SUNDAY JOURNAL: When reality comes to call

By LORI ROY

© St. Petersburg Times, published May 20, 2001

I was 5 years old the day my parents floated down from up on high, transformed into warm flesh and began the simple act of breathing in and out. That was the day they became ordinary.

There is pounding on the back door. I can hear it from my room in the back of the house. It is very late for visitors. Surely someone will answer it. I set aside the scissors and my Barbie doll, which no longer has long, flowing golden locks. Someone is still banging. Can't anyone open the door?

I can hear Dad's voice. He must be in the kitchen. Maybe he will open the door. When someone knocks, we open it. I thought I heard him yelling, but now I think he is on the phone. Can't someone please open that door? I'll hide my Barbie before I go to the door. Mom will be mad if she finds it like this. Probably won't buy me another. Here, under my mattress. She won't find it here. If no one else can open the door, I can do it.

The back door is in the kitchen. It's my favorite room. We carve pumpkins in the kitchen at Halloween, and Mom lets me sit on the counter while she cooks. I'm big enough now to open the refrigerator myself. My dog Blackie lives in the kitchen. He can't leave his corner when he is in the house, and he has a blanket that is all his own. No one else is in the kitchen. I thought Dad was on the phone but I am all alone here. I see a face in the window. I think I know that person, the one who keeps banging. I know that smile, but her eyes look different from when I see her at Dad's work. They frighten me now. Those eyes want me to open the door really bad. I wish she would smooth down her hair. I think I know who she is, but I'm not sure. She is smiling at me. Yes, I know her, and now she has stopped banging. She knows I'll open the door.

I stop to pat my dog Blackie. I am almost to the door, but my dad yells at me to stop. Get away, he yells, and his eyes look just like hers. He yells really loud. Blackie is here, and I crouch down with him and hold him so tightly that my dad cannot pull me away.

When the glass breaks, he pulls so hard that Blackie cries out.

I look back at my dog and hope he is not hurt. Dad does not have shoes on, and he steps carefully on his tippy toes because now there is glass everywhere. He drops me in the living room where there is carpet, and now I am crying. Dad looks me over. He runs his hands over my arms and legs and turns my head from side to side and front to back. He is looking for blood. Her face is not in the window anymore.

My mom hands me a plastic bowl and tells me to hold it in my lap. I try to throw up in it but can't. I hope Mom won't be angry. My brother is peeking out from his room. I hope he won't tell about my Barbie. Mom is on the phone now. It's our preacher she is calling.

Dad is outside now. I hear him call out that he has found her behind a bush. Mom takes some rags from the bottom drawer and tosses them out the shattered window. She doesn't go outside. I'm glad she doesn't. Through the broken window, they talk about the hospital, and I imagine blood flowing from that woman's hands. Dad will wrap them up in the rags from Mom's kitchen. Let her go now. Let her go to her own home.

I am 30 years older now, and I know why a woman becomes so angry she will break through a window even though a 5-year-old and a black Lab are crouching nearby. I know why a woman gets a crazed look and will not smooth back her hair. Somehow I knew it at the time, even though I did not know words such as infidelity and illegitimacy.

That was the day my mother became her own woman and my father only a man. That was the day I grew up.

Lori Roy is a freelance writer in Tierra Verde.

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