Indigo: The Saving Bailey Trilogy #2 (23 page)

“You know, I bet this sand would feel mighty good between our toes.” Dad grins. He pauses and takes off his boots. Tying the laces together, he swings them over his shoulder. I pull mine off too and wear them on my shoulder the same way. We share a smile and he takes my hand again.

“Steel toed?” I ask.

“You never know when you might have to fight.”

And smash heads like pumpkins.

The Dairy Queen is straight ahead, the shadow of the pier looming over it. Dad holds open the door for me and my bare feet shuffle against the wet, sandy concrete. He looks at me and says, “Cup or cone?”

“Cup.”

“Two cups of Vanilla please,” he says, putting down three crumpled dollar bills on the counter. Smoothing over the money, a woman manning the cash register hands Dad a receipt and walks away to fill our order.

“You haven’t changed a bit,” Dad says.

I’ve changed more than you care to know
. I swallow my words and nod.

The woman hands us our cups of ice cream and we take them to the beach, strolling near the shoreline as we lick it off red plastic spoons. I find a small green shovel lying abandoned in the sand. I pick it up, flick the sand off and stick the handle into my waistband.

“What are you going to do with that?” Dad asks.

“Build a castle, dig a moat…the possibilities are endless.”

We come to a part of the beach where sandbars intersperse the deep ocean and small children stand on the patches of sand as far as thirty feet out, stools in the water. Shallow pools, warm from having absorbed the sun’s heat during the day are left behind by children who have dug them into the sand and filled them with pails of water stolen from the ocean. I wade through one of these pools, kicking the water up and splashing my legs.

Dad finishes his ice cream, takes the empty cup from my hands, and stacks it in his.
Thank you
, I smile.

“Hey, Flower, don’t you think we should get going back the other way? Before it gets too dark. Wouldn’t want to get lost on the beach,” he says.

Actually, I would love nothing more than to get lost on the beach with you.

“Yeah,” I say.

We turn around and head back, strolling along the shoreline again, the cold waves lapping at our feet. On the way, Dad spots a picture in the sand, a stick figure couple, in love, with a heart drawn above their heads. “Give me that shovel you found,” he says.

Dad gets on his knees and draws a heart around himself. He writes my name in the middle of it, sweeping, elegant letters. At least as elegant as one can write in the sand with a toy shovel. “That’s my heart for you, Angel Cakes.”

It’s cheesy, so cheesy that I can’t help the giggle that escapes my lips. And then, I’m crying. Falling to my knees and grabbing fistfuls of sand. I can’t look up as my dad wraps his arms around me. “You love me?” I ask, terrified of what will be his answer.

“I don’t know what happened when I left, Bailey,” he says, “but not a single day went by in prison that I did not dream of my beautiful little girl.” He wipes at my tears with his thumbs. “Someday you will understand why I had to do what I did. And I pray someday you can forgive me for not being there when you needed me most. All I can promise is that I’m not going anywhere now, not unless your hand is in mine.”

I pick up the shovel and stick it back in my waistband. Dad gives me his hands and helps me up; he doesn’t let go. “I love you, you beautiful crazy flower. I’ve never stopped loving you, and I never will.”

My knees shake. This love is different—it can’t be compared to Spencer’s or Clad’s. It’s a love that I always knew existed but feared I would never get the chance to feel again. “I have to tell you about Mom,” I say. “But I need light to do it. Can we go under the pier?”

“Of course, anywhere you want.”

I look back over my shoulder at the heart wrapped around my name, my father’s heart wrapped around me. And I face forward for the first time in forever, unafraid of the past that once haunted me.

A heart in the sand, a cup of vanilla ice cream, and a promise to never let go—that’s all it took to fix a broken doll. But, like most dolls secrets had been whispered in my ears, collected in my heart, stories I could not contain.

“When did it start?”

“Three days after you left,” I say.

The sky is black and white now, the colors lying on top of each other, refusing to mix like oil and water. The moon, its own entity perched in a corner of the sky.

I draw flames in the sand. A stick figure Mom, a stick figure Bailey. Tiny squares falling into the flames. “She burned my pictures?” Dad asks.

I bring my hand over the drawing, flattening the sand out. This is how I am able to tell my story. At some point I will have to speak, but the drawings will pull the words out.

I draw another stick Bailey and Mommy. Bailey is in a box, her room. Mommy is on the couch, her bed. The couch would end up in Cape Coral, only to be hoisted into a moving truck eleven years later and brought back to Fort Myers. I draw a bottle with skull and crossbones on it. I draw pills.

Dad looks at it all, very confused. I will have to talk now.

“After you left, I learned two very important things about mother: One, if she smelled like the bottom of a vodka bottle or the inside of an ashtray, I was to stay out of her way. Two, if she picked up anything while in that state of intoxication,
duck
, she’s probably aiming for your head.”

I swipe the sand flat again. I carve into the flat surface a stick Mommy, stick Bailey, and then I do my best to carve a broom in Mommy’s hand. I erase the smile on stick Bailey’s face and replace it with a frown. I add two vertical eyebrows to Mommy’s face, giving her a look of evil, happiness.

“I cried for you every night in my sleep. I had nightmares of you bloodied and Jack lying dead with his head against a parking block. On the fourth night of this, Mom decided she’d had enough. She shook me awake and slapped me in the face. ‘
He’s gone, Bailey, and he’s never coming back! So stop crying for him, you little bitch!’
She screamed at me.

“I didn’t sleep after that. I just breathed heavily under my blankets, dying inside at the idea of never seeing you again, except for in my nightmares. The next morning, Mom made me pancakes and let me watch Barney on TV, even though she absolutely could not stand the singing purple dinosaur.”

The drawing sits before us; it doesn’t make sense yet, but it’s about to.

“I left the maple syrup open on its side, dripping off the coffee table and onto the expensive rug you bought Mommy for Christmas one year. The one with geometric squares, like that famous painting done in red, yellow, and blue… do you remember?”

Dad nods, his eyes wet. He tried to sink back into the darkness so I would not see his face but I am not fooled.

“The syrup dripped on the rug for an hour or so as I sat and watched Barney, eating my stack of pancakes. When the show was over, Mom came out of her room…I think she despised it that much she couldn’t even bear to
listen
to it
.
The first thing she set eyes on was the coffee table, with the nearly empty bottle of maple syrup lying on its side. Mom could’ve melted it with the fire in her eyes. I gulped, but not on pancakes—sour saliva.

“Mom drew closer to me and that’s when I smelled it, that ashtray-vodka smell that clung to her like a ‘do not disturb’ sign. I sat bolt upright and scooted farther away from her. I knew Mom was angry, perhaps angrier than the night before, and as I accidently put down my hand in the puddle of Maple Syrup, I wondered how many pancakes it would take to make up for what she was about to do.”

“Stop!”
Dad says, his hands up in surrender, tears sliding over his cheeks, dark spots on the sand where they drip.

I’m not crying. I’m not the least bit moved. In fact, I am smiling; a wicked, victorious smile. I can’t hide from Mom, but I
can
hide behind my words. My story is poetic, it is descriptive and heart-wrenching, and my dad cannot stand to hear it portrayed in this way. All the fluff, the drawings, he doesn’t understand it’s the only way I can ever let him know of the secrets stored inside me. Any other way would make me explode like an aerosol can too close to fire.

“I can stop if you want me to,” I say. It is a lie.

He shakes his head. “No, I’m being selfish. You shouldn’t have to hide your pain from me. Please, go on.”

I skip over parts. I pull the story together and come right to the part that I know will stab at my dad’s heart the deepest.

The drawing in the sand, I point to it. “I’ve looked down the barrel of a gun before, but it was not nearly as frightening as looking at the end of a broomstick in my mother’s hands. The broom had a splintering wooden handle and she slapped me across the cheek with…”

“Bailey, you can stop.” Dad’s hand is on mine now. I squeeze tears from my eyes and take a big breath in; it’s too raw, too sore.
Where is the poetic prose I had hid behind?

“She beat me so many times, the end of the broom is where it starts and the bottom of a frying pan is where I hope it ends,” I manage to choke out between sobs.

“It doesn’t,” Dad shakes his head, his shoulders heaving up and down as he cries, “it ends with a father’s love.”

He reaches across space for me, my knees drag against the sand, smearing my drawing and distorting Mom’s face. He holds me tight against his chest and I breathe in his musky smell.
Irish Spring body wash.

I try to control my body as it convulses against his. He squeezes tighter to calm me. I pull my face out of his warm, dark embrace and look out at the waves coming ashore, crashing around the pillars holding up the pier, spraying us with cold saltwater. The surface of the ocean is orange from the reflection of the street lights that skirt the sides of the pier.

My body doesn’t move anymore, except for the beating of my heart and the expansion of my lungs. Dad loosens his arms and I slip free.

“Are you okay?” he asks, a ghost of a smile on his lips.

I don’t answer him right away. Instead, I take the shovel in my hand and draw a heart around us. I smile widely and say, “The possibilities are endless.” I stab the shovel into the sand and rise. Dad picks himself up too, but it takes him more effort, like buckets of concrete have been tied to each of his limbs.

He reaches for the shovel and I grab his hand. “Leave it for someone else.”

On the ride home, the stars come out to light the way, sprinkling the sky like metallic confetti. I press my face against Dad’s beef jerky jacket and whisper into it,
“Take me to the moon, Daddy.”

Hopping off the bike, I take three bounding leaps until I am standing in front of the locked apartment door. I kick my feet up and down like I need to go to the bathroom, excited. Dad gives me a funny look and unlocks the door. I rush in, stopping in the middle of the living room, surprised by how homely and commonplace it looks. A couch, television, and coffee table furnish the little room.

Dad flicks on the lights. “It’s not much … only what the church donated,” he says.

“What church?”

“Naw, I don’t even remember the name of it,” he says with indifference.

I throw my boots down in the middle of the living room and he does the same. I imagine Mom’s face glowing red, all her features enlarged and her voice grating my ears,
“Boots by the door, young lady!”
I smile to myself.

“Where’s your room?” I ask.

He points to a door just off the living room. I walk into his bedroom, holding my breath. I’m not sure what I expected but whatever it was, his queen size bed and six-drawer, white wood dresser exceeds it. Dad comes in and puts a hand on my shoulder, “Do you like it?” he asks.

I don’t know why it would matter if I did or not, it isn’t my room. But still I say, “I love it.”

He bends down a little so he is eye level with me. “I’m making myself a sandwich, hungry?”

I hate to turn down the first meal he’s made me since my toddler days, but my stomach feels like it could wait another eleven years before needing any food. It knots inside of me like a rubber band ball as I think of Mom finding me here. She won’t show mercy when she discovers I’m hiding from her in the arms of the person she detests most in this world—my father
.

“No, thank you, I think I’m just going to take a shower,” I say.

He steps away and looks at me, sizing me up. I know what he is thinking; I am too thin. He doesn’t have to taunt me with words like Mom does; his eyes do the job just as well. He felt it when he held me, every bone in my ribcage, my sharp shoulder blades jabbing his collarbone.

“Mom couldn’t afford food after you went to prison and she started drinking.” I defend my malnourished body, but it sounds like an accusation that I starved because he wasn’t there for me. And really it is the truth, but I didn’t mean to be so blunt.

He looks hurt, gazing downward at his toes. “There are towels under the sink,” he says, and the bedroom door clicks shut behind him.

The bathroom is adjoined with the bedroom. I walk in and shut the door. My heart races as I search for the light switch. I find it and flick it up. Exhausted, physically and mentally, I slump against the wall for support. I snap my head around and take in the shower curtain, pitch black.
Body-bag- black
. I groan.

Peeling off my clothes where I stand, I toss them to the floor. I pull back the shower curtain and step into the tub. I fiddle with the faucet knob for a while, turning it left and right until the water is no longer melting my skin, nor turning me into an ice sculpture. It’s lukewarm. Like me, lukewarm—in the middle of emotions. That grey area; I’m not sad, angry, happy, or worried. I am everything and nothing.

I squeeze shampoo into my palm and rub my hair. Sitting down under the stream and closing my eyes, I hug my knees to my chest.

I am eight years old again, Mom is bathing me. I’ve upset her in some way. She rubs my skin raw with a Brillo pad.
You filthy little girl.
But there’s not a speck of dirt on me.