Dominantor's Property

5

SANA

After the ceremony was over we were all in the school’s courtyard for photos. Dad rushed to me. His eyes sparkled. Everyone said I had his eyes. He’d never been perfect but we did things together. He taught me to cook, I’d hang out with him while he tinkered with his car, he’d hold me high in the air with an airplane ride to bed every night that he was home at bedtime, read me bedtime stories with such effort and emotion, doing different voices for every character. He wasn’t the perfect father or husband before she died but after she died, he was like a shell of a man who tried to drink and gamble away his pain.

He swung me around in a giant hug, making me squeal. “Sana, sweet pea! I’m so proud. You look all grown up. Look at you. Someone take our picture!” He called out to the rest of our group and Rose hurried over with her camera. Jihyo, my social worker, eyed my dad warily.

I knew she’d lost patience with him over the years. Getting me to agree to be a crown ward made her life so much easier because she didn’t have to continually try to reach him to find out what was what with him, to get him involved in decisions that needed to be made, and so forth. When it’d finally happened and he lost his parental rights it had been 11 months since he’d made contact. He always managed to miss birthdays.

It hurt that he could go that length of time without checking on me, leaving others to raise me. It hurt but I wasn’t the sort to start laying blame aloud. I always just thought of him as broken.

He’d found her dead in the bathtub with slit wrists one day. It was a day when I was supposed to have been picked up from school late after a field trip that required parents to pick up the kids because it got us back after 7:00 at night. That night was a long one and I’d sat in the principal’s office for hours and hours while they tried to find someone to pick me up. The principal had been huffy and snippy, too, clearly with plans for the evening that had to be cancelled due to this poor little neglected girl who hadn’t been picked up from school.

Finally my Aunt had come along and brought me to her home. She hadn’t told me about my Mom. She let me overhear her on the phone telling someone else that she was stuck watching me for the evening because my father was a wreck, mourning his dead wife who’d killed herself. What a way for me to find out. She was a witch, my Dad’s sister.

She hadn’t bothered with me for all these years, just wrote me off. Mom hadn’t had any family step up either. I heard she had an older brother but it seemed she was a bit of a black sheep with her family or something, too. I really had no idea. No one sought me out after she died.

So, here Dad was, all smiles for the camera, looking well-fed, well-groomed, and yet there was a weird aura about him, something in his eyes, a nervousness in his laugh. He seemed off, like there was something shifty going on. He kept checking his phone and looking around suspiciously. When everyone had gotten their fill of camera flashes in their eyes, Rose tried to corral everyone so we could go back to her house where a big buffet and gifts were waiting.

“Please join us.” she said to my Dad.

“I’d love to!” he beamed, “Sana, ride with me. We can catch up on the way back.”

I nodded, feeling like something was way off. Did he have something to tell me? I was happy to see him; it’d been ages since I’d seen him, but something was off, I could just feel it.

He had a decent enough car, surprisingly. We drove through a coffee shop drive-thru for Dad to get a coffee and me to get an iced cappuccino on our way and then we parked so Dad could get out and have a cigarette first, knowing I wouldn’t want him smoking in the car with me.

“Thanks so much for coming, Dad.”

“Like I’d miss it!” He gave me an ‘Are you kidding’ look. As if he hadn’t missed other milestones, like my first communion, my confirmation, school plays, every single birthday since my 10th, and so forth.

“What’s new, then? You working?” I asked.

He nodded, “Yeah, I’ve been working at an auto parts place. Got a nice apartment. Got myself a nice girlfriend, too. You’ll like her. She’s a schoolteacher. Teaches kindergarten. This is her car.”

“Really? That’s awesome!” It’d been the longest he’d held down a job for ages and this was the first relationship he’d ever told me about. He knew what was going on with me already; I’d filled him in with my Facebook message where I’d invited him to come to the grad ceremony.

“Something off, though, Dad? You seem stressed.”

He nodded quickly and lifted the lid off his coffee and took a sip, “Yeah, we need to talk.”

I frowned, “Okay?”

He sat down on a picnic table outside the coffee shop and picked at an imaginary thread on his suit pants, “I’m in some trouble."

My heart lurched, “What kind of trouble?”

He let out a heavy sigh, “I have old debts from when I was gambling. I haven’t gambled in a long time, Sana. I go to a support group. The debt was sold to someone high up in organized crime, someone who hates my guts and has a vendetta from years back. He’s decided to make life --- difficult.”

I nodded, urging him to continue, feeling dread spread through my gut.

“I need to figure this out, find a way to get them paid. They’ve already given me an extension but they want a marker. I just need a few days to sort this out; I was hoping you could help me.”

“How? How could I help you?” I didn’t have any money. Well, $248 in my savings account from my job at the ice cream parlor but that was it.

“You need to be my marker.” He said, resigned.