Keeping Up With the Wind: A 'Burban Tale by Suleyma Moon

26.

            Spider and Li'l Jay were both right. Faith was only getting worse. Day after day, Li'l Jay would go to see her, as if he thought that his company alone would make her feel better. Who knows, maybe it did. Faith had said that she was lonely and needed people to come visit her.

I stayed pretty much to myself after Spider moved away. Whenever I ran into my dad, he was always talking about that stupid trip, so I even tried to avoid him. For the most part, I just stayed in my room and watched old movies. Knowing that I had a passion for pictures of strange places, my pops promised to bring me some back of the view from the plane. I wondered if he would be taking this trip alone or with someone else, but I never asked. I didn't really believe him about the pictures, either. He was never one to be true to his word.

Once, he even promised that my mother would get well.

            I left my window unlocked all the time those last few weeks of summer, but no one ever came through it. Li'l Jay was right. There was no one left to come through it. Every day that went by placed another sandbag named Faith onto my heart. I knew that sooner or later, I would have to go see her. If for no other reason, I had to go because I promised that I would. And because I missed her. A lot...

One day, the time finally came.

            I woke up that morning with the sun in my eyes. I think I must have been having a great dream, because I sat up excitedly like a child on Christmas morning. Nothing special was waiting for me when I opened my eyes, but the day was still so beautiful that I jumped out of bed and ran out into the living room just to make sure. That's where the Christmas tree used to go. Of course, we hadn't celebrated Christmas like that since my mother passed. I don't know what I was thinking going in and expecting something to be there.

            The first thing that I saw was the china cabinet with the "expensive" dishes that Ace bought to replace my mother's broken ones. It had taken him a couple of years to replace them all. I could almost see the two of them in the living room, mom opening the boxes excitedly. She had always loved presents. Her singsong voice floated through the air, telling him how beautiful each dish was and how nice they would look in her china cabinet. I remembered that the real china, and also the cabinet had belonged to her own grandmother. She never told Ace that. I guess she already knew that she wouldn't be able to enjoy the real dishes in a couple of years anyway.

            "Hey pop," I stopped my dad with his hand on the door. "Where did these dishes come from?"

            He looked at them, clearly remembering, then looked back at me and shook his head. "I don't know."

            Maybe he lied because he didn't want to open up old wounds. Who knows why people do the things they do? I don't even know why I wanted to see if he remembered. He left after that.

             "So..." I said to the closed door. "Where did you get the money to buy that plane ticket? That is a real ticket, isn't it? Or are you just making the trip up? You are coming back, right?" I felt helpless. Why was it that I could always talk to people only after they were gone? "You won't leave me, too, will you Daddy?"

            I stood there, silent for a moment, but the door never answered. So I went into the kitchen. I was halfway through my second bowl of Cookie Crisps when Li'l Jay came tearing down the hall. I looked up, mouth full.

            "I came from the window," he said breathlessly, as if I didn't know. "I was at the hospital." I wondered if he had run the whole way to my house. "Why aren't you dressed?"

            I put another heaping spoonful of cereal into my mouth and mumbled, "Should I be?"

            "Yes. And don't talk with your mouthful. It's gross." I wondered where he had gotten manners from.