No Time To Bleed

Follow Him In His Lies

“Why can’t you even listen to me?! I am your wife. How could you do this?" Her voice radiated through the house, angry, desperate. "What type of man are you?!”

The salty tears came sliding down my cheeks. My back pressed against the hallway wall. I couldn't bear to move. I coudn't bear to breathe. Everything was falling apart. Everything."

"I mean, I loved you. We got married seventeen years ago and you broke the first promise we ever made to each other... with some slut?"

What type of man are you? It seemed to be the question of this hour, this day, and this lifetime. Who was my father?

“Jasmine…” A voice murmured from a nearby bedroom doorway. A little boy with glowing cream colored skin, soft dufts of dark hair, spaceman pajamas, and teddy bear in hand, stood.

All I had to do was say his name. "Ricky..."

Ricky trotted over, shuffling his feet along the hardwood floors, eventually he sank into my lap, and rested his head against my beating chest. My fingers played with strands of his hair.

"Jazzy, why are they fighting?" Ricky and I stared ahead stoicly. His teeth gud into the arm of his teddy bear.

"People change. They.."

And I couldn't quite finish. Part of me knew everything. It knew that my father had made a selfish choice, that he'd ripped all of our lives apart and tried to shove me into a corner. But the other part of me was breaking, crumbling all the way down a hill and left to rot at the bottom. That part of me was the hope.

She was crying now, crying through the walls. "I should have never left my family for you. It was the worst choice in the entire world and now I don't even know who you are anymore. You're not even a man."

“Why do people change?” Ricky asked.

"They don't want their lives anymore."

I rested my hand upon Ricky's stomach and rubbed there, just the way I did when he couldn't fall asleep or when his mother was crying or when my father wouldn't come home or when I couldn't speak to anyone.

“You're my life, Jazzy."

Then I must have lost. I closed my eyes and I left the salty stings slide past my lashes and my temples pounded and I could have sworn I felt the walls of my very core fall apart.

“Gladis, I know I messed up. I messed up so bad, but you can't take this out on the family."

In the next room it sounded like glass shattering against a wall. "That girl is not my daughter."

“You promised me you’d look after her, Gladis. You promised me. She's your daughter."

"I don't owe you anything."

“Ricky…”

He continued to gnaw on the bear’s arm. “Yeah, Jazzy.”

“Don’t let your mom take you away."

“Gladis, Gladis, please…” My father was begging now. The door to their bedroom opened and Gladis came bolting out: earrings dangling, luggage on her arm, and in a rush.

“Ricky, we’re leaving.”

Gladis didn't even look at me. She just kept walking on by. When Ricky didn't move, she stopped, and turned. “Ricky! I said come here. We don't have time for this."

The bear’s hand left his mouth. “You can’t yell at me! Jasmine told me you can't yell at me and I'm not leaving."

“I don’t care what she said. She is just like him, his flesh and blood."