I end up where I have never left—beside my father. I sit next to his bed, his chest rising and falling in perfect synchronicity with the respirator. I take his hand in mine, his cold seeping into my warmth, chilling me. I had hoped for the opposite—he had been the shelter from the storm, the one safe place I could rely on. When your anchor becomes unmoored, you are left to the whims of the vast ocean, unsure where it may lead you but forced to hold on nonetheless. “I have no one left,” I say to him. “I’m all alone.”
I wait and wait, watching for anything to give me hope. A sign that will lead the way, guide me to an answer for a question that remains unasked. But my road remains unpaved, with no marker to give me direction. But then history has proven that the events that uproot your life, the ones that remain so deep in the recesses of your mind that you can’t even imagine them, let alone fear them, are the ones that come without warning. No compass can lead you away from them, no alarm can caution you. They happen, and when they do you must make a choice—allow the wave to wash over you until there is nothing left but blessed blackness or fight with everything, even if in the process of struggling to survive you fill your lungs with salt water.
“I thought that’s why I stayed,” Sonya says quietly, arriving just as I spoke aloud.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, standing quickly, uncomfortable she heard me.
“I work here,” she reminds me.
“No,” I motion around the room. “Here. In Papa’s room.” Her uneasiness clearly matches mine, both of us wary. She glances around, as if avoiding my question. But I don’t let her evade the question. “You’re here to visit him,” I say, realizing.
“Yes.”
Saying anything else would be a lie, I can tell. She doesn’t bother, since I have known from childhood all of her telltale signs of lying. I used to catch her when we were children and hold it over her like an ax ready to fall unless she did my bidding. Fearing repercussions from my father, she always danced to the tune I played. Now I wonder if I too wasn’t a puppet, like all of them, the strings visible to everyone but me.
“How did it feel?” I say, softening as shame fills me. I think of the luncheon, charities set up to protect families like mine. “When he hit you?”
She takes a step back, ready to run. It’s a question I never asked, didn’t dare to. Hearing the truth would have changed Papa in my eyes into a man I couldn’t conceive. Even as I saw him beat them, I convinced myself that wasn’t really him. It was a mirage fueled by anger or disappointment and maybe, maybe it was just as much their fault as it was his. If only they could be more of what he wanted, needed, then they too would be safe.
“Like there was nothing left of me but the imprint of his hand,” she says, her voice a mere whisper above the roar in my ears. “He owned me. I was a vessel for his rage.”
“Then how are you surviving without him?” I ask, instinct driving the question. I know Marin and Sonya’s legs were cut from beneath them. They learned to walk with prosthetics, the true part of them taken away by force.
Something flitters across her eyes, a story untold. A secret she won’t tell. “By trying to forget.”
The young girl is walking down the hallway, her hands limp by her sides. Her throat is raw, her screams having gone unheard. The darkness is now welcome to hide the sins of her soul. There is only empty air all around her but she still can’t catch her breath. Gasping, she tries to remember her name, but even something as simple as that escapes her. She tries a door and finds it open. Finally, since every other one has been shut to her, refusing her refuge. She enters the pristine bathroom but the light has gone out.