AWAKENING

I started to quiver from inside, my eyes fixed on the near distance. I could not blink or cry. The other men in the room watched in silence.

Sam reached for my hand and spoke. “It’s happening for you, isn’t it Nick?” I looked at his black face and nodded slightly. His hair had been pulled back into a tiny ponytail and the pomade that made this possible glistened in the morning light streaming from the patio behind him.

It was rehab, the residence next door to the hospital. Sam was the counselor. I was the patient. He led me out of the kitchen to the bedroom I shared with Jeff. I stood at the side of the bed. My T-shirt and shorts scraped against my skin, suddenly tender. The closing door sound was a distant click, like a jewel box locking me inside. The air was still and thick. I gulped it and I found myself kneeling. I gripped my hands together tightly and placed them on the nubbly stained bedspread. Its color was a memory. An expanse of time appeared before me and I swallowed it. I almost choked, but I swallowed it, and when I was finished, I looked up.

I did not look to the right, where the nightstand held the evidence of my life here in rehab. A pack of Marlboro’s, a lighter, a travel alarm, a journal. I did not look to the left, at the pile of discarded clothes and the stack of books and papers. I saw only the painting on the wall before me.

It was an oil, the portrait of a man in three-quarter profile, dressed in an olive Army uniform. A wild cat roared from a round shoulder patch and a jaunty cap with a crease down the middle tilted at an angle on his head. He wore a slight smile, outlined by a pencil-thin mustache. My father.

A pose captured at the end of World War II by an itinerant French painter. That’s what Mama said when she gave it to me for my birthday the week before. Daddy had been in a closet somewhere until a relative sent him to mama. “I thought you’d like it,” she had said.

I remembered how long my hair was the day we buried him, nothing else. 20 years. The shiver inside me deepened and became a moan. A deep animal noise filled the room. It was coming from me. A light surrounded his face on the wall and I felt a release as I said the words.

“Daddy, I miss you so much. Please help me.”