Two Deaths and A truth

"Gabriel is dead." Mama says with a regret I don't quite understand. "Okay." I say. I hand her the steaming cup of coffee I've just prepared and sit down on her bed. She looks as if she's going to cry. "Are you okay, mama?" I ask. It's a stupid question but I don't know what else to say to her. I can't bring myself to even pretend that I'm sad. Mama sips her coffee, "He died alone." She mumbles. "Ma, you did everything you could do for him and you gave him far more than he deserved. He made his own decisions and that's not your fault." I say and stare down at the floor. I don't want her to look into my eyes and see my lack of grief or my annoyance at her ever-bleeding heart. "You know his friend Karl... Karl said his kids took over everything then left him alone to die. Nobody knows where his body is. Karl said they might've shipped it somewhere south and had him cremated... they left him to die alone... Nobody deserves that." Mama says and begins to cry. I nod, "Nobody deserves that but it isn't like he didn't put himself in that position. He told you he didn't want your help anymore. What could you have done for him after he said that?"

"I could've gone to visit him."

"You looked for him, ma. You couldn't find him. That's not your fault."

She's quiet for a moment then she repeats herself, "Nobody deserves that."

~

Gabriel had a stroke over a decade ago and mama agreed to take care of him. My sisters and I spent days there helping out. Cleaning his apartment, waiting in the car as mama drove him from one doctor's appointment to the next, hauling his groceries up the four flights of stairs that led to his apartment then putting away everything. Mama did his laundry, bathed him, sorted his pills, and cooked all of his meals. He never showed a pinch of appreciation. He never even faked a genuine "thank you". He could only complain about the lack of salt in his meals that he was forced to endure due to his high blood pressure.

Gabriel was the cause of the second stroke that left him nearly crippled and unable to speak. His memory was just as bad as the rest of his issues and he kept calling mama by his ex-wife's name.

"S-S-Sandra, I-"

"Sandra isn't here, Gabriel, my name is Beverly."

"Shit."

"Stop cursing."

Gabriel was a piece of shit. He saw mama's care as an act of babysitting. Too stubborn to acknowledge that his second stroke was his own fault, he treated us all like we were a bother to him. He eventually met a woman and told mama that he didn't need her help anymore. She told him that once she signed off that she was no longer his caretaker and that she wouldn't sign back on. He agreed. He thought this other woman actually wanted a partially crippled old man who wore diapers and always had a faint smell of piss due to wetting himself and being too proud to admit it. She took what she could and left him. He tried to get mama to come back and help but she refused so he found another caretaker.

One day, mama found out that he had been put in a nursing home and abandoned. I went with her to see him. I sort of just went along for whatever food she'd be stopping to get along the way. When we were leaving he wanted me to tell him that I loved him and he wanted me to call him dad. I rolled my eyes and refused but mama pleaded. Gabriel looked up at me with tears in his weak, pathetic eyes and I did it- for mama, not him. Never for him.

"I love you, dad."

The words tumbled out of my mouth like rancid and insincere vomit. He cried as I stared at him incredulously. I just wanted mama to give me the car keys so I could head back to the car and listen to music.

That was the last time I saw him.

~

"Gabriel is your father."

The cool air in the Target parking lot whips into my empty head through one ear then floats out through the other. I laugh. It's so wild that I have no other choice but to. It's funny.

"I'm serious. He's your father. Gabriel Dorian Black is your father."

My hands begin to freeze and my chest gets this strange hollow sort of feeling as if I've just been told that someone I love has died. I don't love him though. I don't even care that he's dead. All I know is that I share DNA with someone I hate and I can't change it. Someone, who many years ago, offered my sisters and me five dollars when we asked him to buy us lunch. "The McDonald's menu is good enough." He said tightly as he shoved the wrinkled old bill into my older sister's fist, "This should cover it."

I feel the cells in my body begin to curdle like spoiled milk and suddenly, my blood is not my own- it's his. I feel invaded and his DNA is an army of foreign bodies that attack the microscopic portion of my existence that I didn't see as flawed until now. Suddenly, I feel like a mistake because I now know that I will never truly escape him.

"J-just me, mama?" I ask and suddenly, I feel as if I might vomit.

"No... all three of you are his. I've made a lot of mistakes in my life but my girls have the same father... I'm sorry I never told you but it was something I meant to get around to doing with your dad but he thinks you're all gonna hate him if you know you aren't really his. I'm sorry but I couldn't keep it in any longer. I had to tell someone." Mama unlocks the car doors and we get inside. I still feel odd and for a moment, I believe that if I close my eyes for too long that when I open them, I'll be looking down at myself as I rise up through the roof of the car. I don't grieve for Gabriel. I grieve for myself as I find a newer, deeper, and ultimately unwavering way to hate myself.

In my flawed body, mistakes run through the blood in my veins and as I close my eyes, I see him in the blood that ebbs through my eyelids.