Simple

Cocaine. It is white, simple. Searing holes in the nasal cavity on its way to the central nervous system, it makes its way to these fragile areas in the brain from the leaves of coca plants, and into the pockets of dealers. From there, it is purchased, stolen, or transferred by men with needles, men with slim, red straws, men with pipes, men with rolled dollar bills. Men like my father.

Elisia. She is Cuban, simple, with bird-like features; a hawk’s nose, a sparrow’s bones. Her fingers are long and spindly, the brown skin stretched tightly over the knuckles, her fingernails filed into points. She is the kind of woman who accepts tickets to the ball game from charming, married men. Men like my father.

At five o’clock in the morning, I roll out of bed, tugging the hem of my nightgown over the goose bumps on my knees. This is my favorite time of the morning, when the daylight shining in through my venetian blinds casts an eerie, royal blue light over my bedroom. Imagining that I am Princess Irenie from my favorite fairy tale, following her magic red ball of string into the sunlight, I pursue the sounds of scraping, of rolling, of bumping, into the hallway, down the staircase, and into the entryway.

“Daddy, where are you going?”

My father glances up at me, startled. His red-handed guilt makes me feel afraid to look at him. I hide my face, but he crosses the foyer in three, neat strides and lifts my tiny body effortlessly. With my head resting on his shoulder, my eye-glasses drooping off the tip of my nose, and my heart silently wilting, he paces the entryway, whispering soothingly into my ear. I memorize the steps he takes on the tiled floor, the way his shoes sound, heel, toe, scuff, when he turns. I am ten years old, but I pretend that I am three, burying my face in his neck and holding tightly to his tie, begging in my smallest voice for him not to go.

The bedroom door opens, and my mother fills the space with her voice, with her sadness. Our two-story house with high ceilings cannot contain her anguish, as she wails, screams, sobs, and crumples on the floor. My feet touch the tile and I become sharply aware that my father has let me go. From my place on the floor, one hand in my mother’s hair, I watch his suitcases file out of the front door one by one until the entry way is empty. His tall, wide frame fills the doorway for a brief moment, and I lift my eyes, fully aware that this will be the last time I see my father entering the front door of our home. He opens his mouth, and there is deep sorrow and a kind of gasping in his voice. My mind jumps to the last scene in Return of the Jedi when Darth Vadar takes his last dying breaths with his son at his side, admitting fault, and saying good-bye.

“Angel,” he whispers, stooping to reach my eye level. “Be brave for me, okay?

I glance behind me, where my mother has collapsed, her sobs becoming a more inaudible, torturous tremor throughout her body. The front door seems much more inviting, but before I can ask my father to take me with him, I feel his lips touch the crown of my head. He is gone before I can open my eyes.

My mother shifts, her skin imprinted with angry, raised lines by the grout. She lifts herself with ragdoll grace and curses my father on the way to the shower. I think about crawling back into bed, but I remember that the serene, morning blue will have lifted from my walls. I choose instead to remain on the hard, smooth, surface of the last place my father loved me.

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.