The Song of David (19 page)

Moses

I NEVER KNEW my dad. I never knew my mom, for that matter. I knew who she was though. I knew her name, her life, her family, her weaknesses. Her name was Jennifer Wright, a blond-haired, blue-eyed, white girl with a crack habit. She had me, she left me, and she died. We had a three day relationship that didn’t include exchanging important information, and she was the only one who knew who my dad was. He was dark-skinned—I’d inherited that much—and that was all I had to go on.

I wondered about him sometimes. Where he was, who he was, how he was. I wondered if he had any clue he had a son. Wondered if he would like to be a grandfather. Wondered if he liked to paint. Wondered if he looked like me. I wondered. I guess it’s just human nature.

Millie knew who her dad was. He knew who she was. He knew where she was. But he’d chosen to distance himself from her and from his son, and I wondered if that wasn’t worse. Odds are, my father hadn’t had a clue. Odds are, he hadn’t chosen to abandon me. I could give him the benefit of the doubt. Henry and Millie didn’t have that luxury.

I’d stepped out of the room when Tag had described running through the house, following a trail of blood. It made my palms itch and my neck hot, his descriptions and feelings too reminiscent of the time I’d walked through my own house to find tragedy had struck. Plus, I’d noticed the heat on Millie’s skin and the way her finger hovered over the buttons on the tape recorder, as if readying herself to push stop when things got too personal. Georgia had followed me from the room, and though Millie must have heard us go, she didn’t stop us.

Even Henry vacated the living room with us, trailing us into the kitchen. He hadn’t said anything about Tag’s absence, hadn’t asked questions, and I wondered how much Millie was telling him. He wasn’t listening to Tag’s tapes. When he wasn’t at school, he sat with earphones on his head, listening to podcasts, watching YouTube videos, or he was up in his room playing the Xbox, cocooning himself in his own activities.

“Researchers have found that saturated fat intake increases sixteen percent among sports fans after their team loses a big game,” Henry said matter-of-factly, as he opened the freezer and eyed a huge tub of rocky road ice cream. I wasn’t sure if he was just making conversation, making a larger statement about loss, or if he was just hungry.

“Do you need dinner? We could order a pizza or something,” I volunteered.

Henry inclined his head toward the crock pot on the counter top, and I noticed belatedly that the kitchen smelled warm and spicy.

“Amelie made chili. Lots of chili. Major League Baseball fans consume approximately ten million chili dogs per year.”

“Well, Kathleen is hungry, and chili dogs aren’t on her menu,” Georgia replied, putting Kathleen’s seat on the counter and digging in the overflowing bag she lugged everywhere, looking for something to feed her. Kathleen let out a yowl of impatience.

Henry shut the freezer on the ice cream temptation and pulled a stack of bowls from the cupboard. We were clearly invited for dinner. He took crackers and sour cream and cheese from the fridge, setting things out, stealing looks at Kathleen as her complaining gained momentum.

“Kathleen doesn’t look like you,” Henry said suddenly, staring at me.

“Uh, no. She doesn’t. Not really,” I stammered, not knowing what else to say. Without another word, Henry turned and left the kitchen. I heard him run up the stairs and looked at Georgia who met my gaze with bafflement.

“Did you hear that, woman?” I asked Georgia. “Henry doesn’t think Kathleen looks like me. You got something to tell me?”

Kathleen shrieked again. Georgia wasn’t moving fast enough with the jar of bananas she’d produced.

Georgia smirked and stuck out her tongue at me, and Kathleen bellowed. Georgia hastily dipped the tiny spoon into the yellow goo and proceeded to feed our little beast, who wailed as she inhaled.

“She may not look like you, Moses. But she definitely has your sunny disposition,” Georgia sassed, but she leaned into me when I dropped a kiss on her lips. It didn’t hurt my feelings at all that my dimpled baby girl looked more like her mother.

I heard Henry thundering back down the stairs and pulled back from my wife’s soft mouth as he strode through the kitchen seconds later. He stopped beside me.

“See?” He clutched a picture in his hand, and he waved it in front of my face. “I don’t look like my dad either.”

I took the photo from his hand and studied it. It was worn on the edges and it had lost its sheen, like Henry had held it often. The man in the picture was familiar to me in the way sports figures are familiar to many. Andre Anderson was fairly well-known and admired. He stood smiling at the camera with a very small Henry, maybe three years old, clutched in his arms. He looked happy and relaxed, and he and Henry wore matching Giants jerseys and ball caps.

“You’re right. You and Millie look more like your mom,” I said, handing the picture back. I didn’t like pictures. Pictures rarely told the truth. They were like gold lacquer over Styrofoam, making things seem shiny and bright, disguising the fragility beneath. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but it still wasn’t worth a whole hell of a lot.

“That’s because we spent more time with her,” Henry said seriously, as if it were common knowledge, as if resemblances were based on nurture instead of nature. It was true, to a point. Mannerisms, quirks, style. All those things could be learned and copied.

“So if I spend a lot of time with Kathleen, do you think she’ll start to look like me?” I asked him, steering the focus away from his father.

Henry looked doubtfully from me to my grunting, banana-bearded child and back again.

“I hope so,” he said.

Georgia snickered, and I hooted and held my hand in the air so Henry could give me five.

“You hear that, Georgia? Henry hopes so,” I crowed. “I guess that means your baby daddy is a beautiful man.”

Henry obviously didn’t mean to be funny, and he totally left me hanging. Georgia reached up and slapped my hand and winked at me.

“If she looks like you, everyone will know you’re her dad,” Henry said, his voice perfectly level, his eyes solemn. “And that will make her happy.”

I nodded, no longer smiling.

“That’s why I go to the gym. I want to look like Tag,” he added to no one in particular. He set down the picture and proceeded to dish up four bowls of chili, handing one to me and placing Georgia’s beyond Kathleen’s reach. Before he ate, he took the fourth bowl into the family room, and we heard the tape pause and Millie thank her brother. Henry came back into the kitchen sans chili, and without a word, dug into his dinner. We were all silent as we heard Tag’s voice resume his tale.

PEOPLE WHO CAN see constantly move their heads. It wasn’t anything I had noticed before, not until I spent time with Millie. But movement was directly tied to sight, and where everyone else tossed and turned their heads, their bodies following where their eyes went, Millie moved cautiously, her spine straight, her chin level, her shoulders back, ready to soak in every available clue. She didn’t tip her head toward her feet when she tied her shoes or tilt her head up when the bell of a shop rang overhead. Moving her head didn’t give her any more information, and as a result, she was perfectly contained, and strangely impenetrable. It made her appear regal, like a Japanese Geisha. But it was intimidating too.

I was restless, always had been, and her stillness beckoned me while her concentration on the smallest things made me more aware of myself, of my size and my tendency to break things. I had always been physical, more inclined to hug than hold back, as inclined to touch as talk, although I did both. I wondered if Millie would have been as controlled if she could see, or if her poise and patience were a byproduct of the loss of her sight. The only time she moved with abandon was when she was dancing, hands glued to the pole, head moving with the music, body pulsing with the rhythm.

I watched her dance every chance I could get. It wasn’t her skimpy outfit or her graceful limbs, taut stomach, and shiny hair, though I was a man and I’d taken note of all those things immediately. But all the girls had beautiful, strong, slim bodies. All the girls danced well. But I watched Millie. I watched Millie because she fascinated me. She was a brand new species, an intoxicating mix of girl and enigma, familiar yet completely foreign. I’d never met anyone like her, yet I felt like I’d known her forever. And since the moment I’d looked down into her face and felt that jolt of ode-to-joy-and-holy-shit, I’d been falling, falling, falling, unable to stop myself, unable to look away, helpless to do the smart thing. And the smart thing, the kind thing would be to stay away. But no one had ever accused me of being particularly smart.

Now she stood perfectly still in the center of the crowded room, people swarming and slipping around her, her eyes open and unseeing. But open. Her stillness drew my gaze. Her straight dancer’s posture unyielding, chin high, hands loose at her side. She was waiting for something. Or just absorbing it all. I didn’t know, but I couldn’t look away. Everyone hurried around her and almost no one seemed to see her at all, except for the few who tossed an exasperated look at her unsmiling face as they squeezed past her and then realized she wasn’t “normal” and hurried away. Why was it that no one saw her, yet she was the first thing I saw? Her dress was blue. A pale, baby blue that made her eyes the same color. Her hair was gleaming, her lips red, and she held her walking stick like the stripper pole, swaying to the music as if she wanted to dance. She’d never come to the bar on club night before. I would have noticed her.

It’d been almost a week since the kiss. Millie had worked her shifts as usual and was her same smiling self, calm and collected, unassuming and independent. I thought for sure I was going to have some explaining to do. Some unruffling. But Millie seemed unaffected. Or maybe she just had me figured out. I didn’t know, but I was simultaneously grateful and offended that there hadn’t been any attempts to pin me down. Instead, I walked her home like I had a dozen times before, and we conversed like old friends, though I found myself looking longer, eyeing her mouth, and thinking of her when we weren’t together. Being with Millie spoiled me a bit. I never had to guard my feelings or school my expression. I could look at her like a man looked at a lover, and she had no idea.