Exodus and breaks

We sat for some undefined time while he told me about his experience. How glorious it had been and the mission he had received to pass on to me.  It was all about how evil women were and why men were dominant. I knew my dad had some tendencies toward chauvinism but whatever he was on amplified and defined the edges to his ideology.

The center of his argument was around his girlfriend Catherine. From what I could gather and what common sense told me, she put some distance between herself and him. This was no doubt due to his drug use but then again I didn’t know how long it had been going on. When he did try to speak to her, she denied him. Apparently this sent him into some paranoid delusion about her turning on him. Betrayal was a big theme for my father.

After telling me what I could only imagine was his version of the gospel, he swore me to secrecy. “This is God’s plan for us. It is not to be shared with the uninitiated.” I didn’t and couldn’t understand the need for swearing me to silence. I was petrified at this point, like a child I sat and listened, nodding fearfully to each phrase that fell from his tongue. All the fear I had once held for my father gripped me and threatened to suffocate.

We sat in silence for some time after. He watched the ceiling, thinking. I tried to figure out how to take control of the situation, how to escape it. This segment stretched as long as the one where he had preached. Only this one was scarier because I couldn’t see the wheels turning or where they would go.

If God had truly given my father a plan, I begged him now to give me safe passage from this place. I’m not religious in any sense, nor am I spiritual. In this instance though I needed some form of omnipotent power to guide me the fuck out of this house.

My father laughed, the corners of his mouth climbing his face and squeezing his glazed almond eyes. A tremor ran through me. “You know what we’re going to do.” I kept silent in case it wasn’t a question, “Whenever Cathy is around I’m going to say it’s templar time.” The squinted eyes climbed down from the roof to look at me, “And we’re going to have fun.” The final words were said with a wicked vagueness.

A shrill sound cut through the silent words he had left unsaid with that grin he now wore. My phone had answered my dire prayer. “Hello?” The phone had practically materialized at my ear. That psychotic smile reappeared across my father’s face as he let his head fall back and his eyes turn skyward. I wondered if he was speaking to God.

“What? Hi.” Rebecca was on the phone. Whatever dread I would have felt at this was vastly and immeasurably outweighed by my current condition.

“Hey hon.”

My father’s eyebrow arched while he continued his communion with whatever was in his blood or beyond the roof.

“Can we talk?”

“You need to talk? Yeah I’m just at my dad’s house.” My nerves were revving my voice into an unflattering pitch. I quickly worked to control it.

“Are you alright?”

“I’ll be over in a second, let me just say goodbye.”

“Sid?”

I hung up the phone. Apologies and explanations would come far easier than terrified fleeing.

“You got to go.” He almost sounded disappointed in me. His eyes still turned skyward.

“Yeah.”

I rose from my seat. A hand clutched the back of the chair to steady my weak legs. With full concentration I strode slowly to the door.

“What are we?” The whisper came from behind me, I dared not turn around.

“Knights.” I took a step forward.

“What are we?” More urgently this time.

“Knights.” My knees shook, threatening to plunge me to the floor.

The bellow came once more, it threatened to drop me to my knees and rend my mind leaving me weeping on the cloudy grey tile. “What are we?”

“Knights.” I barely made my body obey.

As I shut the door I took one last look back and saw him staring at me. His mouth curled, “Good.”

* * * * *

I didn’t stop to collect myself until I was in the parking lot for Rebecca’s complex. When I cut the engine’s power my hand lost its composure and shook relentlessly. My stomach drew into itself and tried to regurgitate what little I had eaten that day. There was water in my eyes and it stung. I wanted to lie on my side and cry softly into my knees. Everything felt wrong and dirty. The world was suddenly a lot more oppressive and intimidating than it had been in the last few months.

I opened the door and stepped out of the car. My footsteps were uncertain and my body felt like it had forgotten how to act. It moved in ways that looked like a caricature of me. I tried to put my father’s degenerating state out of my head but it kept making its way back in. What drugs was he doing, how long and why now? Mostly I wanted to forget how he made me feel. I’d learned to be firm around him and it all went to hell the moment I caught sight of those eyes.

As I grew closer to Rebecca’s apartment I began to understand that I was losing my father to something sinister. His past, his faults and all the years of abuse from his father had taken root and were beginning to bloom, a violet germanium of despair.

I knocked on the door and pushed the event with my father from my mind. Rebecca had sounded serious over the phone. That and she had given me the signal for troublesome talks. Like a puppet suddenly yanked up by his strings my body lifted. I didn’t want to be here right now and especially for this. There was no way I’d do it like a beaten pup.

When Rebecca answered the door she was solemn. Upon seeing me something in her flickered for a moment: sympathy, concern and affection. Each disappeared the moment after they had appeared, behind the blink of her eyes. “What happened?” was my consolation prize. My heart and face hardened into stone.

“Nothing.” I stepped into the apartment looked around expecting the witch to come soaring in on her broom. Agatha didn’t show.

She closed the door behind me and sat down on the couch. “Sit.” Though I heard it as a command, she was trying to hold herself together from something too. The soft contours to her body beckoned me to sit near her. I wanted to stubbornly pull up a chair and set the mood properly. I chose the lesser of the two and seated myself beside her.

No jokes sprung to my mind, nothing to ease what was going to be a tense situation. I’d already dealt with a great shock. Whatever relationship turmoil we were about to trudge through would be a cake walk by comparison.. “All on the same day too.” I said aloud.

“Excuse me?”

“Nothing.”

Her lips moved and twitched as though the words fought from behind her luscious lips to be freed. Another day and I would have imagined the hundreds of combinations she would utter. My pessimistic imagination would draft thousands of replies to each of her statements. Today I sat and waited while she worked up her nerve. “We need to take a break.” Her body quivered with the completion of the sentence.

Some part of me laughed. The rest of me shook its head like a disappointed parent discovering a household treasure smashed. Their child blathering excuses as the adult is beyond belief that their day of labor and toil would end with on this note.

 “That’s all?” I asked.

Her eyebrows furrowed out of confusion. “What?” I supposed she had expected a different reaction. I just wasn’t feeling like myself today.

I got up and began walking to the door.

“What is wrong with you?” The words were accusatory and a bit fearful. “What happened to you today?” Her words were losing the formality she had built up. She was coming down from her pedestal.

“Nothing.”

As I grabbed the knob she was at my side and grabbed my shoulder. “Talk to me.”

I wanted to scream hateful things. To yell, threaten and pour my frustration and anger out into a smoldering pile of putrid waste. Leave her sobbing to herself and affirm her need to be away from me. Assure her that I was a monster and villain.

I wanted to fall to the floor and lose control. Cry large sobbing tears into my arms. Have her wrap her arms around me and hold me until the trembling stopped and I found my voice once more. Tell her about what happened, try to explain and understand it all.

I wanted to fight to keep her. Tell her that we were stronger than all of this. We were worth so much more than anything I had and anything I would ever own. Tell her that I loved her.

“No.”

I opened the door and walked away.

Hopes and weakness

The house was messier than I remembered it being. The lights were dimmer than I remembered and the tile floor was clouded. Small streams of light beamed through slits in the blinds like cracks in a wall. It was as though he were reworking the place to resemble a modern cave.

On the living room table were scraps of metal spread around and containing some form of order, like a beast dissected and observed. Paper had been laid beneath each pile and tools sat nearby prepared to work. My father moved around touching this and that as though he were tidying up but only coming across as though he suffered from a compulsive disorder.

The shirt he wore hung baggy on him. I’d always pictured him being more fit. It dawned on me that perhaps I’d taken his age for granted. Something about it all didn’t feel like dementia and something began to scratch at the back of my mind.

“Sorry I’ve had nothing to do lately so I’ve worked on,” He continued to touch and move things. He was striving for some optimal global orientation, “projects.”

I looked around and folded my arms, “So what’s the problem.”

“Catherine…” The word was a hiss. It took me a few moments to recall that this was the name for his girlfriend, the mediator and polite socialite. His eyes turned back on me and the hairs on my neck began to rise. “You didn’t bring the girl with you.”

“Didn’t figure she needed to be here.” While mostly true, I hadn’t wanted to ask Rebecca along fearing that I might worsen our already tenuous relationship.

“Good.” He mumbled, “I’ve had a realization. One of those epiphanies.” This was the most talkative he’d been with me in years. Something inside me smiled at the thought of us conversing while the itching in my brain continued to nag at me. My arms unfolded and I sat on one of the chairs while he organized his thoughts. “Nothing matters.” He finally said.

While the idea was a little broad I began to think that perhaps he’d had a change of heart. Maybe something happened to change his mind about the whole thing.

“No one matters.”

This could be the beginning to repairing our relationship. I was skipping ahead of the whole process a bit quickly but a moment required seizing while ripe.

“It’s down to you and me.”

He was doing it. Realizing the true value he held in his son.

“Really you’re all that I have left.”

My heart swelled and the infernal grating in my brain screamed alarm.

His eyes turned up to me and everything I’d built up in the last few moments came crashing down.

The eyes were filled with madness. They glared wide, encased in a glassy layer, straight through me. All of my bravado and courage that I had collected in the car turned to ash. I felt the same as I had in the bird woman’s house. I was ten again and in terrible fear of the man before me.

“Catherine is wicked Sidney. She tricks and manipulates me into being someone I’m not.” I couldn’t understand that statement. He’d been the same person the whole relationship. “We are knights, Sidney. In service to God. For our works we will be rewarded with all that we please.” He paused to watch me. I was frozen and helpless. “What are we son?” he whispered.

My throat was dry but I managed a squeaking voice, “Knights.”

“What are we?” He asked again.

I had to swallow before speaking again, “Knights.”

“What are we?” He yelled.

A tremble worked its way into my body, “Knights.”

He began to bellow again but the voice that came out made my blood go cold. “What are we?”

“Knights.” I wanted to cry as I had when I was young but afraid that he would grow angry.

“That’s right.” An insane smile taking his face, “You can have anything you want as long as we are together working against it all.” He stopped for a moment to think of a way to convince me. “You like that girl you’re with?”

I made a tiny sound.

He clapped his hands and sent my heart racing. “You can have all the black, brown or blue girls you want.”

What small scrap of me that was left screamed from within my skull, “What the fuck is going on?” That small piece started working on an escape plan while trying to understand what drove him to this.

“Son, you know that Moses spoke to a burning bush to speak to God.”

I made a tiny sound.

“Cannabis.”

My inner self perked up at this and thought to remember everyone who’d gotten high near me. None had acted this delusional or fanatical.

“Science has given us many new ways to speak to him.”

Instead of a sound, I gathered a little strength to ask him a question, “How long?”

He looked at me sideways like an animal would when studying something strange and intriguing. “Only recently.”

I wondered if he meant since I’d last seen him or in relation to how long he’d been on this planet. All I knew was that I had to get out.

“I’ve spent the last few days toying with Catherine, trying to get her to break. She’s crafty and wicked.” He laughed loudly and suddenly. “You should see how she reacts, as though I’m the crazy one.” His face went dark as quickly and violently as the laugh had come, “Just like my father.” He snapped from it and looked dead at me, “But we will fight it because we are…”

“Knights.” I squeaked.

“What are we?”

“Knights.” My voice wavered.

He bellowed once more, “What are we?”

“Knights.” I’d never felt so weak and alone.

“That’s right.”

Dinner and Family

I pulled up to my father’s house and began preparing myself. Slow breaths, flexing the fingers and spinning my wrists. Each and every joint needed to be loose for this and my mind would have to be prepared to flow. I did the best impression of quick meditation that I could think of. Pulling from movies, books and a relaxation tape Rebecca’s mother had gifted her.

The last time I had come down and visited it had been with Rebecca. An introduction was long overdue and she was anxious to meet my father. I had spent years telling stories from my youth to either prepare or discourage her from the trip but we had made it. I remember her smiling and kissing me then springing from the car and looking back to see if I was coming along.

Maybe it was revenge for meeting her parents a year before and dodging the reciprocal visit. Maybe she was genuinely happy to meet one of the being who had sired me. Maybe she was just easing my obvious and overwhelming dread.

She held my hand on the way to the door. I knocked loudly and made peace with God. She squeezed my hand and smiled at me, her eye lashes swishing softly, and whispered that everything would be okay. I smiled and turned my attention back to the door but I held the image of her face in my mind.

The visit went over like spoiled milk. It had seemed pleasant enough at first glance, words and compliments exchanged with little depth or motive. Then things turned sour. Nothing visible but you could smell it in the air.

My father’s girlfriend attended the evening and spoke whenever the room would fall silent. Rebecca sat next to me and held my hand. She spoke softly and respectfully, most of the questions were handled with concise statements that didn’t lead to anything. My father and I sat silent. I sat mutely following the spacing between the tiles and he watched the conversation between his woman and mine as though it were a polite tennis match.

By the end of the peace talks and everyone had run out of polite statements and small talk questions we descended into eating. With food there is a loosening of boundries with my family so it took three forkfuls to draw the first question from my father.

“So what do your parents do?”

Dishes clattered with the impact of knives and forks. Dull thuds rumbled through the table with the removal and replacement of cups. There was no long silence between his question and the answer but each of us felt the passage of time.

Rebecca wiped her mouth and replaced her napkin in her lap. Residual manners from her mother but they did not go unnoticed. Each pair of eyes followed the fold of paper from lap to lip and back to lap.

“My mother is in mortgages and my father’s an English teacher.”

A sliver of meat hung from my father’s fork and he grunted, “Uh huh, and where did they meet?” He placed the chunk between his teeth and chewed slowly savoring and waiting to swallow.

“I think the story goes that they met through a mutual friend, dated and married.”

“Still married?” He spoke while still chewing.

“No.”

We ate for a few minutes without another word. Rebecca was concentrating on her food. I pushed against her leg with my foot and threw her a smile. At that my father piped back in.

“Are both your parents brown skinned or is one of them…” He let the phrase hang. Each bone in my body had locked in place.

Rebecca responded to this question the same way she had when asked what her major was in school, “My father is black and my mother white.”

My teeth clenched and I waited.

“You must take a lot after your mother, your skin is so light.” My father’s girlfriend swung in trying to suffocate the embers that had begun to glow around the table.

I had not been raised to harbor ill thoughts about color or religion, nor had Rebecca. When we met I had thought her a beautiful creature, her tan brown skin and dark obsidian hair. Never before had a girl of color caught my eyes but she had taken my breath with them. I knew that my family would have its issues, most were polite and said nothing. My happiness was enough to quell their misgivings. My father raised me to be open minded but quietly I imagine he tried to instill a reluctance to date openly.

So there we sat at the table, my father, his woman and I plus my token mulatto girlfriend.

“I didn’t know my son liked dark skinned girls.” My father said.

It took a great deal of force to keep my tone steady and to drop the knife in my hand. “I didn’t know we were discussing my tastes.”

He regarded me for a moment and didn’t speak further. The volatility of the discussion subsided and dinner ended soon after with some tension left unresolved.

My father and I ended up in a room talking very sternly to one another while the women sat in the living room awkwardly waiting for the groans of a distant argument to subside.

When we left I had never felt angrier. Rebecca grabbed my thigh as I drove. She had been strong throughout the whole evening and been respectful. I couldn’t ask for a better person to have come home with me. At a red light I kissed her and apologized. She pulled me back and kissed me again. She whispered that it was over now. My response was to smile back weakly but I couldn’t get to where she was. The disapproval from people on the streets was one thing but I hadn’t expected so much from my family.

Since then I hadn’t spoken much with my old man. He’d been too stubborn and I had been too upset over the whole thing.

Now I sat in his driveway about to see him and I didn’t know what to expect.

I walked up to the door and knocked. The face of Rebecca smiling floated into my mind.

He answered the door in his reading glasses. Something about the width of his eyes seemed wild. His hair had thinned more and he’d cut it recently. It hung in mass at his temples and behind his head but allowed a hazy view of his scalp from above. His skin was also a little baggier than I had last seen and more yellow. He did not look well.

“Sidney, come in.”