Sunny(12)

Dear Diary, It’s late and I can’t sleep. Because the quiet has been unquieted. Sound. Coming through my bedroom door. I wish it was something cool, like harps or drums, or even the weird creaking of this big house “settling” as Darryl sometimes says. But, no. It’s just my father choking on his own snore. Choking on his own sleep. He probably needs to adjust, roll over, or something.

He’s not choking.

No, I don’t think he’s choking at all, actually.

I think he might be crying.





6


Wednesday


Dear Diary,

It’s Wednesday morning, and I’m pretending I didn’t hear Darryl crying last night. I said good morning, and he said good morning back, which made the morning goodish. Better than the last three. But I wonder if he was just saying good morning in the same way people say fine when you ask them how they’re doing, just because that’s the answer everybody gives, and it’s easier than the truth, which might be something like . . . constipated. I’m not even sure you can really have a good morning after having a bad night, and it sounded like Darryl had a bad night. And I didn’t have the heart to ask about it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not freaked out from hearing him cry. Crying is crying like laughing is laughing like sense don’t never have to be made because it just is. Whoa. I felt like Coach with that one. Sunny Shakespeare. Anyway, what I’m trying to say is hearing my father cry is normal.

Every time we finish a puzzle and have to take it apart, he cries.

Every birthday, he cries. His or hers. Or mine.

Every anniversary, he cries. Of their marriage. Of her death. Which is my birthday.

Every first-place ribbon, he cries. Not around me. But at night.

But he didn’t do that this weekend. There was no crying because there was no ribbon. And I learned a long time ago to never check on him. To leave him alone. When I was little, maybe like six, I asked him if he was okay and he yelled at me. And that yell was a yell like nothing I’d ever heard. It was as if my father’s throat had become a revved motor, as if his eyes had become headlights, as if he had become something that would run me over. And he never has, but . . . never again.





Dear Diary,

Have you ever heard of a movie called Baraka? Probably not. I hadn’t. And when Aurelia said we were going to see it, at first I thought she said Barack, as in President Barack Obama, and I asked her how she knew him.

She didn’t know what I was talking about.

So I asked her again. About Barack Obama.

And she said, Baraka. Buh-RAH-kuh. It’s a movie, and, Diary, you should see it. Not like you can, but if you were real—I mean, you’re real because you’re here with me, but I’m saying real like a person—then I would say you should definitely see it. I saw it today. Aurelia took me on a field trip to the movies. She said it was for history and science class.

We drove across town to this old movie place. At least it looked old. But Aurelia kept trying to explain to me that it wasn’t really old but it sometimes showed old movies.

We ordered popcorn, gummy bears, gummy worms, Swedish fish (which are also gummy), and nachos. And water, because like Aurelia always says, health is wealth. We carried everything into the theater—thankfully, we were the only people there—and plopped down right in the middle of it all. Aurelia did that thing where you pretend like your head is blowing up and you make the brrrrggghsssh sound, and told me to get ready.

Ready for what?

That’s what I was thinking as the movie started. There was some kind of flute playing, long, drawn-out notes. Fluuuuute. Fluuuute. Mountain range. Big and beautiful and stone. And then from there we see a monkey in a hot tub. I know this probably all sounds silly, but if you saw it, you would be like, look at that monkey in that water, and you wouldn’t be able to turn away, with all that fluuuuuuute, fluuuuuuute going on in the background, and that monkey just sitting there, up to his neck in a bath, relaxing, looking at the camera. And I’m sitting there wondering where that monkey is, and where they have hot tubs made by God like that. And then . . .

Everything everywhere.

People, running and dancing and crying and working and walking and spinning and moving and moving.

Animals, climbing and fighting and dying and running and swinging and moving and moving.

Things, like cars and buses and clocks and sun and moon, ticking and changing and swerving and crashing and moving and moving.

And fluuuuuuute was met with boom boom boom and tap tap and symphony and drum armies and so much more that I really can’t explain. I guess the best way to explain it to you, Diary, is this is what you will be like when I’ve filled up all your pages, maybe. Or maybe if everyone—the whole world—wrote in you at the same time. Or something. I can’t explain it right, but Baraka must mean something like Whoa. Either Whoa, or maybe it’s the sound tears make but not the ones that come out, the ones that stay in. Yeah, that might be Baraka. Because that’s how I felt at the end of it. Like maybe I should cry. But I didn’t. But I felt like maybe I should. And, honestly, I didn’t even really know why.

As the credits rolled, Aurelia exhaled as if she’d been holding her breath the whole time, and asked me what I thought.

I hadn’t even touched the popcorn. Or the nachos. Or any of the gummy stuff.