Page 49 of Feel Me

“Sounds good.”

“You’re lying.”

“You’re right, it sounds awful,” he grumbles. “Damn nausea.”

I smile against him, mostly because I’ve always liked feeling close to him. My smile falters when I inhale and smell the pungent odor of medicine. There’s nothing left of his familiar aroma that hints of home and comfort. All that’s there is the reminder of the cancer he’s battling.

A battle I’m not certain he’ll win.

I kick off my heels and curl closer, shaking off the negative thoughts. Instead I focus on all the good things that make my father who he is, and everything that makes lying against him so special. He feels as warm as always, and I fit as perfectly against him as I did the first time I allowed him to hold me.

“Do you remember the first night we became a family?”

“Of course,” he says. “I still have the scars to prove it.

I laugh, this time meaning it. “Sorry, I bit you.”

“Yeah. It shows.” He laughs now because I’m not the frightened child he attempted to welcome into his home.

When we met, I was so taken by his soft brown eyes and how safe he made me feel, even though I couldn’t understand him. But when the social worker dropped me off at his house, I thought she was shoving me into the arms of a man who planned to hurt me, exactly as my mother had. I kicked and screamed, and yes, also bit him.

Dad, bless his heart, backed away, holding his bleeding hands out and mouthing words I couldn’t understand. I curled into a ball, sobbing in the corner of the living room. Even after all these years, the memory is so vivid.

I was hysterical and cried myself into exhaustion. When I woke, I had a warm blanket around me. Dad was sleeping a few feet away on the floor, wearing the suit he’d worn to work.

He fed me Cheerios that morning. To this day I always smile every time I see a box in the store.

“I’m surprised you didn’t send me right back into foster care,” I confess. That first night with him was one of many nights I’d freaked out on him.

“Oh, believe me, I thought about it more than once,” he admits.

“Daddy!”

He laughs, stroking my arm. “It’s not that I didn’t love you right away.”

“It’s that you didn’tlikeme,” I finish for him.

He pauses. “Yeah, you kind of sucked.”

I throw back my head, laughing. He laughs right along with me, kissing my head. “Melissa, I knew I couldn’t let you go from the moment I saw you. But I was in way over my head and doubted whether I was the best parent for you. All the men I knew told me I was crazy, and all the women regarded me like a creep who belonged on some list.”

I giggle, that much I knew. “Except for Grandma and Grandpa.”

“Yes, God rest their souls.” He angles his body so he can look at me. “Every night I came home, I begged your Grandma to stay, knowing you were more trusting of her than you were of me. But every night she left me and told me to get to know my daughter.” He winks. “I’m glad that I did.”

“I’m glad you did, too,” I say, remembering how it took several months before I’d allow him to hold me. “When did you know we were going to be okay?” I ask.

He thinks about it for so long, I start to wonder if he fell asleep. I glance up almost at the same moment he begins to speak. “You’d been letting me tuck you into bed for a while.” He shifts beneath me. “Do you remember? I’d sign to you that it was bedtime. Like a good little girl, you’d stop coloring, or whatever you were doing, and follow me upstairs. I’d watch you brush your teeth?by the way you kind of sucked at the teeth brushing thing, too.”

“Oh, the truth finally comes out,” I interrupt.

“And your taste in clothing was only so-so.”

“Dad, I was six.”

He chuckles. “Anyway, I’d wait for you to get into bed and lightly place the blankets around you. But I wouldn’t get too close, and avoid direct contact. One night, I took a chance. I signed, ‘goodnight, I love you’ like always, but this time I kissed your head. Your eyes widened like you were scared. I walked out, thinking I made a big mistake and probably set us back.” He pauses for a moment. “But in the morning when I woke, you were lying asleep beside me. That’s when I knew we would be okay.”

My eyes burn as I recall that memory. “It’s because I didn’t know what love was.”

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