Sunny(5)

Dear Diary,

There’s so much I need to tell you about now, but there’s also a lot I need to tell you about then. You missed a lot when I put you away. You missed a lot since I stopped making noise. Since I stopped asking about her. Since I stopped screaming about how bad I miss her, how I don’t know what it means to miss her but know that I feel like one pant leg is always too long. Like something just don’t fit. Since I got okay at keeping my mother inside, so that I didn’t upset Darryl.

One of the things you missed is really important, but before I tell you, I have to tell you about the time Aurelia took me to get a tattoo. It was a few years ago. We were at the museum, having our usual social studies class, this time staring at old sculptures. I remember there was this one that we were looking at. A statue of a lady as white as Lu. She looked like she might’ve been about to do some kind of dance move, maybe a spin, but couldn’t quite whip it right because the artist forgot to make arms for her. And all of a sudden, while looking at the armless lady, Aurelia just started crying. I told her it was okay that the lady didn’t have arms because it was just a statue. And Aurelia said that wasn’t why she was crying. That she was crying because it was her anniversary. And then I told her that I didn’t know she was married. And she said she wasn’t, which really confused me, and my confused became confused-er when she all of a sudden was like, Let’s go get a tattoo.

I was thinking what you’re thinking right now, Diary. I was thinking WHAT? But she didn’t mean we were getting tattoos. She meant she was going to get a tattoo, and I was going to come with her. Art class.

Have you ever been to a tattoo place? Actually, I know the answer to that one. You haven’t. But I have. There was art all over the walls, and books and books of sketches of googly-eyed dragons and hearts with knives stabbed in them and dripping fruit and all kinds of other stuff. And a lady who looked like she liked the same things Aurelia liked sat behind the counter in the front of the place. She was bald and had a tattoo of a corner store on the side of her head. I remember her. I’ll never forget her. And I’ll never forget Fish.

Fish was this big, big, big dude—the guy who tattooed Aurelia. He was like a walking wall. And if he was really a wall, he would’ve been like a wall in my house. Clean. Plain. No marks. No color. No art nowhere. Seems weird for a house. Seemed weirder for a tattooer.

And I’ll never forget him asking Aurelia how many years she’s celebrating, but he said it like How many is it, again? like he was supposed to know. And Aurelia saying this was her twentieth anniversary. And him asking if she wanted another star, and her saying yes but in a different color. And him asking what color, and Aurelia turning to me and asking me what color, and me saying green. But not just any green. Go green.

And I’ll never forget him pulling out this weird little machine that buzzed like it had a tiny lawnmower engine inside of it, if there was a such thing as tiny lawnmowers, and dipping it in what looked like green paint, then scratching another ugly star into Aurelia’s wrist. And while he was doing it, dragging that buzzing machine over her skin a few times, scraping green into brown, Aurelia told me a story to keep her mind off the pain.

The story was about how she got hooked on drugs when she was in college. Yeah, I was surprised too! Aurelia said her boyfriend introduced them to her and she just got . . . lost. She said the only people there to help her were my parents. They pretty much dragged her to get help. Especially my mother, who, after Aurelia got out of drug rehab, begged her to come to a dance class with her so she could stay busy and keep her mind off getting lost again. And this dance class was going to help Aurelia stay found. That’s when I found out my mother used to dance. According to Aurelia, my mother wasn’t very good at it, but still.

After Aurelia’s first year clean, she and my mother got really, really bad star tattoos as a way to celebrate. And Aurelia kept doing it every year after. Tattoo after tattoo. Star after star. Kept dancing, too. And my mother made Darryl promise to keep Aurelia close—keep an eye on her—keep her busy, which is how she ended up my teacher. Part of the plan.

Oh, and I’ll never forget asking Fish why they called him Fish, since he didn’t look like . . . a fish. And instead of just answering, he lifted his shirt up over his head, and there was a picture of Aurelia tattooed on his big belly.

Aurelia Simone Fisher.

Fish was the boyfriend. The one she was messed up with when they were younger. The amateur tattoo artist who gave her the first star in her galaxy.

That was the day I decided to never do drugs. And the day I decided that when I got old enough, I would get a tattoo that covered my whole stomach. It’s going to be of three ships, but not on water. On land. And, most importantly—the thing you missed—that was the day Aurelia started teaching me to dance.





Dear Diary,

Yes. I dance.

I know. A lot has changed.

I guess you could say, dancing with Aurelia is like gym class. We kick our shoes off, then move whatever we can move out of the way in the living room of my house to make enough space—a pretend dance floor with carpet the same ashy color as cardboard, but not as easy to break-dance on. We move the coffee table, and some of the smaller things, but the chair, my father’s chair—their chair—we leave alone. Darryl’s told me a bunch of times that he and my mother bought the chair as their first piece of furniture together. He had just landed his big-time business job doing whatever he does with numbers and money and ROI, and was going to help my mother open up her own therapy office. Her own space to talk to people about their lives, and what they’re scared of, and how dreaming sounds to them, and the first thing she and my father bought together—for her—was the thing to make the clients more comfortable. This chair. It’s soft purple, and leans back, and Darryl’s always lint-rolling it, and brushing its bulky arms softly with the palms of his hands, like patting a son that’s made him proud.