Tuesday
Written by: Sarah
He left on a Tuesday.
I remember, because Mama said that we had forgotten to take the trash out, and trash days were Tuesdays. And because I remember the week after, having to stuff two weeks’ worth of trash into the can and carry it to the curb. I was seven and a half, and Mama was already not right.
We had a long driveway, then.
My father had big hands. A gun looked like a kid’s plaything in them. When he picked me up for a hug on the platform, I tried to imagine that I was a gun. Cold. Hard. Watch that trigger, motherfucker. It was the sort of thing I imagined him and his army buddies saying. Over games of poker.
I didn’t cry.
There were tears enough. A whole unit’s worth. Lots of snotty kids and wailing women to bump elbows with. Lots of kisses to choke on. This one lady? She kind of humped her husband’s leg. Right there in the open. Like she saw us kids and decided, at the last second, that she needed to make her own brat, to keep away the dark nights.
It never seemed to help Mama much.
It was a Tuesday morning. I want to say 9:15, but I guess that’s neither here nor there. Only this: one minute he had that big hand on my head, sort of ruffling my hair. The next, he was gone.
And I can’t, for the life of me, remember his final words. If he had any. I just know I was embarrassed, later on, for having a big wad of Mama’s skirt in my hand, as I tried to grow tall enough to see him in the car.
A train makes a lot of noise. It’s an impressive business, a first-rate sight. Something so heavy, kind of waking up. We all felt it, standing there. Holding our breaths. Because they needed something to do, people waved flags at it. Which made me feel like I was in a movie. I liked that.
I liked it a lot.
