Push(95)

Two years turned into three, then into four. Shep had to get a night job stocking shelves at the grocery store and cut down on his classes so we could pay for both our rent and his schooling. We ate a lot of dented cans of soup to make ends meet, but we always did it. There was a map of the world tacked up on our kitchen wall to remind us that it would all be worth it someday. Because someday, we would get on that airplane and get the hell out of here.
By the time Shep finished trade school, we had quite a bit of money in the bank. We almost had enough to buy a pair of tickets to Frankfurt and cover the first few months’ rent on a little farmhouse we found through a housing cooperative. But then my mother died. She didn’t have any life insurance, and my brother was broke. We had to use well over half of the money we’d saved to pay for her burial service. Shep was not happy about it, and neither was I. My mother had taken out a reverse mortgage on her house a few years before, so when she died, the bank owned the house, and my brother and I were left on our own. He moved to Arizona, and Shep and I stayed above the grocery store. Working and saving and making love.
Shep started drinking a few months after I found out I was pregnant. He wanted me to get rid of it. But I told him that a baby didn’t have to stop us. That we could still go to Beijing and Barcelona and Milan; we could go as a family. There was still time. But he didn’t believe me, and he started going to Peyton’s every day after working his carpentry job. He started coming home later and later every night. By the time David came into the world, Shep was well on his way to becoming an alcoholic. I missed the old Shep, but my bright little bird kept me busy.
David was a beautiful toddler with the temperament of a cool, quiet ocean. He seldom cried or asked for anything beyond the bare necessities. He liked to carry things around with him, and then drop them wherever he pleased. He would fill his arms with books or crayons or kitchen utensils or stuffed toys, and then systematically spread them around the apartment. When I would scold him for making a mess, he would look at me with his big eyes, and then he would set about picking everything up and doing it all over again. His kindergarten teacher later said that he was the most well-behaved child in the room. He followed all the rules, raising his hand before speaking and helping the other children when they needed it. But the teacher was worried about him. About our family, actually, because David would come to school and tell her about how his daddy was good at yelling and screaming and making his mommy cry. I told her not to worry about it, that David had quite an imagination. She smiled and told me to let her know if I ever needed anything. That night, I spanked David and told him to never talk about his daddy like that. Your daddy works hard, I told him, and it’s nobody’s business what happens in our house. At the next parent-teacher conference, David’s teacher said that he had stopped talking completely. He stopped raising his hand and offering to help the other children. She wanted us to get him help, but I told her that David was just shy. He would be fine.
By the time David went to first grade, he was talking again, and he knew how to stay out of his father’s way. He knew that when Shep came home from Peyton’s, he needed to be asleep in his bed—or at least pretending to be. Shep liked to come home at night and make drunken love to me. He liked to look at the map still hanging on our kitchen wall and yell at me about why I had to have that child. Ever since David was born, I have tried my best to appease Shep, telling him that someday we’ll still go to all those places. We’ll still see it all. I’m sure David has heard every word we’ve said in that kitchen over the years. I’m sure he knows his arrival has caused nothing but chaos for me and Shep.
I started calling David my bright little bird the night I caught him trying to fly out of his bedroom window with a pair of ingenious homemade wings. He had made them out of cardboard and colored turkey feathers and butcher’s string. They were clever, but they certainly weren’t clever enough to work. I pulled him back into the room just before he jumped and told him that if he tried to fly he would just end up breaking his leg and pissing off his father. He tore off the wings and threw them into the garbage. That was the first time I saw him cry since he was a baby. It was a week after his seventh birthday.
I’d been short-circuiting for a long time before David’s flying attempt, always lamenting over the pile of dashed dreams that had become my life, but somehow, I always managed to function. I always managed to keep myself together. I never allowed the depression sink all the way in. But over time, the sadness seeped into my bones and ate away at my brain. I stopped getting out of bed in the morning. I stopped doing the laundry and the dishes and the housework. I stopped letting Shep make love to me. I stopped caring about anything. I felt myself slipping into a place plagued by doubt and regret and loneliness. I felt myself starting to sputter out. Shep saw it. He had to see it. But he didn’t do anything about it. He just ignored me and our life together, choosing instead to sleep on the couch and drink with his friends.
And my bright little bird has been watching me the whole time. Watching me fall. He’s seen me crying, alone in my room in the middle of the day. He’s watched me stumble around the house, unwashed and unkempt. He’s seen me lock myself into the basement for days just so I wouldn’t have to face the sunlight. My bright little bird has stared at me while I ate rotten food simply because I could not bring myself to go to the grocery store. He has gone hungry because of me. And the thought of it all makes me sink deeper. The thought of him suffering because of me makes my insides hurt. It makes my brain and my muscles and my bones and my heart ache for the life I have forced on to him. And for the life I was supposed to lead.