Page 2 of Black
I wanted to surprise Daniel with one for his birthday next week, but that won’t happen now, since my little walk landed me in police custody. That’s what I get for being a good friend.
There’s a pay phone on the wall in my holding cell, but I have no one to call. If my mom is even alive, I still would rather stab my eye out than call her for help.
My dad… well, I’ve only seen him once. The night I ran away from my mom when I was fourteen, I went to his house thinking he would take me in once I told him about the horrible things that were happening at my mom’s place, but I never got that far. He wouldn’t even let me into his fancy house or listen to me.
He had a new family with a wife and three small children, and the only thing I got from him that night was two hundred dollars and the message that he had been right to give Tina money for an abortion; he had known she wasn’t mom material and he felt sorry for me, for being born.
Sure, he had been right about her, but she had been right about him too; Brent was a cold bastard without a heart.
Still, it’s not like I’d have anything to lose by giving him a call. He has money, lives in a fancy house, and if anyone could afford to bail me out of this hole, it would be him.
I hadn’t spoken to Brent in seven years, but that only meant there was a slim possibility that he had found Jesus or grown a conscience since I last saw him, so I reckoned I might as well try it.
I had his number on a scrap of paper in my hand. The police officer had been nice enough to look it up for me, and it turned out that Brent still lived in the same place.
As I was listening to the sound of the phone ringing, part of me was hoping that he wouldn’t pick up. I didn’t want his help. I didn’t want to owe him anything.
“Hello.” His voice was slightly nasal, like someone with a cold.
“Hey, this is Black… I mean Darcia, your daughter.”
Silence.
“I need your help… Dad.”
“How did you get this number? I told you to leave me alone.”
I sighed. “I know, but I was arrested.”
“You were arrested?”
“Yes.”
“What did you do?”
“I stole a few things.”
“Where are you?”
“Downtown at the police station. They told me I’ll see a judge within a few hours. I think it’s basically just to charge me and set the bail.”
I waited for him to say something, but there was only silence.
“Could you come down here and help me get out? The bail shouldn’t be more than a few hundred dollars.”
He was still quiet, so I swallowed my pride and added a soft “Please…”
“I don’t think so,” he said in a low voice. “You caught me in the middle of an important family celebration and I can’t just leave. I’m sorry, but you know what they say: don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.”
That arrogant bastard! I squeezed the phone hard enough to make my knuckles white. “So you’re just going to let your own daughter rot here, while you celebrate with yourrealfamily?”
“You know I don’t think of you as my daughter,” he said in a cold voice.
What an absolutely redundant thing to say. The man hadn’t been in my life for twenty-one years. The fact that I was his dirty secret and biggest regret didn’t come as a shock and, yes, I know I should have just hung up and cut my losses, but I give as good as I get, so of course I had to have the last word.
“You know,” I said sardonically, “talking about crime and time… you shouldn’t have made a child if you aren’t prepared to be a father.”
“That’s not the same thing,” he said.
I kept my cool. “No, in your book, stealing a bit of medicine is a much bigger crime than leaving your baby to an alcoholic and abusive teen mother, and later sentencing that same child to a life on the streets.”
I didn’t give the shithead a chance to say more after that. I hung up, plunked myself down on the steel bedstead that held the thinnest mattress in history, curled my legs up to hug myself, and, yeah, you guessed it – I felt fucking sorry for myself.
My dad comes from a large and rich family. The kind that sends their kids to summer camps, goes on vacations, celebrates Christmas, and gets into colleges. They are my family too, even though I’ve only seen them from afar. I know I have two younger half-brothers and a half-sister, grandparents, aunts, and uncles, and apparently they were having a family celebration, right now.
With a pout I rested my chin on my knees, and imagined them all laughing and sharing jokes, while I sat here, alone and unwanted. The outsider no one cared about. And it fucking hurt!
