Hard Work

It was a warm summer Saturday, ordinary and oppressive. I was in the corner store my family and I started ten years ago, when my daughter Sunny was just an imagination. Just like every night I was scrubbing down the surfaces and emptying the cash register. Then just like very night Sunny and I walked three blocks to our small home. We passed the small garden Sunny’s mother made and the mural Sunny painted on the side of the house last year. The smell of our home wafted out to greet us when I unlocked the door. We walked in and took a deep breath. I looked down at the small child holding my hand. Her tiny fingers grip mine with force unlikely from a six year old, but she knows the best we can do is hold on tight to the ones we love. I taught her that after her mother left, and since then its been me and her - father-daughter. But I don’t mind and neither does she. We had our little rutine; get up, leave the house, get breakfast at the bakery next door, and start off our work day. Sunny stays with me everyday all day. I don’t believe in sending my little daughter to school, I educate her myself. Besides she loves being in the store, and the customers love it too. I swear before I had Sunny, there were half the people in the store.

I pulled Sunny’s small yellow rainboots off her feet and placed them next to my enormous ones, then I sat her down at the kitchen table. While I opened the take out bag from the pasta restaurant we passed by, Sunny ran her fingers along the tiny drawings of stories she and her mother had made. I’d intended to get rid of it, but we both loved it too much. I placed my fingers under her chin and turned her face towards mine, her brown eyes gazing into mine. I pushed the carton of pasta with butter in front of her and handed her a fork. We ate in silence, like every night. Just us, filling our bellies with good food, and preparing ourselves for the next day.

Like every night, when we finished eating I cleaned the table while Sunny gets her PJs on. Every day, the same. Every night, the same. Always the same, no change, no complications. This is the world I lived in and that was how I intended to keep it. So, like every night, I went to Sunny’s room and sat on her bed. She handed me the book we always read - The Saggy Baggy Elephant - about an elephant who just doesn’t fit into his skin, or his life. We read it every night before bed, and when we were done I tucked Sunny in and turned out the light. I closed her door softly, but then wished I hadn’t. On the back of the door Sunny and her mother had pasted pictures of the family around the word Sunny, that I had made from wood. In one of the pictures, Sunny’s mother and I stood in an empty lot, we were both smiling. I had my arm around her and she was holding up a hammer. This was the day we baught the empty lot and started construction for the store. I looked so young in the photo, my skin stretched perfectly around my face, and my smile… my smile reminded me of different times, times when we were more happy. Now my skin was like The Saggy Baggy Elephant’s, stretched and wrinkly. I turned away from the pictures and went down the hall to my bedroom. It wasn’t always just mine, it was once Sunny’s mother’s as well, but then she had left and her spot on the bed had gone cold. I settled myself under the covers. It was hard work - raising a daughter alone, owning a store by yourself, living alone. But it was hard work I was willing to do - I got to spend everyday with the person I loved.

***

In the morning, the hard work begins for the day. As usual Sunny greeted me in the entry way, all dressed and ready. She wore a beautiful little yellow dress that matched her little yellow rainboots. She handed me a hairband and I carefully braided her hair back. Her mother had forced me to learn how to in light of anything. And then we were off, down the street to the bakery. The buttery croissants we got fill us enough to make it to lunch. The two blocks left to walk until we would reach our destination we played the game Step on a Crack, Break Your Mommas Back. Sunny laughed the whole way there and I myself smiled once or twice. We reached the corner of Jackson and Pierre, where our store was located, out of breath and happy. That was until I looked up and saw that the huge front window was shattered. I bellowed a gut wrentching scream, and fell to the ground in front of the window, touching the shards of glass letting them prick my skin. The window was the one Sunny’s mother had made with me. We had melted our own sand, collected from the beach where we got married, and tempered our own glass. With a careful hand she had written in bold yellow letters Sunny Day. We had placed the window in the front of the store, so you could look through and see what we were selling. Now when you looked through you could only see destruction. Everything was damaged and ruined. This store had been my lifes work, it had been the sunny spot in our lives. Sunny placed her tiny hand on my shoulder and I cried, more than I’ve ever cried, even when Sunny’s mother left. With my eyes fixed on the broken shell of our store I can almost imagine us wrapped up in an embrace, Me, Sunny and her mother - all mourning the loss of our Sunny Day. But if her mother were here she would say “Anything can be fixed, with a little hard work.”