Chapter 10: The Week Nothing Came Back
The first day back at school after break was a Tuesday and it was cold enough that the sidewalk salt crunched under my black Mary Janes. I hadn't worn the red velvet dress. Dad had hung it in the closet and I was back in jeans and a navy sweater that itched a little at the neck.
Mrs. Harper stood by the door with her travel mug and said, "Welcome back, honey. How was your Christmas? Did Santa find you?"
I didn't know how to answer that. I had practiced saying "fine" in the car.
"It was quiet," I said. "We had dinner at home. Just me and my dad."
She smiled in that teacher way that meant she heard more than I said. "Quiet can be nice," she said, and touched my shoulder lightly as I went to my desk.
At lunch, Maya slid her tray next to mine and started talking fast about her cousins and the karaoke machine she got. She asked, "Did you go to your grandma's? You said you were going to the big house with the tree."
I swallowed. The milk carton was cold in my hands.
"We left early," I said. "We didn't stay."
Maya looked at me. "Why?"
I shrugged. I could feel my eyes getting watery the way they had by the folding chair, and I didn't want that at school. "My dad decided we needed to go," I said. "So we did."
She didn't push after that. She offered me half her cookie and I took it. That was the whole conversation, but it sat in my chest the rest of the afternoon while we did math worksheets and the radiator hissed under the window.
Dad had been holding the line without making a show of it. I heard him on the phone that week in the kitchen while I did homework at the little table we actually used. It was work, then it was about my dentist appointment, then it was someone from his family. I couldn't hear the other side, only his side.
"No, we're not coming by this weekend," he said. His voice was even. "I meant what I wrote. I'm not going to debate it on the phone."
A pause.
"I've got her school thing Thursday. That's where I'll be," he said. "If you want to talk about how to move forward, you know where I am."
He didn't raise his voice. He didn't explain me to them while I was in the next room. When he hung up he stood there a second with his hand on the counter, then he came over and checked my spelling words like nothing had happened.
That night at dinner he did something he hadn't done before, or maybe I just hadn't noticed the meaning of it until then.
Our apartment table only had four chairs, the kind that wobble a little if you lean. Dad pulled one out first for me before he sat down. He put his hand on the back of it.
"Your seat," he said.
I looked at him.
"You don't have to wait to be told where to sit here," he said. "You just sit."
It was such a small thing. But I felt my shoulders drop. I climbed onto the chair and he slid it in. He didn't sit at the head of the table like Grandma did. He sat beside me, so we were side by side, and he passed me the mashed potatoes first.
Every night that week it was the same. He saved the chair. He asked me about my day and actually waited for the answer. When I knocked my water glass and it left a ring on the wood, he just wiped it up and said, "You're good."
On Thursday after school the pick-up line wrapped around the building and Dad was there in his navy jacket, not his blazer, with the heater running. I got in and he asked how the spelling test went.
"I got a hundred," I said.
He looked over at me and smiled for real. "Of course you did."
We drove to the grocery store because we needed bread and milk. In the parking lot I saw a woman from school with her mom loading bags into a van. The woman waved at Dad. Dad waved back but didn't stop to talk long. I realized I was waiting for that tight feeling I used to get when we saw people who knew Grandma, like I had to act perfect so they wouldn't think anything. It didn't come, or it came and went quickly.
At bedtime that night I stood in the doorway of the living room while Dad folded laundry. The envelope was not in our apartment. It was at Grandma's house and no one had answered it. I had checked the mail with Dad every day after school, and every day there was only junk and a water bill.
"Are they mad at us?" I asked.
Dad folded one of my t-shirts and set it on the pile. "They might be," he said. "People get quiet when they don't know what to say."
"Are we going to be okay without them?" I said. My voice was small.
He stopped folding and looked at me. "We already are," he said. "Look at this week. School, dinner, laundry. We're doing it."
I nodded. I wanted to believe him. Part of me still listened for the phone to ring and for him to say we should just go fix it.
He must have seen that. He patted the couch cushion next to him.
"Come here," he said.
I sat down and he didn't say anything big. He just kept folding, and I leaned against his arm. The apartment was warm. The tree was gone from Grandma's house and we had a little one on our counter with white lights that Dad had let me wrap myself, crooked and all.
May you like
The silence from them that week started to feel less like waiting and more like an answer. We had made dinner without them five times. We had done homework and grocery shopping and spelling tests without them. The chair was still there every night, pulled out for me first.
I didn't need anyone to tell me I had a place anymore. I could see it.
