Flower of Innocence

The marigold stared at me from the hideous cup holding my morning tea. Chipped paint clinging to chipped ceramic. One more bit of ugliness in this place. I don’t remember it from before. He must have left it behind. He was good at that.

Like a sudden gust of Wyoming wind, grief and anger swell on me and the cup flys across the room and smashes into the wall. Brown liquid dripping down the cracked and dirty plaster walls. I don’t remember throwing the cup. I get up to go clean up the mess. Strange. The cup is unbroken.

I pick it up, holding the pathetic ugly thing in my hands and wails erupt from me like an ambulance siren. My body sinks onto the stained carpet, crumbs and imbedded ash adhering to my skin but I’m not really there anymore. Im lost in memories.

I hate him.

Time passes, snot dries on my arm where I have wiped it, my body drained and weak. I stand up. Walk to the kitchen with the marigold cup. I set it in the sink, turn the tap, listen to screeching and bumping until the pipes release enough tepid water the color of weak coffee, to fill the cup. The water overflows the rim and splashes and splatters against my hand, still holding the cup.

For a moment I’m no longer in the kitchen but standing under an umbrella at his funeral. The only one present to acknowledge the passing of the bastard from this life.

My hands shake. I dump the water from the cup, shut the tap off and go look for something stronger to ease this episode.

I thought I had dealt with all of this. I was sure that the years of therapy had fixed me. All that washed away like dead gutter leaves when the call came that he was dead. That I had to come deal with it.

So here I am, 22 years old sitting in the dirty house of my rapist, my tormentor, my father. Only he’s dead now, and unlike the living you can’t hide from a ghost of a memory.

I was five when my mother died and my father descended into the bottle to deal with the pain. Six when he began touching me. Just caresses at first. Over the clothes. Then under the clothes but over the underwear. Then the bath. Then all pretense gone. I was 11 when his drunken frame stumbled into my room, weighing down my small body as he pushed himself inside me, tearing whatever innocence was left from me. After that it was only a matter of time I suppose. I was 14 when I found out I was pregnant. I never told him. Just ran away. Ran like hell itself was on my heels. It was. It still is.

I slosh some clear foul smelling liquor into the cup and look around at the dirty dilapidated house. I don’t want it. It’s not worth anything. I just want it gone. I want to be gone. I can’t breathe here. The air smothers.

I start to wander the rooms, until I’m standing outside the room that was mine. I feel my stomach clinch and fight back the bile rising in my throat.

The door is open. The room spotless. Exactly the way I remember it. Posters on the wall, stuffed animals lined up on the bed. Something white catches my eye. It’s an envelope laid against my pillow. The white paper stark against the dark purple comforter. I pick it up and sit on the edge of the bed. It’s his hand that has scrawled my name on the outside. I tear it open and find a folded letter, and a key to his safe. I know where the safe rests deep in his closet. I toss back the last of the foul liquor and unfold the letter.

Dearest girl,

If you are reading this I’m dead and you have finally come home. I know what I did to you was horrible and I want to explain, want to make some excuse but there is none. I was a drunk and a bastard and I fucked up your life. I have lived with it sober for the last two years while the cancer ate my body. I know you will live with it forever. I am sorry, though I know it means nothing to you.

The safe contains a sad attempt at penance. It’s all I can offer.

I did love you, sweet girl. The wrong way. But love the same.

Dad

I stared at the letter. I wait for the explosion. Surprised when there are no tears, no rage, just numbness.

He was sorry! Fuck him! I was sorry! Sorry that I ever came back. I want to feel something. Some connection to this man. Some desire to forgive him, or hate him, or love him. I can’t though. I have nothing left for him or his ghost.

I move quickly then. I go and grab the safe finding in it a bundle of cash and the deed to the house. I carry the safe downstairs, set it by the front door and go in search of his beloved zippo. Finding it by his chair in the living room along with some smokes. Where they had always sat, next to an overflowing dirty ashtray. I guess smoking really did kill him.

I have a plan now, and with an almost manic energy I go to the kitchen and turn on the gas stove, not lighting the burner. I run to the living room for the zippo, then suddenly I am seized by a strange desire I can’t explain and I race to my room taking the marigold cup. Then I light the zippo, leaving it burning next to his chair, pick up the safe and walk out of the house.

I’m not there when the house explodes. Im racing east on interstate 80 towards Colorado and home.

The sun hasn’t been up long and I’m sitting in the kitchen drinking tea out of the marigold cup when she finds me. She’s in her bunny footed pajamas with her sleepy face and curly hair. She crawls into my lap and whispers, “I missed you mama”

I nuzzle her hair and in the smell of baby shampoo, I finally breath clean air.