excerpt
Tap, tap, tap . . .
Dad’s inebriated face is shoved up against my bedroom window.
– Locked out, son. Let me in? He thinks he’s whispering. The
clock radio says 2:30 a.m.
The basement door squeaks on opening; the sound runs through
the house like a shiver. I hear my father at the back of the yard. Our
bathroom had recently been renovated; the old toilet had been left in
the alley awaiting pickup. Dad is on his knees vomiting into the
bowl. For him, cursed with a weak stomach, the porcelain prayer
was a familiar posture after a night out. Old habits die hard, I guess.
A soft rain murmurs in the warm spring sky, its lazy descent visible
in the glow of the streetlights.
– Thanks a hell of a lot, Burt.
My father slumps against the fence, eyes listing. I get him inside
and wrap his arms around a beam. It’s kept the house upright all
these years; I’m hoping it’ll do the same for him.
– Where’s the car? I ask. You didn’t drive like that, did ya?
– Somewhere, he says. I fish the keys from his coat pocket.
We hear a noise, its cause and source indecipherable. I’m hoping
it’s faulty water pipes or clanking furnace vents or just groaning
floorboards — anything but my mother, her resurrection.
The sound of trickling water makes me suppose the plumbing.
This turns out to be partly true. A sigh escapes my father’s lips; a
gurgle trickles over his steel-toed boots. The deluge settles between
my toes, hot and sticky.
Just then the door at the top of the stairs is flung open. The overhead
bulb blazes.
– That you, buster? My mother.
– Sorry, son, Dad says.
– Let’s talk about it in the morning, woman! he hollers. I had a
winner tonight!
– Heard that one before! Mom spits, slamming the door. She
begins constructing a barricade with kitchen chairs.
– Come on, doll! he pleads. I need sleep!
– Don’t you doll me! she thunders, muscling table legs across the
kitchen floor. You’re not sleeping in my bed!
I slip outside and rinse my feet under the garden hose. The rain is
whooshing through drainpipes, gushing along the eaves, …
Libros Libertad 