Sunny(19)

And I would say.





Dear Darryl, Dad. Dad. Dad. Dad. Dad. Dad. Dad. Dad. Dad. Dad. Dad. Dad. DAD DAD DAD DAD!

D A D! DADADADADADADADADADAD! dad.

You looked cool in your tan suit.

I hope you’re having a good date with Ms. Linda. I hope she makes you smile a little. I think you deserve it.





Dear Darryl, I wish. Stuff.

I wish stuff like a good job from you. And if you don’t want to talk much, maybe just a hug. Maybe a kiss on the forehead like how I kissed my discus. But I’m not as cold or as hard. And neither are you.

I wish you knew that.

I wish you knew I know that.

And I wish I knew why you made me call you Darryl. And not Dad.

And I wish we weren’t like statues with no arms.

I wish we weren’t like puzzles.





8


Friday


Dear Diary,

I have some news. Last night, after not being able to sleep, I got up and did something I’ve never done. Ever. I crept across the hall to Darryl’s room. He wasn’t home yet. I didn’t just go in there for no reason. I went to put the picture Gramps gave me on his nightstand. That’s all.

I pushed the door slowly open, slipped in, and closed it behind me.

I had never been in there. Not that I can remember. I only remember being in my own room. In my own space, my own crib, my own bed. My whole life. But now I was in his room. It was much cleaner than I thought, from what I could tell, minus the towers of stacked boxes of finished puzzles along the wall. In the dark, I crept to the bed. Slid onto the side where the covers were already pulled back. Climbed in. Yanked the covers up to my chin. I laid on the left side. The side I figured he laid on.

I have to tell you something, and it’s going to sound weird. But by now . . . you know.

I sniffed his pillow. Buried my nose in it and sniffed and sniffed. It smelled like nothing. Tried to know him. Tried to feel what it must be like to be him. To be here in this room, one-half of a whole plan, broken. One half of a person. Maybe. And then—and I don’t know why I did this—I slid over. Slid over to what I guessed was her side. It was cold and the sheets were so flat, so stretched that they seemed hard. Like maybe bodies on cotton makes it softer or something. It was like resting my body on a thin sheet of ice, it shattering underneath my weight into water. I pulled the pillow from behind my head and while lying flat on my back, hugged it.

I sniffed it. I imagined it smelled like

something

something maybe

her. It smelled like her. Maybe her,

I imagined.

And I started to cry. And sniff. And cry. And sniff. And bury my cry. And cry. And squeeze. And squeeze. And sniff. And cry. And squeeze. And squeeze. And then not bury my cry. And cry. And try. As hard as I could to swallow my howl. Squeezing the pillow. Tighter and tighter until I felt something on my skin. Something soft, like feathers. But not feathers. Too big to be feathers. Too . . . I don’t know. I didn’t know what it was, so I reached over and yanked the lamp chain, the room instantly warming with light. Then freezing once I realized what was happening. What was tickling me.

Not feathers.

Not feathers at all.

Ribbons.

First-place ribbons.

Years’ worth of them.

I sat straight up in the bed and snatched the pillowcase off the pillow. The ends of it badly stitched together were bursting, ribbons pushing through like guts. My squeezing had caused the seams to come loose. I started yanking the ribbons out, years and years and years of them. First place, first place, first place, long ones, short ones, first place, first place. And the whole time I’m still crying and now it’s louder because I wasn’t trying to swallow it anymore. And I’m pulling them out, and crying, and pulling and crying and suddenly Darryl opened the door. I didn’t hear him come in the house, or walk up the steps or anything. He just appeared, just stood there in the doorway, staring at me covered in ribbons as if I had jumped in a pile of leaves.

First-place leaves.

He didn’t say nothing. He didn’t ask me what I was doing in his room. In his bed. He didn’t ask me why I had destroyed the pillow. He didn’t say a word. He just stood there. It was only when he came in that I even looked up long enough to see all the other pictures. The ones from their marriage, them kissing, them laughing, them in college, in high school, in middle school. Them, everywhere.

He was shaking as he slowly walked to the other side of the room, his eyes never leaving me. Then he sat on the edge of the bed, crawled into the midst of the mess I’d made, and hugged the rest of my tears out.

He said he was sorry again, but this time for everything for what happened to your mother for making you run for running for shutting down in a voice that sounded like a sound I don’t think I’ve ever heard. He said it over and over again, his arms wrapped around me, my eyes on the nightstand. We were two S’s. SS, lying side by side. Ships, finally docked in the night.





Dear Diary, You ever heard people say, things don’t change overnight? Well, guess what?

They don’t.

But at first I thought that they had. This morning I woke up in my father’s bed, took a shower, got dressed, and went downstairs, and there Darryl was, pouring himself a cup of coffee.

He said he called Aurelia and told her to take the day off. And that he took the day off. And a few minutes later I kind of wanted to take the day off, and put the night back on, because me and Darryl were sitting in the kitchen . . . just . . . sitting.