FEEL

14. Povism

Povism ~ the frustration of being stuck in your own head.

~ The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows ~

~°~

“Where have you been?”

His voice adds a weight to my chest, like I'm being compressed between two walls. My father sits on the couch as I enter the house at 11PM, having been at Dre's house talking to Breanna. She had to go back to her dorm when Dre returned from hanging out with his friends, cutting our conversation while it was still piping hot.

I'd forgotten what it felt like to have a girl friend. And Breanna was so amazing, probably more than any friend I'd ever had. I didn't speak much, but I would say a word or two and she would turn into a story worth a thousand pages. Naturally, we lingered in a blissful state of limbo until Dre showed up and time became a thing again.

Tata sounds drunk, so I won't reply to him. I know by now, when he's drunk and when he's sober. At some point, he drank so much that it seemed like he was always inebriated, but I could always tell when the alcohol was taking its full effect. At the moment, he had a grip on himself, but could still be unreasonable.

He calls for me, “Hey, Aquila!” I keep walking. “Answer me, damnit, I'm your father!”

Was my father. What he turned into couldn't be called that.

His voice fades away into the far distance as I get closer and closer to my bedroom. It blurs when I shut the door. Now, he just sounds like a muffling madman, screaming curses in the living room. I know that he won't come near me. He never comes near me when he's drunk. At least from what I can remember. He'll sit there all night and scream his lungs away.

“I won't stand disrespect under my own roof...”

My backpack is tossed at the foot of my bed. I find my iPod in the drawers in one of my bedside table. My older cousin gave it to me about five years ago and I never used it as much as I'd liked. I plug the earphones into my ears and turn it on.

“I'm the man of this house!...”

“Please work, please work...” I pray fervently. The thing was ancient, to say the least, but it was the only thing I had to drown out my father's shouting. “Yes!” the word came out in a big sigh of relief.

Brenda Fassie rung loud in my ears, an old African pop artist that my cousin must have been into while she was growing up. The plan was to start with my homework, and I would have done exactly that.

I had opened my closet in search for something comfortable to lounge and sleep in, when I spotted it. The gray school skirt my mother had bought me in the beginning of the year. Thrown at the deepest corner of my closet to rot away. And then I thought of Mr Pierce, for some peculiar reason, and what he might think if I had it on at school tomorrow. Men liked that kind of thing, didn't they, when girls wore short skirts.

Without another thought, I pull it out. It ignites hope and excitement, the thought that I might get a reaction out of him. The thought that I might attract his attention in any way.

Quickly, I pull my pants off, replacing them with the short skirt that now seems shorter than it had been at the beginning of the year. I make my way over to the long mirror against my wall, taking in my reflection. Knife-pleated and tight along my hips, creeping up along my thighs to reveal so much of my dark caramelly legs that their length appears more abysmal.

My head tilts to the side.

I don't know anymore. The weather lately has been nothing but blistering cold, courtesy of Boston's February climate, and having so much of my skin naked like this would be obviously foolish. Although, if I wore a pair of gray long socks and some thick soled shoes...