Bedwetter
People always commented on his unnerving gaze. Nothing behind the eyes, they’d say, shuddering. The first time I realized I was scared of my old man was at the hospital after I broke my elbow falling from Spider Log when he threw the black widow on me. He stared at me so hard that I would do anything to avert that gaze, so I just nodded when the doctors asked if it was true that I’d fallen down the stairs. The fifth time I fell down the stairs, the doctors began looking suspicious. After that, he stopped taking me. Ma never took me, either. It’s just his way, baby, she’d say, passing me the ice pack. He can’t help it.
*
Ma’s eyes were different. They were mossy-green and lively, with everything behind them when she looked at me. But I saw her sometimes, leaning over the sink with an ice pack to her face, and her eyes were as drained and empty as my father’s as she watched blood drip, drip, drip from her nose. Then she’d turn to me, smile, her eyes lighting up as if she’d flipped a switch for me. We used to go to the swimming hole together, with t-shirts over our bathing suits, and we’d play like we were at the beach. She always promised we’d go to the real beach one day, and she’d talk about the sand and the sun and the endless waves that I had never seen, and I’d think she wanted it more than me. She taught me to swim.
Exactly three years after Ma died, I quit my job and drove eight hours straight to the ocean. Midnight blanketed the beach in a shroud of darkness, but I could hear the waves hissing, pausing, slapping against the shore in rhythmic eternity. I took off my shoes and waded out, lay on my back and floated in the waves until it was just me and the sea and a hundred billion stars. I think it was an escape for her, to think of the beach. I think she wanted to float like I did, to drift away from the old man’s hollow gaze. Just a few days before she died, she burst into my room and began throwing my clothes into a suitcase, telling me anxiously that we were going to the beach. We drove for two hours and she stopped, started crying with her hands to her face. She had stitches over her eye. I’m sorry, baby, she said to me, over and over. I told her it was okay, and we went home. I don’t think the old man ever realized we’d gone. He’s just a little rough around the edges, all right? Ma would say. It’s just who he is.
Playing beach with Ma was the only time I felt safe from his gaze. She would play music from the radio, the station with music she had listened to as a teenager, and she’d sway and spin in the water, running her palm over the surface and scattering waterbugs as if remembering some long-ago dance. When she got in that mood, I knew not to bother her. After smoking enough, she’d crawl to the bank and lie on the dirt to sunbathe while I continued playing mermaid with the minnows. On days like that, she’d sleep for hours, and her eyes, usually lively, would be red and puffy and distant with drugs. Once the sun went down while she slept, and I stood still at the edge of the swimming hole, silver minnows nibbling my bare legs like a thousand stabbing kisses. When darkness came, the water looked deep, like yawning jaws, and I thought of the bag of squirming kittens and got out of the water. Knees to my chest, I sat beside Ma, waiting for her to wake up, until I dozed off. The old man found us at dawn. He thought we’d left, and Ma took the punishment for it. Later, she found me in my room, clung to me with blood running down her swollen face. One day, baby, she promised again. One day we’ll go to the beach.
Years later, floating on the ocean waves under the endless stars, I forgave her for never fulfilling that promise. For the first time, I understood that this solitary drifting at sea was just as frightening as sitting still in a desert of spiders and scorpions. The stars looked at me like so many empty eyes.
*
When Ma went missing, people—police, counselors, lawyers—asked a lot of questions about my old man. He’s just a little rough around the edges, I’d say. The night after he pushed Ma down the stairs so that she cracked her head open on the floor, he’d taken me out of bed and carried me like a bag of cats to the creek. You never learned how to swim right, goddammit, he’d said. She never taught you right. He’d taken me to the swimming hole in the pouring rain.