My mother's favorite color was purple. That's one of the only things I remember before she disappeared. Purple, the color with many meanings depending if it's light or dark. Only light, my mother would say. Dark purple symbolizes sadness, and royalty. Light purple is the color of happy things. That's why, once my mother disappeared, I never saw light purple again. The happy color was removed from our house, clothes, and belongings. Dark purple got to stay but I never saw light purple again.
My father broke a lot of things when she disappeared. I saw before my eyes how he began to change. The sparkle in his eyes that I used to see faded over time as the bags under his eyes grew darker. That was also the time I remember he went out a lot at night. But not to bars, to rebel meetings. Against the government. Because they made my mother go away. At least that's what Uncle Felix says.
My uncle Felix watched me while father was gone. He and I would read and watch movies, and laugh. My father almost always came back in the mornings and slept all day. We started struggling for money. My uncle Felix moved in with us and started to yell at my father. He said he needed to pull himself together. That he was going to get himself killed. But father never did.
One night, Father left and didn't come back for a few weeks. Felix stayed with me. Every night when I was falling asleep, I would gaze out my window wondering where he was and what he could be doing. Was he hurt? Was he in jail? I didn't know.
Uncle Felix and I were watching the news when it happened. We saw explosions of blue fire and buildings fall. We watched people lose their lives right on our television screen. The man talking on the news called it "The Terror Attack of the Ages." They wiped out half of the city with bombs and guns.
When my father came back, he said we were leaving. Where we were going, he wouldn't tell me. When Uncle Felix protested, saying what he was doing wasn't right, my father told me to cover my eyes. Though I couldn't see, I know exactly what was happening. I imagined my father's crazed expression as he pulled back his fist and brought it down on my Uncle's face. When I looked again, my father's knuckles were bloody and cut. Felix lay unconscious on the ground, his nose and inch father to the right than it should be. The skin around his nose and both eyes developing dark purple and green bruises.
He then started packing our possessions into bags and stacking them by the door, leaving Felix on the floor. I didn't know where we were going, but I understood that we weren't coming back.
As soon as the sleek black car pulled up in our driveway, a woman wearing all black military clothing stepped out and carried all our belongings into the car. With my father in the passenger seat, the woman driving, and I in the back, I said a silent goodbye to our little house as it grew smaller and smaller. I imagined Uncle Felix inside, left to either bleed out, or regain consciousness. Eventually the house disappeared in the distance.
