Hello, I said to Angela as I sat down next to her at the table. She pulled her drawing close to her chest, so I leaned in to get a better look.
What could a thirteen-year-old girl be drawing that was so secret? I had seen so much red in the picture and wanted to know more.
At eight years old, I didn’t understand why everyone, no matter how small, makes themselves unique by keeping the world at bay through holding secrets that nobody knows.
It was because of Angela that I made it eight years without learning why.
I tried to grab the picture away. She was my sister, and I loved her. No part of me understood why we couldn’t share.
Half of the paper tore off in my hand with a violent rip, and I staggered backwards. Before I had fully regained my balance, Angela’s furious hand had cracked against my cheek.
My skin blossomed with so much red.
It was the last time I ever asked to share her art, because after that, it made me afraid.
*
I was six years old, and afraid to go to my sister’s art show. She was the only eleven-year-old featured in the Exhibition of Young Artists of Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, and we were getting in the car to meet her there. I watched my father get into the driver’s seat, then saw him turn to his right and talk to my mom. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but I saw his face light up with laughter.
He must have told her to stay put, that’d he’d be right back, and then he got out of the car to make a beeline to my hiding spot in the bushes.
My father knew exactly where I was, and he knew exactly what to say. Even at six, I understood that I was baiting him. I loved him for feeding into it. He would peak around the leaves, say “I found my little green Bea in her little green Bea-pod,” then ask me what was wrong. I’d be coy at first, but as soon as I understood that he was listening, I would open up. I’d explain that I had always believed Angela’s art was just for me, that it was our secret sister language no one else ever knew, and it made my little heart ache to know that the rest of the world would rip our sister secret away.
I was certain that he would listen to every word, rub his clean-shaven chin in serious thought, and say “you look just like your mother. Think like her, too.” Then he’d scoop me up and give some explanation about how things would die if they couldn’t grow – but whatever was allowed to reach its full potential would live and live and live. The part that blossomed from the original growth would never go away, but would instead become the trunk of an oak or the sun which pulled an entire world into its mighty orbit.
I knew such a speech was coming as I sat in anticipation behind the bushes. I needed it, because I was a little girl and all little girls need their daddies.
But that’s when an angry screech of tires rushed into a mighty crumpling of metal. What followed was the loudest sound I had ever heard. I felt the concussive wave of the violent explosion as soon as I’d heard it.
Dad had been holding me in his arms, but dropped me without hesitation. “Dearie, no!” he screamed at the parked car as he sprinted toward it.
The pickup truck had crashed while going full speed, and both autos were immediately engulfed in an aggressive crimson inferno. Angry red flames licked every crevice of the mangled frames, changing the familiar form of my childhood car into an angry sepulcher of pain.
Each sense has a different, specific memory.
My mother’s anguished screams burned themselves into my ears as she was slowly cooked to death.
The smell of burning gas was so significant that I never learned to dissociate from the memory.
The coppery taste of blood on my tongue was the only reason I realized my father had dropped me chin-first in the driveway.
The feel of searing heat from forty feet away forced me to understand how much hotter it was for my dying mother.
But the most powerful impact was the sight of my father. He attempted so many times to approach the car door before being forced back by the heat. Over and over, he tried – and failed – to get close enough to make a difference.
He actually succeeded in his last attempt. I could hear the sizzle of flesh as he rested his arms on the door, and his screams finally trumped what came from my fading mother’s voice.
It still wasn’t enough to open the door.
My father collapsed in a heap on the road.
I crawled within nineteen feet of the conflagration before the heat was too much to bear, and waited thirteen minutes for a fire truck to arrive.
My mother’s screams were still vivid, but greatly diminished from what they once had been. I got on my knees and asked God for my mother to die so that her suffering would end.
Very slowly, God answered my prayer.
Everyone thought they had spared me by keeping her casket sealed at the funeral.
But I didn’t have the strength to explain that the image of charcoal in the shape of my mom could never be erased.
*
Angela would ask me to stay in the bedroom with her while she drew pictures, but I didn’t try to look at them after she hit me. I never understood why I got slapped, but I assumed there must have been something bad about me. So I was happy that she forgave me for being me, and I drew my own secret pictures that I learned to hide from everyone.
Sometimes Dad would come to visit us when we were together. I didn’t like that, because it meant we couldn’t draw anymore.
The morning that I woke up alone felt wrong. It should have been Angela fighting to get me out of bed to come down for breakfast. She would always tell me that she’d let me sleep longer if I could get out of bed quicker, but I rebelled against my sister because she was the closest equivalent to a mom that I could find.
It was past 8:00 a. m., which meant we were late for school. I walked into my father’s bedroom. It used to smell like cigarettes, but Dad had stopped smoking those after Mom died, so now it just had the scent of unwashed clothes.
Dad was asleep on the bed. Angela was asleep on the floor.
She wasn’t wearing any pants or underwear. There were so many purple bruises around her neck.
I bent down to shake her awake. When I touched her face, it was like touching a rock.
It’s a bad memory, but still not as bad as the charcoal.
*
Angela first asked me to come stay in her room just after Mom died.
She would sometimes let me sneak a look at the drawings – at least in the beginning. I kept prying because didn’t comprehend what it meant to make another person truly uncomfortable. I was eight years old, and only understood that I sometimes was denied the things that I wanted.
I didn’t want to hide under the bed, because it meant that Angela would have to leave. But I was able to understand that there were rules, even if I didn’t like them.
I could only make my little-kid drawings when I was on the floor, because that’s where I belonged. Angela would be on the bed, which squeaked and groaned as she raced toward me when it came time to stop drawing. Her head would pop over the edge of the mattress and she would tell me to move.
I didn’t like these moments, because I would have to sneak my drawings under the bed. Then I would crawl underneath and hide in the farthest corner with a dark blanket covering my whole body.
Dad never opened the door nicely. He would burst in and slam it against the far wall, where it would thrum in protest. “Where’s Bea?” He would ask in a shaky tone. “She looks just like her mother.” Dad would start to sob, then violently punch whatever was nearby. Sometimes it was the door; at other times, it was a dresser drawer that suffered the consequences of his crying. Angela never replaced any of the mirrors in her room, because there was no point.
Instead, she would calmly step off of the bed and tell Dad that Bea wasn’t around. I knew it was a lie, which confused me. We’re not supposed to tell lies, but Angela was what I had instead of a mother, so I trusted her.
I was never supposed to look, but I broke that rule. I would peek one eye over the blanket as she walked out of the room. Without fail, Angela would take my father by the hand, lead him away, and say, “I look close enough.”
*
I didn’t want to sleep the night that Angela died, because that meant I would have to wake up in the morning and remember it all again. I buried my head so deep in the pillow that no sound foght its way inside, and I heard nothing but the beating of my own pulse. Crunch. Crunch. Crunch. Like rocks being ground into wet sand by the waves, like footsteps coming into my room.
The thought of Angela’s voice go to sleep, Bea, dreams bridge the worlds came into my mind unbidden, and I was overwhelmed with the kind of exhaustion that makes bones feel like ancient wood.
Joseph dreamed of his family in the Old Testament, and Joseph dreamed of his family in the New Testament. We’re told that the Bible is gospel truth, so maybe the lines aren’t as straight as we’d like to believe.
The footsteps were still in my head, but they stopped when Dad was pressing Angela against the bed with his body, the vulgar burn scars up and down his arms making him appear somehow both meek at sinister all at once. Something must have been wrong, because his body was swaying in place even though he had her for support. Angela was trembling, but her stance was firm, however small.
Dad yelled, and Angela cringed. He yelled again and she flinched with her whole body. His hands were balled up in fists. He screamed once more, then turned her around and hit both shoulder blades, one after the other. Angela screamed, but I didn’t hear it. Dad spoke, though I heard no sound. But I knew he was asking her why she made him do it. She was sorry, and he felt sorry, too. He felt a lot of things. Her hands trembled like crisp autumn leaves as she took off her nightie and revealed her back to him.
Livid red welts were raised on her shoulder blades, with little flecks of blood beginning to sprout like tomatoes against her alabaster skin. Her body seemed so tiny as it racked with sobs. Dad started to cry, too.
You need to tell him what you saw, Angela said, but it was just her voice in the dream. It’s not really Dad you’re seeing, it’s the dust of the angels. He needs to stop before he does the same thing to you.
And she began to tell me all of her secrets, things that nobody knew, everything she’d hidden just to keep the world at bay and make her unique.
Dad leaned forward and began to caress Angela’s bare shoulders.
It’s okay, she told me as I looked down at her ravaged back.
Angels can’t grow wings without tearing their skin.
*
I didn’t think that I’d be able to survive a single day after Angela’s death. The burden was just too great.
But I discovered that time would take a day from me regardless of what I thought.
It took many days.
Sometimes, Dad would cry. At others, he would get very quiet.
But there were nights when he seemed to have the energy of three men, stomping and yelling throughout the house, his eyes crisscrossed with angry red cobwebs. He would sway back and forth whenever he tried to stand in one place, then give up and start breaking anything he could get his hands on. Later, I would find blood on these broken things. I knew the blood was his, since there were only two of us left in the family.
My teacher would tell me that time heals all wounds. That’s how I learned that teachers sometimes lie to us, which is a lesson all on its own.
Dad just got angrier as more time passed. I learned to hide everything important I owned so that he would not destroy them in these moments. But he found almost everything I hid anyway, because some things can’t be hidden from family.
I locked the bedroom door, just like Angela said, the first time Dad got too angry to sleep at night.
On first night, he only pounded. I hid under the bed, because Angela always told me that’s how angels protect us. I assumed she was right, because I had always been safe.
The second night, Dad cried by the door. That was much scarier than the pounding.
But on the third night, everything was different. Dad punched the door and got angry when it stayed locked, so he punched some more. When the door finally began to splinter beneath his blows, he got so much angrier. I thought again about how time heals all wounds, and other lies we believe to stay alive.
Dad hit the broken door one final time, and I heard it crash like rocks being ground into wet sand by the waves, like footsteps coming into my room.
His footsteps came right to the edge of the bed. I wanted, so badly, to believe in the power of sacred objects to protect us. I yearned to have faith that angels watched over little girls, even as he was grabbing my ankles and pulling me from under the bed. I wanted to know that I had always been safe beneath the mattress, that it never had been a lie, even while angry splinters tore into the soft, fleshy tissue under my nails as I fruitlessly dug into the floor.
My nightie had lifted up around my crotch as he dragged me, and I felt naked with my clothes on. “You look just like your mother,” he breathed, rubbing his unshaven chin beneath wild eyes. He looked hungry.
You need to tell him what you saw
“I know you’re controlled by the angels, even if you don’t have faith in them,” I rattled quickly. “I know you breathe their dust. After she died, Angela showed me the places on her back that you hit while you let the dust control you.” Dad was kneeling on my chest; I was struggling to breathe. “I…. I think that you believe the angels aren’t watching, and that’s the only reason you’ve come for me.” I was panting hard, though Dad remained completely still. “But Angela wants you to know that both of us can’t escape you.”
He looked up at the ceiling in frozen thought. I couldn’t get a full breath of air with his knee on my tiny ribcage, but was powerless to move him with my arms.
Then he stood up, and was gone.
*
I got up and made myself breakfast the next morning like nothing was amiss, because I didn’t like the feeling that something was wrong.
I chose to have faith that it was a normal day.
But when the sun began to set, and I still had not seen my father, I knew that I had to go into his room.
I creaked open the door and immediately saw him lying in bed. I was comforted on the outside but sickened on the inside, like food that had been cooked all wrong.
I saw the needle in his arm as I walked closer. It was sitting in his left elbow, and his right hand was nearby.
His lips were blue.
I looked into his eyes, but they did not see me back.
I touched his forehead. It was like touching a rock. I pulled my hand back like it had been burned by the cold.
I turned away from the bed, since my dad wasn’t there anymore. Instead, I looked at the nightstand. There was a note. I picked it up with trembling hands.
You’re my angel, Bea.
-Daddy
*
That was twenty-two years ago. I was raised by people who weren’t my originally my family and loved me even though they didn’t have to.
That’s the only reason I have a family.
I never said goodbye to Angela, but that’s okay. She made me feel loved, and goodbyes are nothing more than a reminder of that.
I’m married. I have two children who will only know my adoptive family as their grandparents. I am at peace with that.
Because my first father gave me my whole life with one plunge of a needle.
I love you too, Daddy.
Goodbye.
Submitted June 11, 2018 at 04:23PM by ByfelsDisciple https://ift.tt/2l17nIs
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