The small boy sighed and tossed over once in his bed. He could not sleep. He never could when he was gone; gone until the sun rose to alert the neighborhood of a new day, when the neighbors would start to wake up, stretching their arms way over their heads to help themselves escape the inevitable fog that was sleep. It was nighttime now, no ray of sunlight to be found- the world enveloped in a blanket of darkness with only the stars to illuminate the lonely streets. The boy shivered as a part of his arm escaped the cozy warmth of his covers and met the bitingly cold air of the room. He quickly snuck his arm back under and opened his brown eyes, acknowledging the fact that he would not be able to sleep for the rest of the night. Clutching the sheets around him tightly, the boy sighed once more, wondering why he bothered to stay up and wait for him—his father. Perhaps it was simply the old pull of blood that was speaking, or perhaps it was the fact that he still did not like being alone at night.
It would be a lie to say that the boy was not getting used to nights like these, getting ready for bed alone and not having anyone to say goodnight to. The first time that his father returned home when the darkness would begin to fold yet the sun still deemed it too late at night to make an appearance, he had cried. He had wandered from room to room, whispering at first ‘Mom? Mommy?’s to ‘Dad? Daddy?’s – then progressing to a full on shout, simply falling as a limp rag doll on the cold kitchen floor with tears streaming down his face, begging and pleading for someone, oh please, someone to come hold him; although he knew in the back of his mind that no one was home, no one would hear him.
As the nights became more frequent where it would be the boy and only the emptiness of the grungy apartment to keep him company- the tears gradually stopped and he aged years beyond his ripe old seven, learning to filter his thoughts as an adult would; for if he let the whole realm of the world be possible for him such as was normalcy for those his age, the images would haunt him endlessly. Of his mother, whom he believed was the one person who would never leave him, with her soothing hands and her soft voice lulling him to sleep—yet she had anyway. She left and he watched her simply leave as if he meant nothing, not a penny— or even a smidge of dirt that brushed her shoe as she walked home from work. He had cried then, too. They started out as silent sobs that racked his whole body, making him convulse and shudder uncontrollably. Then the sounds of pain, anguish—betrayal left his body in ugly, grotesque whimpers that seemed to drown the empty walls of the grungy apartment with his sorrow.
Adjusting his head on the pillow, the boy listened attentively as he heard the familiar creak of a door and the click of a lock. He watched as the light turned on in the kitchen, illuminating the silent darkness of his room. Raising himself up, his small feet touched the bare wood floor, his nerves screaming against the shockingly cold temperature of the room. Every fiber of his being told him to go back into the warm embrace of his covers, yet he had to. The boy had to go see him or the gates of slumber would never admit him, no matter how loudly he begged and pleaded to be let in. Tiptoeing quietly, he made his way to the kitchen, lit disturbingly bright—and as he drew closer, he heard a familiar, gruff voice, clouded with the effects of drink. A bang, a curse, then rustling. The protest of a chair being dragged across the tile floor. Leaning against the wall warily, the boy’s vulnerable frame shook as another sigh left his body—a small sigh that no one but the walls heard. Even they seemed to pity him.
With dejected steps, the boy dragged his hesitant frame into the kitchen. He was fully bathed within the light now, yet instead of enveloping him in its warmth, it seemed to pound into his back, leering at his naivety. Lowering his eyes and training them to his father’s feet on the floor, the boy took in the man before him slowly, parts at a time—for that was the only way he knew to take in his father. The boy had always thought that his father, although a skinny man, was impossible to take in on first glance; the invincible hero of his dreams, standing unimaginably tall as he protected the boy from all the harms of the world—now a broken man, too broken for it to be possible to look at him in full without being pinned by the crippling sense of grief that seemed to emanate from his very being. When the boy’s eyes finally reached his father’s face, they were not met with the sight of brown orbs clouded with the sheen of visions only his father could see in his inebriated state, as expected; instead, the boy was met with a gaze so unnervingly intense that it seemed to slam him up against the wall, providing no space for even fidgeting. After a long bout of silence that seemed to compress the air in the room—tighter, tighter, tighter—leaving the boy almost gasping for breath, his father finally spoke.
“Son.”
His voice was uncharacteristically clear, the drunken drawl the boy had heard not too long ago from his room, gone. The boy regarded his father with uneasy eyes before opening his mouth to answer, finding that his voice was stuck inside of his body. Clearing his throat, the boy stared at the floor, wishing more than ever that he was back in bed once more, before responding.
“Papa.”
The moment the word escaped the boy’s lips, the father’s eyes grew unfocused as he steadied his gaze on his son. This time, however, he seemed to look through the young boy—as if he were transparent—seeing him, yet not quite seeing him at the same time. Giving a short hiccup before cocking his head, still with the unseeing gaze trained upon the boy, the father began to mutter things to himself. The boy was at a loss on what to do; he had never seen his father in such a state before. Their nightly routine was that the boy would walk in, check that his father was home, before leaving him to consume yet another bottle of alcohol. In those nights, his father had never addressed him, never acknowledged his presence—until tonight. Shifting uneasily in the spot that he stood, the boy made to return to his room when his father suddenly shook his head, pinning him under his gaze once more.
“Where is your Mama?” the father asked, his voice the purr of a lion.
“She… she’s not here anymore, Papa, she left—”
At the word ‘left’, he fire behind the father’s eyes sprang to life, consuming the dull brown in its path. His face contorted into a mask of fury, the man reached out and snatched the vase that sat pitifully in the middle of the plastic table, flinging it against the opposite wall.
“I know!” he shouted, his eyes ablaze with the same emotions that the boy felt towards his mother. The sound of shattering glass seemed to break the boy’s father out of his trance, his body suddenly going limp—as if he were a puppet whose strings had been cut.
“I know.”
The boy’s eyes were now wide, his small form quaking uncontrollably at his father’s outburst. Taking a step backwards, he once more moved to retreat to the haven of his room, when—
“Paper.”
The man’s voice was lucid once more, as if his mind was not flooded with the effects of liquid spirits. When the boy froze and simply regarded his father with fearful eyes, he gave a grunt and tapped his fingers impatiently on the table, giving his son a pointed look.
“Paper. Pen,” he commanded, leaning back into his chair expectantly—almost as if he were a petulant toddler.
The apprehension towards his father slowly ebbing away with the appearance of morbid curiosity, the boy made his way over to the kitchen counter, opening the drawer that his mother kept his crayons and paper in when she filled the empty walls with her warmth. Erasing all thoughts of how she used to smile at him so lovingly before she placed his art supplies before him as he sat at the table, much as his father did now, the boy reached in and grabbed a few sheets of paper and a purple crayon before setting them in front of his father’s frame.
Noticing the paper and crayon, the man gave a grunt—of thanks or of acknowledgement, the boy did not know—before writing broken letters and words furiously, filling the stark white sheet of paper with the blood of the purple crayon. The boy watched as the man slaved away in front of the table, his tongue poking out of his mouth in intense concentration. His curiosity unable to be contained any longer, he reached out one, cautious hand and placed it on his father’s shoulder, giving him a tap. The man seemed to break out of his trance at the boy’s touch, staring at his son from under the locks that covered his eyes. Noting that there were no traces of anger or confusion, the boy opened and closed his mouth before finally speaking.
“What are you doing?”
The man simply stared at his son before giving him an annoyed grunt, waving him away.
“I have to do this,” he mumbled, returning to the paper before him—filling the silent kitchen with the sound of crayon meeting paper.
“What do you have to do?”
The boy’s voice was soft, now, as if he were speaking to a wounded animal. Don’t worry. Don’t run. I won’t hurt you.
“Bah!” the man exclaimed, waving one hand in the air as if to brush off a pesky fly. “I have to do this!”
His father’s distraction giving him confidence, the boy pressed, “What? What are—”
Before the boy could even finish the sentence, the man flung his hands up into the air, giving a frustrated shout.
“My essay! My essay! College!” he bellowed, not looking at the boy, but at the seat across from him instead.
“I told you it was important, but you didn’t care! ‘Education, bah,’ you said! You told me that nobody would care; you promised me that it wouldn’t matter in the end! But now you’re gone and she’s gone and he’s all I have left…” the man’s voice trailed off, tears now flowing freely down his sunken cheeks.
Staring at his father, the boy had the sudden urge to cry with him—when he remembered what his mother would do when he had cried. Thinking back to the memories that he only allowed in during the gloom of night, the boy almost had an urge to laugh at how trivial his problems were back then. He wanted to shake his old self and yell at him that a broken crayon was nothing, that a dropped cookie was nothing, you stupid, stupid boy.
Shaking his head, he pulled his thoughts back together, turning his attentions back to the man before him. It was strange, seeing his father clutching a small crayon within his large hand so tightly, as if it were a lifeline—as if it were the key to a new life away from the tortures of every second that ticked by. Reaching out a gentle hand, the boy took the purple crayon from the man’s grasp, cupping his wrinkled cheek with his free one—just as his mother had done for him. Wiping away the rivulet of tears that traveled down the crevices of his father’s face with his small thumb, the boy ran his fingers through the man’s brittle hair before giving him a small smile. At the boy’s touch, his father closed his eyes, leaning his cheek into his son’s hand.
They stayed in that position for a long time, and it was only when the man’s head started bobbing from sleep that the boy took his hand back. He wiped the condensation of grief on his pajama bottoms before taking the man’s hand in his own—somehow, his hand did not seem to get enveloped and lost in the larger one as it had before, in the days when they used to walk hand-in-hand to the park together to enjoy a bit of sunshine. The boy led them both out of the kitchen, away from the misery that seemed to hang about in the air, whispering things that neither of them could handle listening to. He shushed his father’s weak protests of ‘I have to finish—I have to finish’, leading him into his own room. Motioning for him to sit down on the edge of the bed, the boy undid the man’s shoelaces and took the shoes off of his feet before placing them on the floor. He then pushed his father gently backwards, causing him to finally lie down—then bringing up the covers to his father’s chin, tucking them securely around his father’s shoulders.
As the boy made to leave, his father stared at him with such an innocent, wholly youthful expression that the boy could not help but to place a soft kiss on his wrinkled forehead before making for his own room. He paused, however, at the doorframe of his father’s room and looked back. His father was fast asleep, a sense of calm drifting over the room that only sleep itself could bring about. The boy gave a long stare before retreating to his own room, slipping back underneath the covers now gone cold. Tucking the sheets under his shoulders with his own, small hands, the boy found that he no longer found the darkness a lonely place—and drifted off to sleep knowing that he never would find it as such anymore.