Page 28 of It's Me They Follow
“Amen,” we responded. We all had faith that one day we could be normal.
“I missed you all,” he said, teary-eyed from his prayer.
“We really missed you too,” said Mommy, also teary-eyed.
And for a minute, we were kind of like a normal family, passing dishes around and serving one another.
When it was my turn, I spooned heaps of macaroni onto my plate to make myself a macaroni and cheese birthday cake, but on the top of the last heap, I noticed half an eggshell baked into it poking out like a candle.
“You better eat every bite too. Your eyes are bigger than your stomach,” Daddy said. He did not see the half an eggshell sticking out of the top of my mac and cheese cake; he just thought I was being greedy.
“I can’t,” I said.
“Excuse me?” His bloodshot eyeballs bulged. “What do you mean, you can’t? Your mom slaved all day in that kitchen, so we are gonna eat this food. Do you hear me?!”
Ma got up and went to the bathroom. Maybe to defuse the situation. Maybe because she felt guilty. Maybe she had to pee. Regardless, she was gone.
I stared for a good long minute at Pa and then looked at the Ms. Harriett angel. I prayed to her to intercede.
Ms. Harriett, please help Daddy see this eggshell without making a scene and embarrassing Mommy.Please resurrectthis eggshell from my plate so I can eat my macaroni and cheese cake. Please let them remember it’s my birthday. Ms. Harriett, can you hear me? I am talking to you. I need you.
Ms. Harriett did not respond. None of the angels did—notthe seraphim or cherub or Michael or Gabriel or Mary, not the naked ones draped in cloth, not the haloed ones with battery powered lights. No one said anything.
The longer I stared at Pa in silence, praying to the angels, the more blood rushed to his pulsating eyes, which made it harder for me to respond to his question. “Do you hear me?” He said it again, slowly.
I still didn’t respond. Which he must have seen as disrespect. Daddy did not stand for no disrespect. So he picked me up by my disrespectful throat and held me against the wall. My head hit it with a few thumps that my mother apparently did not hear from the bathroom.
Being held off the ground by the neck is like levitating against your will. I was barely breathing, crying and not crying.Father, why hast thou forsaken me?I thought. I caught eyes with Jesus in the painting my mother hung across the dining room on the wall. Jesus wept.
“Daddy!!!!” you screamed, trying to remind our father that I was a child, even though you were just a baby. You tried to remind him that it was my birthday, that I could die, but Pa could not hear you over the vile and ravaged words that he spit into my face. Ma also did not hear this part.
“You speak when spoken to. Got it, little girl? DO YOU HEAR ME?” Pa said to me.
But I couldn’t respond because I couldn’t breathe.
“Daddy, Daddy,” you continued, likely because my lips wereturning blue or because my body was going limp, my head tilted to one side like a snapped turkey’s neck.
“O”—I got that breath from Ms. Harriett—“kay.” And fell asleep.
Then I guess he put me down, calm, like nothing had happened because I woke up upright in my seat.
“Eat up,” Mommy said, coming back into the dining room from the bathroom like she hadn’t seen or heard anything. Maybe the angels had protected her from it. Maybe it was all in my mind.
I ate every bite of my cake.
After dinner, Mommy and Daddy went out for a drive and got into that terrible car accident. They never made it back home. I always blamed myself. That’s how we ended up with our grandparents.
We would never be a normal family. Happy birthday to me.
But I say all of that to say, is that how you remember it? I know you were young.
Love,
Your Sister Friend, Gee
Chapter 16
JANUARY 16, 2020
