56. ABRAHAM
AbrAHAM
THE MUFFLED cadence of shuffling footsteps triggering a deeply-ingrained habit, I remained still as I listened to the creek of the floorboards.
Laid out on the living room recliner, one hand draped over my forehead because I’d given up my room to my brother’s girls who’d passed out during the movie, I clocked a small, purposeful gait with no surreptitious ability.
After the movie had ended—along with the dryer cycle on high—I’d dressed my disheveled ex-wife, unwilling to leave her until the very last minute.
But she had duties now. Like making sure her child bathed and dressed and was read at least five chapters from The Hunger Games after catching a second wind.
I’d reluctantly let her go, temporarily pacified by the fact that I’d convinced her to stay the night and could probably talk her into breakfast in the morning. That’d been a few hours ago.
The footsteps moved into the kitchen and I contemplated remaining where I was—a child getting up in the middle of the night for a drink of water hardly warranted my interruption—but then I heard the scrape of one of my mother’s bar stools and was on my feet.
At the edge of the counter, a little girl in sage green designer silk pajamas, a matching bonnet drooping off the side of her head, braced herself to climb onto the chair, then slowly opened a cabinet, attempting to remove a mug from the shelf.
However, the cups were stored higher up and as I’d suspected, she was still not tall enough to reach.
Careful to neither startle the child nor crowd her, I approached from an angle just as the ceramic pale blue mug she’d been slowly pushing toward the edge with her finger tips, toppled over the edge. I caught the mug before it smashed into the ground and set it on the counter.
“Careful. This is my mother’s favorite.”
Miracle stiffened, her eyes widening. Though, not in fear, but rather the normal chastened reaction of child caught doing something they were not supposed to. “I’m sorry,” she rushed out in a whisper. “I didn’t mean to. I’m really sorry. I won’t do it again, I swear.”
Her overreaction confused me roughly a fifth of a second before it fully registered, then it enraged me.
Locking that shit down so the child couldn’t misinterpret me, I crossed my arms over my chest. “Why?”
Her face scrunched in shame. “My tummy hurts. Mommy makes me lemon tea when my tummy hurts.”
“No, I mean why are you sorry and why wouldn’t you do it again?”
Confused, her tiny brows furrowed as though she didn’t understand the question. “I want to be good. If I’m good, then I might get to come back.”
Swallowing, I offered the girl my hand and she trustingly accepted, clumsily climbing off of the barstool. Once she was safely on the ground and no longer in danger of breaking any bones I’d have to answer for, I shut the cabinet and grabbed the kettle from the stove. “Take a seat at the table.”
“Are you going to tell?” she asked.
Filling the kettle with water, I shut off the faucet, brought it to the stove and flipped on the burner. “Tell what? You have a stomach ache, I’m making you tea. That’s not a punishable offense.” I turned to face the girl. “Why are you afraid you won’t be allowed to come back?”
The girl was quiet for too long, like she’d learned not to reveal more than she should, but eventually, her shoulders lifted into a shrug.
I braced my hands against the island counter. “Apologies assume you did something wrong. Did you do something wrong?”
Miracle considered that. “I didn’t ask. Adults don’t like when you don’t ask for things.”
“Is it that adults don’t like when you don’t ask? Or is it that it’s not safe for you to be climbing on furniture because you could get hurt?”
“Mommy was sleeping,” she defended in that small, infantile tone children did.
I sighed, recognizing that the last thing a newly adopted child in a foreign environment needed was an itemized breakdown of their rationalizing skills. “It’s alright. You did nothing wrong. Okay?”
She nodded, albeit skeptically, but I relaxed.
Going to the pantry, I fished out a bag of chamomile tea and dropped it into the cup.
Then went to the fridge for lemon juice and honey.
I moved in silence, aware of large, dark eyes on my back as I poured a generous amount of hot water, lemon juice, and honey into the mug.
When I returned to the counter, Miracle glanced away quickly and I remembered what Nineah had told me.
The unique mark on her face was red and bright, but not angry looking like the scars I’d seen in my former line of work. In fact, it almost reminded me of the color blocking in an abstract portrait. I handed her the tea. “I don’t know how she makes it, so let me know if it’s alright.”
Miracle lifted the mug with both hands, taking a tentative sip, then another. “Mommy puts an ice cube in it sometimes if it’s too hot. It’s not too hot.”
I nodded. “Good.”
Another prolonged silence ensued as she drank and I couldn’t help but steal glances at the child.
She was small for her age—a detail I knew from my mother—and I recognized the same hyper-curious nature oft-embodied by Nineah herself.
I could tell she wanted to speak, fill the silence with questions, and with anyone else, I’d have pretended I didn’t see it, but with this child, I couldn’t make myself.
“Did you enjoy yourself, today?” I asked, offering an opening. The girl latched onto it like she did her tea.
“I tried double dutch. I’ve always wanted to, but the older girls at school don’t really want to teach you if you don’t already know how. I saw you talking to Mommy.”
I stiffened. Then I remembered it wasn’t a capital offense to speak to my own ex-wife and relaxed.
“She says you’re not married anymore, but you’re still family,” she continued.
“She talks about me.”
Miracle nodded. “You’re in the book.”
“The book,” I repeated.
Setting her mug on the counter, she slipped off of the barstool and left the kitchen.
Then a minute or two later, returned carrying what appeared to be a satin-bound scrapbook.
She climbed back onto the stool and set it carefully on the table like a prized possession and opened it slowly, like the pages were made of a delicate material. The first had a headline—Our family.
Miracle turned the pages of printed photographs I recognized because I’d taken most of them, stopping when she reached the one she was looking for.
She pointed to the left side, which featured a wedding portrait of me and Nineah at the altar.
Underneath, in cursive script, read the words, Mommy’s First Love.
I traced the tiny script with my index finger, a well of suppressed emotion I only addressed with paid professionals constricting in my chest. “May I?”
Miracle nodded, pushing the scrapbook over to my side of the counter and I flipped through almost as carefully as she had.
The remaining pages held pictures of Nineah’s friend Zajre, as well as her husband and children, our colleagues from work, our boss and his wives, and finally, my family.
I touched the photos of my parents. My sister and brothers.
My nieces and nephews. On the last page were photos of Miracle.
Weathered baby pictures someone had saved for her, school portraits, candid shots from field trips, and recent ones of her and Nineah both.
I closed the book gently and returned it to Miracle. “Thank you.”
“Are you sad because you’re not together anymore?”
I glanced down at the child who wasn’t asking out of curiosity, but genuine concern. Her soulful dark eyes soft with compassion, she clutched her book to her chest.
“I’m not sad at all,” I admitted. To be honest, I didn’t know what I was.
Regretful? Tired? Ashamed of how much time I’d let pass only to circle the same block of indecision and conflicting desires a thousand times?
In truth, it was likely a combination of all of those, but that wasn’t the kind of thing I wanted to dissect with a third grader.
I should’ve known, however, that she wouldn’t let up.
“But you still want to be together.”
Like mother, like daughter.
“What makes you say that?” I asked her.
“Papa Izzy told me.” Her mouth tugged at the corner conspiratorially. “He says smart adults are some of the stupidest people he’s ever met.”
“Did he?” I said, flatly.
She giggled. A quiet sound that loosened something in my chest. Turning to face the curious child Nineah already loved so much, I was unsurprised that I already saw so much of her in Miracle, but what did shock me was how much I saw myself.
Curious, serious, impulsive, contemplative, this child who shared none of our blood, managed to somehow encapsulate our most conflicting natures, and the irony was not lost on me.
The living, breathing evidence of two clashing personalities married in one body, she wasn’t hopeless or doomed to ruin, she was perfect. And my father was right, I was stupid.
As fuck.
“Miri?”
Her expectant eyes blinked with surprise at my use of her nickname.
“Papa Izzy is not wrong.”
She nodded as if I was the obtuse one and she’d been waiting for me to come to this conclusion all along. “Then it sounds to me, like you have a lot of flowers to buy.”
“A lot of sour gummies, too.”
She laughed. “A lot of sour gummies.”