Page 20 of Deeper

I could’ve stayed in the car and rapped along to Wale for hours instead of turning off the engine and removing my keys from the ignition.

I climbed the same stone steps to the porch like I’d done all my life and went and knocked on the front door instead of ringing the doorbell, instead of using my key. I did this, like I always did, with the hopes that maybe he wouldn’t hear me, that maybe he wouldn’t come.

But like always, my father came and answered the door. His aging eyes that were turning blue took me in, and he forced out that same smile he always did whenever he first recognized me on my visits.

“Hey, Dad.” I greeted him with a wave.

Five minutes later, per a sad tradition to keep in touch, we were in the dining room. Crayola crayons and markers were on the table as we sat across from each other coloring. He once mentioned the idea of using adult coloring books, but for me, I liked the fun the children’s books provided. They made me feel young and free, capable of any and everything.

I’d been coloring with my father since I was a little girl. Times had changed, significantly, brutally, but somehow, unconsciously, we had this. We had coloring. It was the only way we could still love each other.

“How’s the shop?” he asked me, keeping his eyes on his project.

I worked retail in Hemingway Park, selling clothes in a trendy clothing store called Angles that sold everything from casual and dressy, to designer duds and pop culture tees and handbags. It wasn’t much, but it paid the bills and kept me out of Lindenwood.

“Good, I live for our discount,” I said with some cheer in my voice.

“Hmm.” He hummed back, concentrating on shading in what looked like a tropical fish. Unlike me, my father had gone ahead and purchased himself some adult coloring books to exercise his mind.

I couldn’t help myself. My eyes began to wander around the room.

Pictures of my older brother and me littered the walls and I felt my stomach fill with a sickness that wouldn’t go away.

You be Cain, and I’ll be Abel…

It was ironic really. I’d never been into boy bands or pop music like that, but when we were kids, Pryor had been a huge fan of the pop group NSYNC. He had a cassette of theirNo Strings Attachedalbum and later the CD of theirCelebrityalbum. I could vividly remember all those times hanging in his bedroom, singing into his floor fan the lyrics of their catchy music. I had never liked the group for myself, but for Pryor. He was in love with NSYNC; he’d even had posters and pinups of the group, although he would never own up to it now probably.

Now here I was, having woken up in bed with an ex-boy bander.

“How’s Pryor?” I got the courage to ask for the first time of the year.

“He’s doing good, real good,” my father told me.

He would know how my older brother was doing. They spoke; they were on the same page almost.

Resentment was a powerful force. My father resented me because I hurt his wife, his love, and my brother resented me because I got it right. I followed the rules and my mother didn’t shame me. I was the black sheep of what was left of my familial unit. The living embodiment of anger and regret. My flesh was bound together by pent-up rage, and I just wanted to scream.

When the people you loved the most, your own blood, hurt you, there’s no way anyone else could. There’s no way anyone else could cause an inkling of damage.Because you’re already fucked up with trust issues and problems.

I tried not to pity myself, because everyone’s tortured when you think about it. And what makes your pain more important than someone else’s?

Once upon a time, Katherine and Elijah Leslie raised two loving and fully capable kids, Pryor and Bianka, in this home. They loved them equally and wholly and accepted them without question. It was real storybook.

And then Katherine was killed and nothing was the same.

Today was a shitty day, there was no getting around it. I always felt like shit during and after these visits.

Worse, I was a wreck with guilt. Victoria. She would resent me too. It was then and there while coloring in an image of a dog that I decided she could never know.

Fucking boy bands.

4

INSOMNIA

Icouldn’t sleep. Nightmares of a life previously lived plagued me. It was always the same, a joyful nuclear unit, a mother, a father, a son, and a daughter, happy as could be. Until an ugly evening where it was all ripped away leaving behind only three. Scratches from the mother’s fingertips lingered on the skin of those she didn’t want to leave.

It was always like this when I got around him. My father’s distant way of handling me left me reliving every painful memory of how things used to be, and how terrible they were now.

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