Something Like This (Secrets) (12 page)

“You gonna give us details about your time with Reece?” Grace hollered from the living room.

I scooped up what lasagna remained and plopped it onto a plate. “Do I have to?”

“Kind of sort of, yes,” Lisa said.

“Hmm, why do I get the feeling you offered me lasagna to get me to spill?”

“Did it work?” Lisa asked.

I came into the living room carrying a plate of lasagna. Sitting on the floor, I crossed my legs, and set the plate on the coffee table. “We’re in love. He told me he loves me and I told him I love him.”

“Mother of all Gods,” Lisa said.

“Who said it first?” Grace asked.

“He did.”

“Oh man, this is serious,” Lisa said.

“Crazy serious,” Grace chimed in.

“I realize we’re moving fast, but it feels right.”

“I’m jealous,” Grace said.

I moved food around my plate. I wondered what Lisa and Grace were really thinking, probably that I was setting myself up for heartbreak. And I’m sure they also thought I was immature, falling for someone so quickly. Only teenage girls fell head over heels for a guy after having only known him a few days.

“I think this is great. I’m happy for you,” Lisa said.

“Thank you.”

“Yeah, I guess I’m happy for you, too,” Grace said.

At heart, Grace was just a little girl, still dreaming of the day her Prince Charming would arrive on a white horse, scoop her up, and take her to live in his castle where they’d spend the rest of their lives living happily ever after.

That Reece had told me he loved me first stung her, I’m sure.

“Your guy is around the corner,” I said to Grace.

She took my empty plate and disappeared into the kitchen. “How about we pig out on ice cream to celebrate?”

“I’m stuffed,” I said, patting my stomach.

“Same goes for me,” Lisa said.

“I’m going to go to bed,” I said.

“All right, screw the both of you, I’ll have ice cream by myself,” Grace said in a playful manner.

“Go for it,” I said. Then I looked at Lisa. “The lasagna was awesome, thank you, again.”

“I’m so glad you liked it.”

“Well, off to bed I go,” I said.

“If you have any dreams with Reece, give him a kiss for me,” Grace called from the kitchen.

“Okay, weirdo,” I said.

I’d have to keep Grace away from Reece. As sweet as she was, she was a hunter—and Reece didn’t need to be hunted.

––––––––

M
orning came and I was off on my usual routine, except that today was
the
day. The day I would suppress my fears, walk right up to my father and talk to him. I would let him know who I was.

I walked with my head held high because I knew that no matter what happened, even if my father didn’t recognize me, even if he yelled at me and told me to get lost, I was doing the right thing. And that’s all that mattered. I had to stop running away. I had to stand up and be part of the real world, where problems and challenges exist and you can’t just ignore what happens to you.

There he was. I was only steps away from him now. I was shaking with every step I took, but I kept going.

He was sitting up straight staring ahead.

I did not halt for even a second. I was determined to see this through. Talking to Reece had made me realize I needed my father more than I had been able to admit to myself. The possibility of never seeing him again...no, I couldn’t stand the thought.

I was standing right next to him. He hadn’t noticed me.

I opened my mouth and said the word he had always wanted me to say to him, the word I refused to say because I was mad at him for breaking up with Mami and moving out of our home. I said, “Papi.”

He didn’t move.

“Papi, it’s me, Jadie.”

He turned his head and met my eyes.

I was trembling, but I held my place. Tears rushed out and there was nothing I could do to hold them in.

I squatted down to his level and took his hand. “Papi, it’s your daughter. It’s Jadie.”

His eyes widened.

“Do you remember me?” I asked.

He stared at me and I couldn’t tell whether or not he recognized me. His eyes revealed nothing.

I caressed his hand.

He started crying. “I remember you,” he whispered.

“Oh, Papi, I’m here. I’m here.”

“Jadie, is it really you?”

I threw my arms around him. I didn’t care that he was dirty or smelled awful. I hugged him tight. I would never let go. I would hold on like I should have when I was twelve years old, like I should have when I was sixteen years old. I wasn’t an orphan anymore. I had found my parent. He had yanked me from limbo.

He wrapped his arms around me all the while saying, “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.”

We held each other for a long time, crying and freeing our trapped spirits. And the memories bombarded my mind. I remembered when he would take me to the playground and push me on the swing and afterward we’d sit on the grass and eat peanut butter-and-jelly sandwiches. I remembered when he took me shopping for school clothes when I was ten years old, and since he had no idea what size I was, he ended up buying everything in the wrong size, but I loved them anyway. I remembered sitting on a bench at the National Zoo eating ice cream cones during the summer and talking about the gorillas, elephants, and giraffes.

I had my father again. He was with me again. We could create new memories.

I had no idea what was going to happen next, but I knew I was going to do everything I could to help him. I would not abandon him.

Thank you, Mami. Thank you for making me stop that day to offer a homeless man a bottle of water.

***

W
hen I finally let go of my father, I said, “You have to come home with me. I’ll take care of you.”

I didn’t care what Lisa or Grace would think. I was bringing my father home. I would not allow him to spend one more night alone on the street. Tonight, he was going to sleep in a bed, under a roof. Lisa and Grace would have to understand.

He raised his frail body off the pavement.

I stood and put my hand in his.

“I can’t go with you,” he whispered.

“Papi, you need help. I can help you.”

He freed his hand from mine and looked away.

“We’re together again. Let me help you,” I said.

When he returned his eyes to mine, he said, “I can’t come with you. I’m not a good person.”

My stomach twisted; I felt as if someone was squeezing my insides. I knew nothing about the life my father had lived, the wrong steps he had taken that had led him to homelessness, the sins he had committed since abandoning me. At that very moment, none of that mattered to me. All that mattered was that we were together again. We had found each other. All the deities in the world wanted us to be together. Why else would they have allowed our paths to cross?

“Come home with me. We can start over. You can start over. Let me help you,” I begged.

Looking down at his feet, he whispered, “I love you so much, my sweet little girl. I wish I could turn back time...I wish I had been stronger, been a better father, but I was weak. And sometimes, a lost person can never find his way home again. Sometimes, a person is destined to remain lost forever. I’m supposed to stay lost, my sweet Jadie.”

I took his hand. “I found you. You’re not supposed to stay lost.”

Adrenaline pushed through my body and I felt as if I had just finished running a marathon, my heart beating so fast it might explode.

He glanced at the sky and then pushed my hand away. In a very low tone, he said, “Only for a moment. You only found me for a moment.”

I stood, paralyzed. “What are you saying?”

There I was
,
with my father on a sidewalk in DC as people passed by, people who hadn’t a clue why I was giving this dirty, homeless man so much of my time. Certainly stopping to help a homeless person wasn’t on their agenda.

A chubby lady wearing a sweater which was much too big for her stopped and touched me on the shoulder. “He’s here all the time. Don’t give him any money. He’ll probably just use it for drugs.”

I couldn’t blame her for passing judgment on my father, but my protective instincts pressured me to respond, “Mind your own business. I’ll give him all of my money if I want.”

She mumbled something under her breath and went on her way.

“There is no starting over for me. I made a choice.” He paused. “Once I made the choice to abandon my daughter, my beautiful baby girl, I knew I could never go home again.”

Different emotions circled through my veins, causing me to gag and almost vomit. “You can’t abandon me again. You just can’t. You can’t! I’m your daughter. How could you have left me, as if I were nothing? I cried for you. I spent so many nights wondering what I had done to make you leave me.”

With tears in his eyes, he said, “You did nothing wrong. I’m happy to have had this moment with you. But, it can’t last. I won’t burden you.”

I punched his chest. He didn’t move. I punched him again. He still didn’t move.

“Hey, hey, what’s going on here?” A man walking by asked. “Why are you hitting this man?” He grabbed my fist before I could hit my father once more. “Look, you better calm down before a policeman sees you.”

“She’s not doing anything wrong,” my father said. “Let us be, please.”

“You sure?” the man asked my father.

“Yes, please let us be.”

“Don’t hit him again,” the man said to me.

I didn’t respond. When the man walked away, I said to my father, “Please don’t push me away.” I wiped my tears and tried to exhale. “I need to know why you left. I need to know why you didn’t try and stop me the day you saw me at the paint store.”

He turned his eyes to the sky.

“Look at me. Are you hoping He will strike you down right now so you don’t have to answer me? He won’t. God won’t strike you down because you need to answer your daughter.”

If that’s what my father wanted, to be struck dead so he could escape me, I’d do everything in my power to summon death and beg him to reject my father’s plea...to go against God and let my father live so he could answer me...so he could face his daughter.

He turned his back to me. “There’s so much you don’t know about me. The things I’ve done. I never meant to hurt you. I never meant to hurt your mom.”

“What happened to you? Why are you living like this?”

“My sweet little girl. My sweet Jadie. You were always so pretty and kind. You deserved a magical childhood. We tried. Your mother and I...we tried, but we failed. We weren’t good enough for you. God made a mistake when he chose us to be your parents. Don’t you understand?”

“Understand what? That you didn’t love me? That you gave up? That you and Mami both gave up? I was a little girl. And I loved you. I trusted you. I thought you would always be there for me. But you lied to me. You disappeared from my life. And you left me with her...she looked for you. Bet you didn’t think she would. Oh, but how she looked for you. You leaving killed her. You broke her heart.”

He faced me. Tears sliding down his face, he said, “Your mom and I stopped loving each other long before I left. She wasn’t easy to live with. I’m so sorry we hurt you.”

No, Mami wasn’t easy to live with, but then I’d stuck with her until she died. I held my mother’s hand and watched her take slow breaths until the light left her. And even then, I refused to leave my mother’s side. I had to make sure her spirit reached a safe place, one where she could dance and sing and be free of all her pain, one where she wouldn’t have to fear the brutal touch of her father’s hands, one where she had plenty to eat, plenty to smile about and, most importantly, one where her own mother hugged her and loved her and didn’t blame her for her father’s wandering eye.

Mami was born in a small, godforsaken town in El Salvador, where even the insects and rodents refused to live. From the moment she entered the world, she never had a chance. And despite her fighting for her place in the world, she died knowing that she’d never found what she was looking for.

And then, my father, my kind and beautiful and calm father walked out on us. He didn’t fight for us. He didn’t fight for me.

“I can’t do this. I thought I could, but I can’t. I look at you and I want to hit you. I want you to feel the pain I felt...the pain I still carry with me. Did you think about me? Did you try to find me?”

He covered his face with his hands. “I was weak. And I have paid for my weakness. I have accepted God’s punishment.”

“It’s not enough. You don’t get to decide to leave again. That choice is no longer yours.”

“I’m not asking you to forgive me,” he said.

Feeling cold and distant, I said, “Good, because I wasn’t offering my forgiveness. You don’t deserve it. I can’t give it to you. You broke my heart. What did I do to make you stop loving me?”

There he was, standing in front of me. I wanted to forgive him, I really did. I thought I was ready. Maybe I thought that we would see each other and all would be well, everything we had been through would melt away and we’d start fresh. We’d go to a baseball game. We’d go for a walk in the park. I’d tell him about Reece and he’d tell me about his life. I was being ridiculously naïve. A twenty-three-old woman stuck in a twelve-year-old body. Stuck in the past, on the day he dropped me off at home and drove away from my life.

“I was weak,” he said.

“Stop saying that. Weakness doesn’t excuse what you did.”

“I think you should move on. Forget about me. Keep moving forward. I’m a demon from your past.”

“You’re my father!”

“Not anymore, I’m sorry. I stopped being your father when I chose to leave. Fill your heart with hate for me.”

His words cut me deeply. I was looking at a man who was not interested in redemption...who didn’t want a chance at a new life.

“You don’t want me to help you?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because that wouldn’t be fair to you. I can’t be helped. God has forsaken me. And I deserve his abandonment.”

“Yet you still search the sky as if you’re hoping He will reach down and lift away your pain.”