Douen

Story by Lyndon Nicholas.  Image by Patrick Hendry.

Douen

I heave it out of me, through the stomach, the intes­tine, the throat, the mouth. It comes out in waves of fabric covered in stomach fluids, flowing, balling up into a knot on the floor, dark­en­ing into black tar, then hard­en­ing into some­thing the size of a foot­ball. I chip away using fin­ger­nails that bleed, flakes lodging under­neath. Slowly, it starts to fall away in small chunks, then larger, and a sound rever­ber­ates. From within is some­thing golden, the shape of a small head. I keep peeling. There is a body curled up, arms and legs pressed against chest, a rushing sound still coming from inside, light too bright to make out exact fea­tures. The body is cold, too cold. I bring it to the bathtub, run the water so that it steams, place the body in it. The remains of pitch that cling to it melt away. The skin under­neath is too yellow, doesn’t resem­ble the color of skin, but it is close enough. Some­thing about the steam, the lost energy from upheav­ing this thing, it all com­pounds and I collapse.

I come to in a pool of water. I can’t remem­ber any­thing. A tub is over­flow­ing. There is what I think is a baby in the tub. I grab it, put an ear to its chest. It isn’t breath­ing. I try to cough it, but maybe the water has clogged its lungs. Nothing comes out. I try to get a look at its face, but the glare from the light casts it in shadow. Its arms are moving. So are its legs, but they are bent back­wards, torso angling away. I look around the bath­room and realize that this isn’t my apart­ment. I walk through an entry hallway lined with photos. The faces differ except for one, a man in dif­fer­ent phases. Here he is in youth, thin and angular. Here he is with a woman, soft and bright-eyed. Here he is with a woman and baby, eyes creas­ing, teeth yel­low­ing. Here he is with the woman and the toddler, eyes hollow, mouth limping into a smile only at the corners. Here he is alone, hairs graying and round-faced. I think this was a home once. I see the remains of some things. Stacks of CDs from parties hosted in an office with a dusting desk. Photos strewn and in souring places where they are left to age, on closet floors and cabinet drawers. I walk into the living room. A dead mouse is under­neath the radi­a­tor, body shriv­eled and dry, bones poking through the tufts of fur that remain, tail curling like an anchor. No, this is not a place to keep a child. The first time I try to leave the apart­ment I trip and drop it. The hard of cob­ble­stone against the head has little effect. The thing is letting out a wailing from some­where beneath where the mouth should be. Some­thing inside of me breaks and never mends. Laying on the ground, I start to laugh. The thing stops crying and looks over at me without eyes. Its face is still in the shadows. Its head is slick with the rot of some­thing from deep in the body, adorned like a crown of roses, long dried and browned. Its body is light. Its red face black­ens in the glare of the sun. Sun, I’ll call him Sun. 

My foster father Jim pays for my first time after my 13th birth­day. It has been 9 years since my father left, 4 years since I found my mother there, 2 years since I started living with Jim and his wife Elaine. 

“Son, I think it’s time.” He pours rum into two plastic cups, one mixed with Coca-Cola, the other straight. His knuck­les are freck­led and shaking, pale blue veins tensing. He hands the first to me. It tastes like dirt and sugar. 

“We are going on a little adven­ture,” he tells me before we drive off, grin­ning and slur­ring the R’s in his words like he does when he is in that state just between drunk and too drunk. I sleep during the ride to avoid talking to him while he’s like this. I wake up in a room with Jim and a woman. 

“How old is he?” 

“16.” 

“He looks younger than that.” She sucks her teeth, a smear of red lip­stick cling­ing to her front left canine. She holds my hand and brings me to the bed as Jim exits the room. I look toward the doorway as it glides shut. The room has orange walls. Bur­gundy carpet. The bedding is a burnt floral print. A fading paint­ing of a coast­line is mounted on the wall. 

“Is this some­thing you want?” she asks, eyes belying a kind­ness I don’t expect.

I nod, staring at the carpet. It is moldy along the edge where it runs into the bathroom. 

“I can pretend,” she offers, letting me linger on a decision.

“No, I want to.”

“Are you sure?”

I shake my head slowly side to side, start­ing to tear up, then sobbing silent­ly so that only the two of us can hear. She gets up and walks towards the bath­room. I hear the water start to run and let the lull of the stream put me to sleep.

I lay Sun down in the middle of the kitchen table, run some water, and pour it into a glass to drink. I sip and I feel the taste of chalk in my throat. I rummage through the fridge. Although sparse, there are things here. An expired carton of milk, a jar with two pickles swim­ming a duet in brine. But no baby any­thing. I check the cabinet. Stale Frosted Flakes and apple­sauce. I grab the apple­sauce, a spoon, and approach Sun. If it is hungry, it makes no attempt at letting me know. I spoon a helping of apple­sauce before I realize there is no point. It’s face eludes me. We both drink the air. It isn’t enough. It is night time and the owner of this apart­ment still hasn’t come back. Sun lays there in the bed quietly, col­laps­ing into the brown bedding. The bedroom itself is a beige carpet that coughs up dust when you step on it, a window out into an alley­way with a puddle from the drip­ping of an A/C unit. 

“Where is your mother?” I ask, but in this apart­ment, I can tell there is no mother. I decide to stay the night, knowing nobody is waiting for me back at my place anymore. For now, we are both stuck here, and this isn’t a dream I can wake up from. I can’t think of a song to sing to put Sun to sleep. He is not crying or making any sounds at all. I put my ear to his chest and his breath comes in murmurs that balloon his body round and then leave him shriv­eled on the exhale. I think about leaving him there and going home, but it doesn’t feel right. A sound starts to come out of me. It is a song from before I can remem­ber, maybe loos­ened from that knock to the brain earlier. It is my mouth but it is the voice of my mothers. 

“Dodo piti popo.” I can’t see his face, but his body starts to slow, and his limbs start to ease down onto the bed.

“Piti popo pa vle dodo.” Sun is still now, breath­ing slowly.

“Zambi a ke mange li. Sukug­nan ke suce san.” I think he is asleep, but it is hard to tell. 

Jim gets sick during my last year of high school. It happens fast. Liver cancer. Two months. He lays there in the hos­pi­tal bed, eyes open, body still. Elaine uses the flash­light from her phone to illu­mi­nate her hands as she knits a blanket, sewing needles like teeth flash­ing, body like an angler­fish in the dark­ness. Sitting there on the light’s periph­ery in sol­i­dar­i­ty. I want to stand there with them, but I feel my limbs don’t budge. 

Instead, I learn how to sew. Elaine teaches me on Sunday morn­ings before coming to the hos­pi­tal. My first piece is a fleece blanket. The fabric store is spools of yarn and hanging tex­tiles in floral and argyle and pat­terns I don’t know the names of.  Sheets of thin fabric hang over­head like masts that could catch a breeze and take the 300 square foot store­front afloat. 

She shows me with her hands rather than her words. 

They speak to me, say:“This is how you make a fleece blanket. Line up two pieces of fabric, one for the inside, one for the outside. Run the needle right along the edge, sew with a long stitch around all four sides. Run the fabric under­neath the sewing needle. Learn to trust the pins, don’t stretch any­thing out of place. Let your fingers work in motion, fluid, smooth­ing the edges around, cre­at­ing a border that flattens.” 

In my head I kiss those knuck­les. I respond “please, don’t ever let me go.” But the words never come out of my body. Whoever sewed my seems closed must have missed a flip or mis­placed a stitch and left them in there.

One Monday, he gives out. He looks at me and tries to raise his arm to put on my shoul­der, but can’t. It  dangles limply over the edge of the bed. 

“You, be strong now, Son. You’re a man now. You’ll know what to do when the time comes.”

At the funeral, Elaine weeps, as the thing eating away at my throat turns sour. After­wards we are driving home.

“What kind of monster doesn’t cry at their own fathers funeral?”

Her teeth that can gnarl so easily. I look down at her hands.

“He wasn’t my father.”

The thing dis­lodges from inside my throat and slips deeper. It is taking shape into some­thing that stays stuck for a long time. Some­thing in me shaped like Jim, shaped like my Father, shaped like me. Her knuck­les flush from white to red as they grip the steer­ing wheel. 

There are some things here but at night the apart­ment feels empty, so I fill the gaps.  I sleep on the floor in the dark. Weeds line the floors where there was once carpet, and the walls start to fade away. They become a forest of trees, the ceiling becomes clouded sky. The hallway becomes a pathway to the other side of a forest, framing the front door. 

I look toward the doorway and Sun is stand­ing there like his legs can support his body. His face is shadows. I stare for a long time and I can hear him, a gur­gling noise like drown­ing coming from where his mouth would be. His body faces me but his legs do not, and he is walking in the other direc­tion. I wake up to crying. I run to the bedroom. Sun is silent. It takes another moment to realize the wailing is coming from my own mouth. I hoist him up, rum­bling his body like a tide. I put him down and he stands, and this is when I realize Sun is dif­fer­ent. He has grown years overnight. Long and strong, he struts around the apart­ment now. 

On the second day I decide it is time to go. There is nothing here for us. I take his hand and try to guide him out of the apart­ment. He follows, but stops at the precipice of the exit. I carry him out of the doorway. He winces at the bright­ness of the day. We are across from a red-brick project. The rum­bling of a train hits my ears, and I rec­og­nize the ele­vat­ed subway tracks, columns a pale green and speck­led with rust. Sun starts crying. I try to rock him gently as I open the gate. He is red, screech­ing and thrash­ing. He won’t stop. I can feel sweat drip­ping down my fore­head. He is getting even louder. He is start­ing to change. His skin glows, the out­lines start­ing to fuzz. He feels lighter. I slow down as I reach the cross­walk. I look down at the splotch­es forming under­neath his skin, and I realize I am start­ing to see myself, my arms, my clothes, through him. He is fading. I’m almost to the other side now, but I look down and see nothing but a bundle of blanket in my hand wrapped around a grainy static, a smudge of a fin­ger­print on a glass of water. But the crying is louder than it has ever been. I break stride, peel back around, legs twist­ing and almost trip­ping. Sun begins to rema­te­ri­al­ize. I crash through the front door. I lay him down on the couch. He heaves his body up and then sits there. He angles his body away from me, facing the window. Sun is not ready to leave. I sit on the couch next to Sun, and turn on the TV. 

“What kind of shows do you like?” I flip through the chan­nels, but it is all static. I sit there and drift off.

The room in the children’s home has a small TV on the ledge of the one window, and my bunk is right next to it. The bars outside criss­cross the glass in tight pat­terns that conceal the trees and the sky outside. There are four of us in the room. I have a poster above my pillow from the last occu­pant, faces of Michael Jordan and Bugs Bunny in hues of navy and black, the Space Jam logo in the middle. Some­times I imagine folding the poster over, making a new face out of the two exist­ing ones, one both real and imag­i­nary. At night we crawl into bed, the four of us boys, and lay there togeth­er, heads on chests, warm, heaving, pre­tend­ing that these small bones can  those of parents, me the arms of my mother. 

I Peer down at my phone. 3:00 pm. I realize that my battery is getting dan­ger­ous­ly low. I text Dianne for the first time in weeks. 

“It’s not my respon­si­bil­i­ty to take care of you, I’m done with that.”

“Please, just come.”

I send her the address, an address I realize only now that I’d already known. She calls twice but I don’t pick up. An hour later, she is knock­ing at the door.

Dianne tells me two months ago, sitting on a bench in a canopy of trees in our com­mu­ni­ty garden. It smells like urine. 

“What do you want to do, Baby Doll?” I finally ask.

“I can’t.”

I watch as a spider tra­vers­es from the leaf of a milk­weed plant that has begun to die. It glides from a smat­ter­ing of brown spots onto the angling leaves of a blue steel plant, with greens that are dull as if frosted over, and a purple flow­er­ing that could be mis­tak­en for laven­der. Throngs of gnats swirl over­head. The sandy path­ways of the garden lead to other small enclo­sures marked by blue park benches. 

“You know, I grad­u­ate in two years. I can take the semes­ter off, pick up some more shifts. We could figure it–”

Dianne’s hand grips my thigh tightly as she looks me dead in the eyes. “I can’t.”

“No, you’re right,” I cough up the words, picking at the loose threads on the left knee of my jeans.

I can’t look at her face, so I look at any­thing else. The thrush of the trick­ling foun­tain at the center of a square patch of trimmed grass framed by the garden path­ways. Ochre brick, rusting metal fire escapes, a violet sky as back­drop. A rat scur­ries out from the crevices and out onto the adja­cent street, almost brush­ing up against the heels of a runner. Knobby ankles and whiskers almost kiss before the man jerks his leg out from under him and swerves away. She looks up at the tree ceiling. It is evening in late summer and Brook­lyn apart­ment lights shine through the branch­es like teeth in a crooked smile turning slivers out of shadow leaflets.

“You look good.” And she does. Her hair is cut short and dyed blonde, buzzed down to show off the soft angles of her face. 

“Whose apart­ment is this?”

“Mine.” I lie. 

“So, what is it?” She shifts her weight to the left side, clutch­ing her hand bag.

“Please, come in.”

She hes­i­tates before exhal­ing. “I’m not staying long.”

I welcome her down the hallway past the bath­room and the kitchen and into the living room. I can see her looking at the pic­tures that adorn the wall, as foreign to her as they are to me. she sits on the couch.

“So?” 

“Wait here.”

I leave her in the living room and grab Sun from the bedroom. 

“I don’t have any clothes for him yet, just this blanket, but here he is,” I yell from the hallway, patting his head, making him look pre­sentable. I hoist him up proudly as I enter the living room. She jumps up imme­di­ate­ly. As she steps closer to take a look, her face twists and her eyes slant. She reaches out to touch his face, and then pulls her hand away quickly. She touches his legs, his torso. She stares back up at me, and then bolts out toward the bath­room, slams the door shut. 

“What is that?” I hear her voice echoing through the bath­room door.

“See, Sun? Under­stand, we don’t even get child­hoods before the world is afraid of us.” 

Sun nods not at me, but at the cracks in the living room wall­pa­per, as if he rec­og­nizes the truth in these words.

The hallway of the Planned Par­ent­hood is walls of sterile white. They say I’m not allowed in with her. Dianne looks at me and nods, grabs my hand tightly in palms clammy with sweat. I kiss the back of each one, and watch as the door closes, a poster of the anatomy of a human pelvis plas­tered on one side.

They lead me to another sitting area with the other part­ners on the corner of one of many cor­ri­dors. There are others here. A nervous man scratch­ing a beard graying at the temples. An older woman reading a Kindle wearing a pink bonnet and Nike slides. I sit until I start think­ing about it, this thing, this thing that is hap­pen­ing, this thing that is just kissing this world, then leaving. I sit until I start won­der­ing about him, and if he waited like I am waiting, or if he left easily. I sit until my legs are burning, fight­ing every urge to burst up and run. I sit until some­thing starts clog­ging my airways, a lump in my throat that needs upheav­ing. I sit, sit, sit, sit, sit, sit, until I don’t. I stumble out through the cor­ri­dor, through swing­ing doors, through the clinic waiting room into the ele­va­tor, down to the first floor. I push open the entry doors and walk out of the glass face of the build­ing. I grip the metal poles of scaf­fold­ing for support, body leaning one way, legs the other. Each step feels like I’m walking back­wards. There is a Dunkin Donuts just down the block, the orange and pink logo coa­lesc­ing over the facade of the entrance. I wait on line, feeling my insides twist into knots that I’m not sure I can untan­gle. Finally it is my turn.

“Sir, are you okay?”

“Two every­thing bagels with cream cheese. Two large iced coffees. Cream and sugar.”

 It takes about 10 minutes. I sit and take a bite out of a bagel, sip some iced coffee. I shake the plastic cup so the grains of brown sugar at the bottom meet the murk of cream and ground bean, then dis­solve. I breathe in, out. The knot in my throat starts to dis­lodge. I relish in the quiet. I decide it is time. I walk back, check­ing for the phone in my pocket. Then in my other pocket. Then the back pockets of my jeans. It’s nowhere. I run. I run and run and run forward through the glass doors and onto the ele­va­tor. I bound up to the front desk of the waiting room where the recep­tion­ist is waiting for me. 

“Jack? We were looking for you! She left about 10 minutes ago.”

“I’m so sorry.”

I see the phone still laying on the faded gray seating. 5 mes­sages, 6 missed calls. 

The sound of the sink running does not mask the sound of heaving and the flush­ing of the toilet. 

“You realize that can’t be a human child.” Despite every­thing, she doesn’t seem afraid of him. He tugs at the hem of her dress. She sits down on the living room arm­chair and holds him. We sit there, I on the couch, she on the arm­chair holding Sun. Her legs cross and her body rocks slowly up and down. I realize that this is what it is that I’ve been waiting for.

“We could be one, you know,” I say, moving closer.

She is think­ing of it too. The pos­si­bil­i­ty. “I never said you had to.” She stares out the window. I scram­ble off of the couch, onto my knees at her legs. She is wearing a teal sun­dress with white flowers that flow down to the hem. I move to kiss her ankles. 

“Stop.”

“I love you,” I croon to her shins. My hands wrap around them like shack­les, clasp­ing tighter.

“You don’t remem­ber, do you?” She asks, legs trembling.

“Remem­ber what?”

“Why?” She says, sweat drip­ping down from her knees. 

“I didn’t mean to.” I want to wrap myself around her like the ten­drils of a vine. I can feel her shift­ing her weight away. 

“Look, I’m not some piece of your shitty puzzle anymore. I have to go.”

Her calves flex and she is stand­ing up. I am sunken, hollow, her body the core I need to make myself whole. I lash out instinc­tive­ly: “Maybe if we had kept it.” At that she kicks me off, and I am on my knees plead­ing, praying to her.

“I shouldn’t have come,” she motions toward Sun. “And hon­est­ly that shouldn’t be here,” The red imprints around the bottom of her legs have already started to form. “This thing,” she looks at Sun, “I see where it’s taking you. This is some­thing you have to figure out yourself.”

  As she starts walking my arm thrusts out, com­pelled by a force that comes from my gut, grab­bing her wrist tight. She looks back at me, and this face I do see. It is the face of someone who has seen me for the last time. 

“This is what you are.” There is pity in the way that she says this. My grip grows limp as she wrench­es her wrist away from me, and then walks out. I go to the bath­room, wash my own face. The salt of sweat irri­tates my eyes, and for a second every­thing fuzzes. I see myself in the mirror for the first time in a while. I am a blur, all hollow.

A week after the clinic we meet at the museum. We walk around the first floor, not speak­ing or touch­ing. One piece that sticks with me is a por­trait drawn on gold leaf. Con­ceal­ing the face up to the top of the head is crin­kling tar. I want to tear it off and reveal the man under­neath. The label says it’s about men who shared a name with the artist’s incar­cer­at­ed father. The artist paints por­trait after por­trait of these men, all adorned with gold and tar. I wish my father was one of these Jeromes. We sit outside on the ele­vat­ed steps looking out onto the parkway. Tourists stand in line at food trucks with gray watery hot dogs. Cars sit in traffic, moving in bursts of energy before stuttering. 

“Where did you go?” Dianne’s lips are cracked from biting.

I pick at an eyelash float­ing in my left eye, pulling it out and holding it under­neath the sun. I flick it toward the ground before reply­ing, “I don’t get it.”

“That person from the other night. It isn’t you.” The tears trickle down her cheeks aimlessly.

“It’s me, I’m still me.”

“I hope not.”

“I’m sorry. I can buy us a new lamp. I didn’t mean-”

“I want you moved out by next week.”

I sit and swallow the words. I should tell her that I got a call from Elaine, after years. Should tell her that someone was trying to find me, a man that for so long had no face, no name. Should tell her that he left a phone number and an address, asked her to pass it along. Should tell her that the words had sat for so long, rusting razors slash­ing at my stomach, the wounds becom­ing infect­ed and scar­ring, build­ing up and turning into this some­thing, this com­pul­sion, turning into that night when my arm moved before I could think. Should tell her about the relief I felt from the world going dark when the flu­o­res­cent bulb shat­tered against the wall. Should tell her that I hadn’t even known that she was bleed­ing until I saw the drops of dried blood brown­ing on the floor the next day. Should tell her I learned it from my father. My father who didn’t die. Who didn’t dis­ap­pear. I thought that he left but that wasn’t even true. He’s been here, living right here. But I don’t, and she gets up, walks forward down the steps. I watch as she crosses the street on a flash­ing red, hur­ry­ing to get away.

It is night again. Sun and I are trapped inside a room of walls upon walls, pushing up against each other like layers of cloth. In waking we are silent. Our teeth gnash­ing in rows that over­flow from our mouths, spilling out and grind­ing togeth­er like the blades of a chain­saw. In the forest of our dreams we are ban­shees. We wander and wail. Wail, wail, wail. Until the trees shake and the leaves fall onto the ground. Until light­ning breaks and rain starts to pound and the forest floor becomes mud and now we are not walking but slosh­ing. Legs march­ing limbs march­ing heads march­ing torsos march­ing chests all march­ing march­ing march­ing back­wards. Sun and I, we go to the doorway, banging at the door to open, voices hoarse, hoping that maybe he will hear us. 

I find her lying there, froth­ing at the mouth, but this story isn’t about that. Isn’t about how it looks like sea foam strewn across a coast after the crash­ing of a wave. How a body can be an anchor. How the famil­iar fea­tures of a face become foreign when there is no life behind them. I sit there in that apart­ment and wait. I don’t know any numbers to call, know any family on either side. It has been just me and her for as long as I can remem­ber. We can wait like this here a little longer. On the third day they take it away and I am untethered. 

“Do you have a father or someone else you can call?” A man in a uniform asks me. I do not respond, cannot, the foam from her mouth felt like it had been my own, foaming up and drown­ing any words that try to come out, even­tu­al­ly seeping into a throat whose vocal cords have no inter­est in resist­ing. A body, my body, rocking back and forth, digging nails into elbow crooks, flaking skin off in patches, jaw clench­ing, muscles chord­ing. This I do not remem­ber but I know to be true. These visions not mem­o­ries but imprints that play like a loop in the back of the head. I don’t have a father.

On the third day I hear the door open in the morning as I finish up another failed attempt to feed Sun. He is even larger, the size of a small child, head up to my hips. It starts with the jostling of keys. Someone  is here. Sun hides in the bedroom. The intrud­er is wearing a bucket hat and his face is con­cealed. He speaks in a voice that sounds famil­iar yet foreign, like hearing your own played back on an answer­ing machine. When he sees me there is a recog­ni­tion in his body. For a while we sit in silence. 

“Elaine said you’d tried to contact her. She gave me your address. I found the key under­neath the entry­way mat outside.” 

“Yea, I figured.” I look down at my phone which has been dead for a day now. 

“Did you think about me?”

He nods his head. “When it hap­pened I thought about reach­ing out. But I didn’t think you’d want to hear from me. I’d already been gone a few years.”

“Was it me?” I ask curtly, staring now at my feet, both point­ing in dif­fer­ent directions. 

“It just wasn’t a fit. Your mother and I,” he says to me. “I never really wanted to be a father.” This feels like some­thing that’s been sitting on his chest. He is trying to share it with me like some sort of inher­i­tance that I never asked for.

“It was like we both had a vision for what we wanted in life, and we really tried to make each other fit into that vision. When I was getting clean and she wasn’t, I knew it just couldn’t work.” Her mem­o­ries flash in my body, pulses that leave me sweat­ing, his imprints bruis­ing still what’s left of her limbs, not my flesh, but my core. But I can’t say this to him. Can’t say how it was his pain, anchored to my mother, anchored to me, that I was feeling. 

“How about after, why didn’t you ever come for me?” I ask because I want to know if he feels it too, this tether that twinges and con­nects us at the topmost parts of our spines.

“I was ashamed. I knew I couldn’t look at your face and see hers.” 

“So you’ve been here the whole time?” I implore, the wall­pa­per feeling like a carousel spin­ning around at double speed.

“I told myself even if I couldn’t be with you I would never leave. Not like my father.” Another link in the chain mate­ri­al­izes, clink­ing into place. This was our home once.

“But you did leave. And now she’s gone.”

There is some­thing in suc­cumb­ing. I let it all come rushing out. A gut­tur­al moan that makes my body into a husk. I slump to my knees. He starts to reach out a hand, but pulls away. Instead he gets up, and I know he is leaving again, embar­rassed of what I’ve become, or what I’ve always been. He starts to walk out of the apart­ment and I uncurl from my ball. I can see him from the apart­ment window already descend­ing the stairs of the stoop. I call Sun from the other room, take his hand and rush him through the hallway. We run out of the apart­ment down to the front door and open it. Here he is, on the stoop, all graying hair and joints that jut out at angles from a glob­u­lar stomach, skin hunch­ing at the back of the head where hair­line meets neck. In my arms Sun is a baby again: pale yellow skin, blue hues under­neath where the lips would be. 

“Keep it this time,” I plead. I place it down gin­ger­ly in his arms, stand­ing on the stones at the bottom of the stairs. I am already leaving. There is nothing holding me here anymore. I watch as he shakes his head slowly. Then he con­tin­ues and walks back into the apart­ment, his saun­ter­ing gait the image that imprints on my mind. I think I see him turn his head slowly, take one last look back, but maybe it is a phantom look, a fab­ri­ca­tion I’ve con­coct­ed that lives in memory only. There are no fathers here.

___

Lyndon Nicholas is a writer and edu­ca­tor based out of Brook­lyn, NY. He has an MFA from the City College of New York, and a BA in English from North­east­ern Uni­ver­si­ty. His work explores Black Caribbean Amer­i­can iden­ti­ty through spec­u­la­tive and science fiction, and is forth­com­ing in Hungry Shadow Press. He is cur­rent­ly working on a col­lec­tion of stories that reimag­ines Caribbean car­ni­val, mytho­log­i­cal, and folk­lore characters.