at the horses grazing.
Later that day when I did return back, it was to the sound of sirens. Mom had hung herself from the ceiling fan. The authorities contacted the person who they taught was my father, and I became his responsibility.
…………………………………The sound of an engine snaps me back to reality, followed by the loud clank of the main gates opening. I realize that its quite late now, the sun which has long gone said it’s goodbyes is now replaced by the dark starry sky.
I make my way back up the stairs that lead to the next floor, where my new room resides, knowing that they are back from the auction.
I stop short infront of a wall where a dozen of pictures are hung up—some old ones showing two young girls just goofing around, some new ones showing the two teenagers in different moments and some in which their entire family is posing.
But there’s one that draws my attention the most.
I stare at the small frame resting among the others, the picture in it shows one of dad’s daughters receiving an award for winning the first place in some talent show. The girl is dressed in a pink ballerina dress and has a huge smile on her face.
But that’s not what makes this picture stand out the most for me, it’s the guy in the background that does. More specifically it’s the look on his face which does. It’s a look that reflects such a sincere pride that even I can feel its impact through this mere piece of paper. Its a look that the once younger version of me— very much naïve version of me— always imagined would be directed towards herself. That one day when dad would be back he would look at me with that very same pride, after seeing how hard I used to work to come first in my class.
Mom was right about one thing atleast. Dad deserved the world. And he did get the world in the form of his new family.
I don’t hate him for leaving me and mom alone. I don’t even hate him for not being my actual father. The bond that links us was never one that was made of blood, it was always made purely by his desire to do what right no matter who or what wronged him.
I hear the faint noises of laughter and chatter coming from the floor below me.
Looking back at my past, there are a lot of questions that are left unanswered. Who was my real father? Where was he now? Did mom ever truly love me? Maybe those questions were never truly meant to be answered in this life. Maybe they were always destined to be just questions.
I’m not sure what life holds for me from here. But if there’s one useful lesson that mom did unknowingly teach me before she died, is that, everything comes in phases. No matter how bad of a time is going on in our lives, there will come a time when it will pass as well. It may take days or even years but it will pass…
By: Sasha Ana Lobo
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