2. Dominic
TWO
Dominic
I step over my daughter’s limp body lying in the middle of the kitchen floor.
“I’m dead,” she declares, eyes closed.
I grab some soy sauce from the far cabinet, wishing we didn’t see that dead rat on the way home from school yesterday. Now marks the fifteenth hour of obsession over it. I step over her again on the way back to the garlic rice cooking on the stove. “If you stood up and helped me, we would be able to eat faster.”
“But I’m dead.”
I use my foot to gently shift her corpse a few inches over towards the utensils drawer. “What if you were a zombie?” I try. “You’d be dead, but you could also set the table.”
“Zombies don’t eat on the table.” She reaches out and grabs my foot, uses her arms to pull herself towards me, then?—
“F—ouch, Frankie, fu—” I inhale slowly, rubbing at the teeth marks embedded in my shin. The zombie thing was a bad idea. “Get up and set the table. Now.”
My five-year-old daughter does not get up. Instead, she barrel-rolls with limp appendages and exaggerated lifelessness towards the drawers. Then, she slowly melts upwards.
“ Frankie .”
She grumbles, then swings the opposite direction and begins aggressively removing spoons and forks.
I look at her feet, vaguely wondering where her other sock went. “Can you taste the garlic rice after you put that down?”
Frankie sighs in five-year-old teenager, but I know she loves tasting while I cook. “Fine,” she says. She puts the utensils down and scurries over. She takes the spatula from my hand, climbs up the step stool I have for her in front of the stove, then carefully takes a small scoop of the garlic rice. I watch her closely, filled with pride when she remembers that it’s hot and to blow it cool instead of just shoving it in her mouth and screaming in agony then throwing a three-hour long fit, which is what we were doing only a few months ago. She looks up diagonally at the ceiling while chewing, and I blink at her, surprised. I’m not sure why I’m still so shocked when she looks identical to me when making certain faces. “More soy sauce.”
“Not salty enough?”
“You try,” she says, scooping more onto the spatula and holding it towards me.
I blow it cool and taste. “You’re totally right. Not enough soy sauce. Wanna add some?”
She puts the spatula down and picks up the soy sauce, uncapping the bottle and slowly tilting it down instead of tilting too much and too fast, which she was also doing just a few months ago. Many batches of garlic rice have been lost this way. She stirs one more time, then tastes. “Perf,” she says.
“Awesome. Do you wanna do the egg, or do you want me to do it?”
She brushes off her hands and climbs down from the step stool. In the span of ninety seconds, she’s somehow managed to get several grains of rice firmly caked into her hair. “You do it, please. I’m feeling over it,” she says, with an introspection and self-awareness that seem well beyond her five years. “I’ll get the suka .”
We switch spots with a routine coordination and finish our breakfast set up.
“Yum,” she says, after munching on the longanisa in the way I image a rabid, dying rat would. “You got the spicy longanisa instead of the sweet kind?”
I shrug, scooping some onto my spoon. “Tito Boy was out of the sweet kind. I like the spicy kind better, anyway.”
“Me too.”
The kitchen fills with the sounds of our chewing. “So what do you wanna do today?” I ask her. I already have a plan, but I’m interested in hearing what she has to say.
“Uh…” she says, looking up diagonally at the ceiling again. “Sundays are laundry days. Why don’t you get all our dirty laundry and then I put them in the basket and then you bring it downstairs.”
“You’re not gonna help me actually do the laundry?”
“I am,” she insists. “I’m putting it in the basket.”
“But that’s only one step.”
“That’s helping.”
I ponder the technical truths of five-year-olds. “Could you help me pour the detergent in?”
She huffs. “Fine.”
“Anything else?”
“I wanna look at the war book we got from the library yesterday. Also we need blueberries,” she says, about her most recent snack obsession that costs me about as much as our rent.
I nod. “Okay. Laundry, grocery, book. I have a work call in the afternoon, around two o’clock… what do you think about reading your book in your room while I’m on the call?”
Frankie frowns at me, her little nose scrunching. “Or I can go downstairs to Tita Gloria and Tito Ben and hang out with them.”
This strikes an immediate nerve.
It’s been just me and Francine for her entire five years, ever since her mother disappeared after all but dumping Frankie on my doorstep immediately after she was born. One drunken mistake, after an entire lifetime of perfectionism, ended up being the most beautiful, wonderful mistake of my life, but I was never going to make a mistake again.
I do fucking everything. I am the most present, involved, supportive, best fucking parent anyone has ever had. I’m a machine. I do it all. I won’t share responsibility. Don’t need to ask for help. Even if when my aunt and uncle live just downstairs.
Dom , my therapist chastises. Fine. Does this stem from shame? Probably. Is it stubbornness? Definitely. Who am I kidding? I know where it comes from, and it’s a generational, cultural curse I’ve been working with my Filipino therapist to break since Frankie came around. There are a bunch of unfortunate things from the culture that I’ve brought back to the States, one of them being hiya (shame, embarrassment) and a general fear of losing face, and, according to my therapist, “this prevents me from admitting vulnerability and seeking help, especially because it involves revealing personal struggles or weaknesses.”
Yep. She’s said it so many fucking times I have it memorized. It’s more nuanced than just being embarrassed, and I can’t explain the crippling anxiety that comes from avoiding being a burden to others, except that it’s a deeply rooted personal feeling that feels almost impossible to break. Regardless, no one else is going to be impacted by my actions or mistakes ever again.
“I don’t want to inconvenience them, Frankie. We don’t know if they’re busy or not,” I tell her.
“Can I just go downstairs and ask?” she whines.
“It’s okay, hon. The call won’t take very long, anyway.” I eye her, hyper aware of what that whine meant, knowing that we are now towing the very fine line dividing passive cooperation from absolute nuclear meltdown.
She rolls her eyes and my body relaxes, Chernobyl warning alarms ceasing.
I take another bite. “Want to go to the park and read together after my call? I got a new book from the library, too.”
Frankie sighs, accepting the subject change. “Fine. But only if you carry my book. I got a visual encyclopedia ( vi-zoo in-thide-a-peda ) of World War II. It’s heavy.”
I nod as if it’s totally normal for a five-year-old to be into World War II weaponry and aircraft. “I know. I carried it home for you. But what if you brought your backpack instead?”
“It’s too hot to wear a backpack. My back gets all sweaty.”
“Fine,” I tell her.
“But you have to do French braid pigtails before we go,” she adds.
“This is not how negotiating works, Frankie.”
“But can you?”
“Fine,” I repeat.
“Looks like I’m a expert negotiator ( negator ),” she says smugly, like a fifty-five-year-old world war leader.
* * *
Frankie falls asleep with her head in my lap fifteen minutes after laying on our blanket in Fort Greene Park. I can’t stop looking at her.
There are moments as a parent when you look at your child and you are struck speechless in awe and wonder and amazement and at the sheer deluge of love that this tiny person claws out of your dark black soul.
The dichotomies of parenthood are insane, a roller coaster of cyclical emotions. The demon spawn drives you crazy, and you need space, and you feel touched-out and overstimulated, but then you want this perfect, gorgeous human to be glued to your body forever and to spend every one of your waking moments with them because they are so much fucking fun. You’re proud of their progress yet worried about the lack of. You want to do everything for them, but you want them to learn independence. You want to give them the world, but you don’t want them to be spoiled. You want to be fun and spontaneous, but you want to set boundaries and rules. You want them to be kind and empathetic, but not a pushover.
Essentially, parenting is unconditional love and debilitating anxiety all wrapped into one wonderful, sleep-deprived package.
It’s a wonder that humankind has successfully parented for so long.
Or maybe not, considering what I’ve read to Frankie about the world leaders of World War II.
My phone dings with a text alert.
Joan
Let’s chat re: PTO pres stuff. Wanna catch you up. School starts soon
Speaking of wanting to do everything and to spend every one of your waking moments with your child and to be the most involved and present fucking parent of all time…
I’m going to be the president of the Parent Teacher Organization of Frankie’s school this upcoming school year.
I was so involved last year, during Frankie’s Pre-K year, that it was easy for me to campaign to all the neighborhood parents and win the election. I volunteered for every single parent event. I organized fundraisers and silent auctions and play dates. I wrote grants. I organized the walking school bus for kids and families on our block, which was amazing. Each day, one parent was designated the “bus driver” and was responsible for collecting all the kids from our block and walking them to school. Since there were so many of us, each parent only had to work one shift every two weeks. This is one of the few times I’m okay with help, because of the work schedule I need to keep if I want to be around to pick Frankie up at five.
Frankie was psyched during my campaign run, totally in her element as a future world leader slash politician. We made and colored and hung up flyers, stood outside her school meeting families, organized dinners and happy hours. We both decided that Frankie should be the one to ask if we could rent Fort Greene bar space or restaurant space for free for these PS 2 parent events, because she is adorable and who could say no to her (her words)?
Free for a quick chat now?
Frankie could actually sleep through a World War II heavy artillery battle, so I’m not worried about waking her.
My phone rings.
“Hey, Joan,” I answer.
“Hey, Dom,” Jean says.
“You ready to pass the torch?” I joke.
“You ready to take it?”
I laugh, looking down at my daughter’s face. “Psyched.”
I learn about all the logistical things I need to take care of before the school year starts, about all the new people on the PTO board that I need to contact and organize. She lets me know about some projects she was interested in starting during her tenure as PTO president but never got around to. Some of them sound great, like having the PTO pay for all the school supplies for the kids. I put her on speaker so I can start typing this all out on my phone.
“I really wanted to start the school supply purchasing for this upcoming school year, but school leadership was a mess all last school year, and I wasn’t able to coordinate with them. Principal Thomas refused to answer my emails most of the year, and then she was removed, and then AP Sanchez had to step up to the plate and run the school. She was slammed with work, and we never saw her. The superintendent’s office never found a replacement principal. I don’t know if they have yet. But I’d maybe email AP Sanchez soon to introduce yourself.”
I think about it. I really hadn’t seen anyone from administration all year.
It’s a damn shame Ollie left before Frankie started there. Frankie and I moved above Tita Gloria and Tito Ben just so she could be in the correct zone to attend his school. I wanted someone there looking out for her.
I tie up some loose ends with Jean, promise to have one more play date with her daughter Evie before the school year started in a few weeks.
Then I adjust Frankie’s head so that it’s resting on my stomach, lie down on the blanket, and take the nap that all parents deserve.
* * *
One may think that the time to myself after Frankie goes down is the most restful and relaxing part of my day, but it is, in fact, the opposite.
In the four hours I have before I pass out for the night, I:
Finish folding laundry
Locate the half-eaten string cheese Frankie lost earlier (found in a shoe in the hall closet)
Pack Frankie’s lunch for camp tomorrow
Scrub the tank drawn in red marker off the hallway wall (washable, thank god, although red never really comes out)
Think about where that extra can of wall paint went
Wipe down the kitchen
Scrape approximately seven different types of food out of the living room rug
Vacuum the apartment
Rinse the solidified toothpaste out of Frankie’s toothbrush
Pick up all the papers Frankie knocked over in my office
Locate her missing sock (found in the houseplant in my office)
Get some work done
I’m lucky I do what I do, lucky I worked my fucking ass off to get to where I was before Frankie came into my life. Flexible schedule and extremely lucrative—what more could a single parent need? I send out several emails to my various teams, and before I shut my computer for the day, I type out one more.
Dear AP Sanchez,
I hope this finds you well. My name is Dominic Flores, and I’m sending my first official email as PS 2’s new PTO President. I wanted to open up the lines of communication, and I was wondering if you might be free to meet my daughter and me for coffee before the school year begins.
I’m looking forward to hearing from you.
Best,
Dominic
I push my chair back, resting my head on the back of my chair. Time for the grand fifteen minutes of personal time I get every day. Is it a jerk it night, or am I too tired? Hey, parents have needs, too, and mine haven’t been met in… years. Since everything went down with Frankie’s mom, and then Viv right after that… I shake my head. Doesn’t matter. Not going there, not doing that again.
From seemingly nowhere, the woman from Ollie’s housewarming yesterday pops into my head. I let it linger for only a second, remembering the soft curves of her body, her riotous curls, the feline tilt of her eyes and the way they found mine across the yard. The determined strength of her gaze. The plushness of her mouth. The way it all combined to form a woman who looked like she would eat me alive. Then I shove it, body-check it, and drop-kick it out of my head.
I’m gathering the strength to get up and lock the door (you never know) when my computer dings and a new email pops up.
Hi Dominic,
Sure, would love that. How does next Saturday sound?
Best,
Lina
I decide to reply tomorrow morning, at a more reasonable hour. I get up, lock the door, and begin to imagine curly hair and cat eyes and luscious curves that would feel like heaven to melt into.