Preface

This is a story that I wrote in my creative writing class at community college in 2007. I can’t even remember what the assignment was or what the outcome was. It must have been a good addition to my other pieces to some extent because I did pass the class with an A; anyways, this isn’t the first draft and probably won’t be the last. I wrote this story three years after my father was presumed missing, but it has been 12 years since I’ve decided to revisit this story. I guess you can say that I took a break from my creative writing because I had decided to focus on my degree in the biological sciences. It was a big mistake that I didn’t keep writing as I pursued this degree because it would have been a healthy creative outlet in conjunction with the stress of college. Now that I’m back on the creative writing track, it’s like an intoxicated high and all I want to do is word vomit onto these blank pages.  

When I first read this story a few days ago, hoping to post this as my first creative writing piece on my first online blog, the tone of the story reflected how I felt three years after my father disappeared. I was not proud of the tone of the story and was even ashamed at times. I decided that instead of making a few edits, I would rewrite the story while keeping some of the original pieces so as not to lose everything. Of course, my writing style has changed since then as well. Then in analyzing the emotions of my characters, I realized that I was making assumptions of how I thought the real life characters were feeling and out of respect for the real life characters, I not only changed their names but also made some modifications to their emotions in the story.

So here is the disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Chapter 1: Just the beginning

My three siblings and I sat in a row of the many dark-stained cranberry-red wooden pews. Growing up, I sat among these mirrored pews at St. John’s Catholic Church on glorious Sunday mornings with other followers of the Lord’s faith. I used to watch my parents listen attentively to the sermons preached about the Lord and his bible with intentions on how we should live our lives in his name. As a child with no understanding of faith or religion yet, it was always hard for the pastor to keep my attention. My older siblings and I would constantly tease each other and make jokes about the Lord’s statues and images, peeking between our parents and one another, giggling silently throughout the sermons. The only thing that ever caught our attention was the ringing of the altar bells when the pastor took that first piece of the quarter-sized sacramental bread and a swig of the holy red wine. This usually alerted us that the end of service was near once everyone else received their blessings as well.

I watched as the sunlight crept in and beamed through the stained-glass windows from above, like the Lord’s saints watching me taint their scared place. Here I was again. It had been thirteen years since I’d been inside a Catholic church. We stopped attending after my parents got divorced because divorce was not accepted and gossiped about. My mother did her best to keep us shielded from their accusatory eyes. The unexpected return to church was different. The day was soaked with harsh rain and old autumnal leaves from the night before. We were informed by the elders that funeral traditions are held for three consecutive days, allowing the spirit time to find peace and pass on. My siblings and I sat again in those pews, the ones promised to help find faith and peace. No jokes or laughter were exchanged in between the reserved pews this time. We were still and quiet as the stale room we were in, except for the sounds of the weeping women which included my own mother and my father’s only two sisters. We never did sit in that one stretch of pew long enough to claim it as ours. A pew behind us was reserved for the wife he had left and their three young toddlers; yet, they never settled there either, bouncing amongst the crowds. In the remaining pews, many strangers known of and by my father sat scattered like bunches of roaches, gossiping about his children, his ex-wife, his widow, and now, the falsified stories of his demise.

I did not feel the source of somber like so many on that first day. I think my sorrow had passed with time, for it all began so long ago. Every face and hands that greeted with mines had the sorrow I couldn’t feel or show or maybe, feared to feel. He was much happier now wherever he happened to be because he was away from us, from his problems. The problems he had, he had left them with us. He was where his problems would never find him.

“I knew your father and I’m soooo, so sorry,” a middle-aged woman sobbed, as she cried and tried to console me, trying to console her. I was neither crying nor feeling any remorse for my father, but I showed my remorse for the woman who thought she knew my father. I gazed cheaply at her as I slowly pulled away and told her “he’s happy now.” She walked away with a look of doubt and confusion, questioning my relationship with this man as so many others always did. My siblings and I lived with our mother after the divorce. He never made much of an effort to visit nor asked us to live with him. Everyone always assumed we never wanted to live with him. They never knew how I felt and would never know how I was feeling in the least bit. They never knew the memories of what I had experienced with this man I called my father.

Besides his name, I had inherited his abundant, dark, thick, black hair along with my warm beige skin tone. During my childhood, I use to watch him in the mornings as he slid a fine-toothed comb under a running water faucet and combed his hair through and through again. With a few strokes, he was always able to tame the wild strays. Some mornings, he would part it in the middle, or on the left, maybe even the right. Most days, he would just comb it all back, allowing his hair to sit like a mushroom cap on a stem.

The last time I saw him was three years before this tragedy that has brought me here today. He had aged; streaks of faded silver in his thick black hair now with the same fluff he always had; tiny wrinkles had formed and hardened in his round cheeks, on his round forehead, and around his chinky eyes. His hands felt and looked much rougher now than those days when he held my hand when he walked me into preschool. Overall, he had aged with the depression he chose.    

I first got the news that Friday night while at my part-time job in banquets. On my first ten-minute break, I had attempted to check the time on my cell phone, where instead I saw a glowing voicemail, waiting to be listened to. I dialed for the voicemail as I stood in the bathroom. The words echoed through the phone, “he left his family in North Carolina and he might be heading to California,” said my sister. I was stunned from the inside out. Dollops of glistening salt welled up in my eyes, full of disbelief, but never letting them drip down my make-up face. I went back to work, hoping it was all just a misunderstanding. Little did I know that this was just the beginning.