of girl they should want. I’m not the kind of girl they need.
I’m tired, but it takes me ages to fall asleep. Memories of the comfort I felt in the arms of my foster brothers plague me. The passion in their eyes haunts me. The love in their touch makes me curl up into a ball and cry.
Everything I’ve done has been a mistake, but before I face up to anything, I must visit Dad’s grave. It’s the only way that I’m going to have a chance of finding the path to take.
27
Uncle Walter’s description helps me find Dad’s grave without much difficulty, but now I’m here, I feel no relief. I’ve bought a small bunch of flowers, not that I imagine Dad was ever a fan, but what else is there? Maybe I should have bought him a beer and poured it onto the ground. Maybe I could listen to a football game while I’m here. At least those things would be about who dad was, not about following the traditional routines of grief.
I place the stupid flowers down on the middle of the grave, noticing how neat everything is and smiling at the laminated picture of Dad with his foster sons that one of them must have brought up here and left.
Standing awkwardly for a while, I look around at the neighboring graves and watch as an elderly woman tends to one twenty yards away. She’s humming a gentle tune that carries on the breeze. There’s a comfortableness in her routines that I don’t feel. An acceptance too. Maybe there were no unsaid thing between her and her loved one. Maybe they had no grievances.
Can talking to a patch of land change the way a person feels? I want it to. I want it to so much that my heart aches and my breath catches in my chest.
I decide to sit, mostly because standing makes me feel pressured to do something or achieve something, and I don’t know how to make any of that happen. With my legs in soft grass and fingers twisting the green blades, I feel more grounded.
What do I say? Do I talk to him in my head or say things out loud?
Frustrated, I tear up a bunch of grass and let it fall. I’m too young to deal with this. Too young to be pregnant and alone. Too young to hold all this anger and anguish and responsibility and hurt inside. I don’t know how to make anything in my life better. I can’t see a bridge across all the turmoil.
“What do I do, Dad?” I ask, my voice cracking. “How do I make this better when you’re not here anymore? I didn’t mean for this to happen. I didn’t mean for you to never call me again. I mean, I know I said that was what I wanted. I know I told you that I hated you, and I didn’t want you to be part of my life, but it was just frustration. You have to know that. I was pushing you away, wanting you to come back. Wanting you to fight for me, but you didn’t. I know you said sorry in your letter. I know you loved me all these years. The boys told me. They showed me the pictures and mementos you kept, but that just makes me sadder. How could you leave all that time to pass and not want to change what happened? You were the adult. You were the one who should have known that kids say things they don’t mean, especially when they are angry and emotional. You made me believe that my voice drove you away. My voice went from being something good to something bad.” I take a shaky breath against the welling of emotions, brushing grass from my skirt before I exhale long and slow.
“I missed you. So much. I lost my faith in people and myself. I made mistakes…” My hand instinctively goes to my belly, and I shake my head. I can’t think of the life growing inside me as a mistake because it isn’t. The process that led to its creation was a mistake. Allowing Justin to use me was the error. Believing that our fake relationship would fill the hole in my heart was where I went wrong.
“And I’m floundering.” A tear leaks from the corner of my eye, and I swipe it away. “I don’t know what to do or where to go. I don’t even know