In Her Father's House

“This is your home.” 

The young woman tried to follow her father’s words. Her mind which never stopped whirling was in overdrive.

“This is your home. Your home has been with me since you were five years old. No matter where life’s journey has taken you, you always eventually come back here to me. Hell, do you even remember anything from before I brought you home?” He was saying.

Though she usually avoided looking directly at the person who was speaking to her, the young woman looked up as she placed her phone face down on her folded leg. They were sitting in the combined living room/dining room of her father’s apartment, a modest three bedroom unit in a 40-year-old highrise, which had long been paid off. It was just the two of them. Her father’s wife had gone out, or more correctly the older woman had withdrawn with a thinly veiled excuse, when the atmosphere in the home had grown heavy following breakfast. After nearly three years away with hardly any communication, the young woman had arrived unannounced on a red eye and brought breakfast to her surprised parents. They had eaten together at the small table on the other side of the room and the smell of fried doughnuts and meat dumplings still hung in the air, and the taste of sweetened soy milk still coated the inside of her mouth. What had finally lured her back after being away for so long, even she could not articulate, but now she was regretting it and her stomach threatened to reject its homecoming meal.

She pulled nervously on the end of her hair: thick, black as midnight, and once an unruly mass of curls now falling in soft waves down to the middle of her back and loosely tied back. It had been a habit for as long as she could remember and it was a wonder she had any hair left on her cranium. Her eyes settled on her father, seated next to her on the same couch, albeit with a healthy distance between them. He had passed fifty and would see sixty in less than a handful of years but hid it well. He was an unassuming bespectacled man of slightly above average height, with tattoos from a youth lived wildly normally concealed beneath collared shirts and only bared in the privacy of his own home. Soft-spoken and reserved with a disdain for conflict and little patience for disorder, traits passed on to his only child, he looked back at his twenty-something daughter with a facial expression betraying nothing. 

It occurred to her that she had not answered him and so she gave a slight shake of her head likewise fixing her own facial expression. She adopted an air of indifferent placidity, a default that infuriated many people for some reason. Her mind never shut up, but her face rarely opened up or reflected any sentiments.

“This is your home, so I never worry about whether you will come back or not. You have no other home now. But…even though it is for the best and I will go to my grave regretting nothing….that was not always the case, my daughter.” Her father’s tone grew more grave and serious. 

Always, he talks like this when he talks about her! Why talk about it if it is so hard? We could just be a normal family!

It had happened only a handful of times in her twenty-seven years of life, only once in a very blue moon was this taboo topic broached. Still, she knew the signs. And she understood instantly why her stepmother had gone. There was one specter that always loomed in the background, haunting what should have been an ordinary home and family life…the young woman’s mother, left behind in her country of birth years ago and now deceased.

The former fact she had known all of her life since her father had never lied to her, never tried to make her believe that the woman he chose for himself was anything more than that, his wife. The latter, he had informed her of nearly a year earlier, calling her out of the blue and delivering the news in a matter-of-a-fact way, devoid of details and all sentimentality. Why he had done it was still a mystery to her though, because if he knew her, truly knew her better than she knew herself, then he would have known that she would never have searched for the woman out of her own volition. For reasons that were almost impossible to put into words, she had simply never felt drawn, only repulsed and disinterested.

“You know the basics.” Her father continued. “But you don’t know the whole story….I kept quiet and never responded for your sake, and I hoped that others who know would leave you alone. It’s not the sort of thing you talk about on the SNS and FaceTime, so I had to wait…” 

She forced herself to look up again and noticed that her father had closed the distance between them. To compensate, she pulled her upper body away and averted her gaze from his face to the dragon that wound its way around his upper bicep to a fanged head precariously close to his jugular. It was simply her habit, although the slightly hurt look that crinkled the lines around his eyes did not escape her notice. Yet his next words confused her.

“You do remember. Even if you don’t remember her face, her voice. You still remember all of the bad. You remember, even if you don’t remember exactly why you have never looked for the home you used to have.” He said with a rueful smile. “I bet you still see her in your dreams sometimes. The psychologist said that you probably would because a child never really forgets those years…”

She had forgotten, though, everything except her deep-rooted disdain for anything and anyone who disturbed her and contradicted the contexts that shaped her existence. For as long as she could remember she had had a home and a settled, stable family life. Now the person who was literally the architect of her entire world for so long desired to rip the carpet right out from under her and for what?

“As I always say, my daughter. You will thank me one day.” 

And like always, she had to believe him. 

The silence hung over them. There was a story to be told and only one person who knew it in its entirety. All the young woman could do was wait for her father to decide to tell it.

Minutes went by. He removed his glasses, wiped them on his shirt, and put them back on again. Cleared his throat, sighed, tilted his head, and righted it again. Words always eluded him in difficult or uncomfortable situations.

“The one thing you have to know and understand is your mother was not a well-woman. She was sick, very sick, and did not want to get well. “ When he finally spoke his voice was tired, haggard really. “You have to understand….she was incapable of having normal relationships or living in reality.” 

He was picking his words carefully.

“And you do not have to believe me. It’s all in black and white. The court documents, the police reports, the psych evals….well the one that your mother was forced to participate in.” And just like that a 25-year-old ghost in the shadows was dragged out into the open. Her life was reduced to simple facts compatible with reality.

“This is your home because your life depends on being beyond all reach.” He surmised. “Or rather it did until your mother’s demons finally won.”

Her mind never shut up, but now the space between her ears was deafeningly silent. Gone were the melodies in a medley of languages, gone were the endless scenarios of what if and alternate realities, and almost gone were the vignettes of yesteryear. Physically in the present, yet always in some form or another, stuck in the past. A scratch existed deep inside her psyche, a fracture inflicted early that would never fully heal.

“Say something, my daughter. Don’t make your old father wait with this anxiety forever.” His voice was not anxious, though. “If you choose to walk out the door right now and only come back when I’m on my deathbed….I understand.” 

Did he though? Could anyone understand? Who could understand what it was like to be tormented by hazy scenes? To wake up drenched in sweat, in the wee hours of the morning, a blurred face and twanging voice filling you with breath-stealing fear? 

No, he could not. Nobody could. And that was okay.

For a moment the facade slipped away, her voice faltered just a bit, and a look of sad resignedness passed over her face. The tears pricked the back of her eyes, but neither welled nor fell. There was no need because now she understood and tears could not help, could change nothing.

So she responded with the same detachedness she had when initially given the news of her faceless mother’s death.

“Thank you….but this is my childhood home and there is still much I don't know."