Before the Ever After(9)

looking at every part of my face

like I’d just appeared in front of you.

What’s your name again, boy?

Daddy, I say. You play too much.

I asked you, what’s your name?

And then your eyes weren’t your eyes anymore and I got up and ran through the house yelling for Mama.

But when I got to the top of the stairs I heard you say Little man.

It wasn’t like you were whispering it, but it sounded like a whisper.

Little man! you said again. Like you were just figuring out who I was. Little man. Your son.

And I came back down the stairs because you sounded so sure this time.





The Whole Truth


Sun so bright over Maple

Daddy walks real slow down to her, sits beneath her branches—all the leaves gone now.

I watch him from the kitchen window, see him lift his hands high into the air

as though he’s reaching up for a ball, snatch them back down again.

Again and again. Reach. Snatch. Reach. Snatch.

Beside me, Ollie watches too while his mama and mine whisper in the living room. I hear the word doctors.

I hear the words don’t know.

I hear my mom say Bernadette, I think they’re not telling the whole truth. Too many of them— Then she gets quiet.

Your dad is so different now, man, Ollie says. I miss your old dad.

He used to call me his son from a different mom and dad, remember?

Now he doesn’t really call me

anything anymore.

It was like . . . it was like I had a dad again, ZJ.

And now I don’t. Again.

I want to yell at him, but his voice is so tiny that I want to hug him too.

So instead I just say

I miss my old dad too.





A Different Kind of Sunday


Now it’s Sunday night and the game’s on and the television’s turned all the way down.

My daddy’s in his chair,

watching with his eyes half closed the way he does when he’s studying every move

and trying to remember the rules, the players, the teams.

I feel like I used to know so much about everything, he says.

Where did my memories go?

And the confusion in his voice makes him sound so lost and alone.

When I was small, I’d climb up on his lap when he was home and we’d both sit there.

We didn’t watch the games together that much back then because if it was football season, my daddy wasn’t home.

And I’d be watching him on television.

And those times when I got to go to his games?

All the other football players used to pat me on the back and ask when I was going to get in the game. Or they’d lift me up on their shoulders and call me

their good-luck charm when they won.

I was just a little kid back then but I remember the sky above me. And my daddy smiling.

And the sound of roaring that must have been fans.

Cheering the team.

And me.

And Daddy.

I hope my dad can remember that.





Waterboy


There was Sightman and Chase and this other guy we used to play with.

Right now, I don’t remember his name.

My daddy has his head in his hands.

Uncle Sightman and Uncle Chase. And the other guy is Uncle Willy Daily, I tell my dad. They’re your friends who played football too. Sightman was a wide receiver and Chase was a running back and Uncle Willy Daily, he was the water boy.

You guys always tease him

and call him Waterboy.

Cuz he really didn’t have no game, my daddy says.

Tell me Waterboy’s name again, little man.

Uncle Willy Daily.

My daddy pulls his hands away from his head.

For a long time, he doesn’t say anything, just looks at them.

They’re shaking like dead leaves shake just before the wind blows them off the trees.

Maybe he’s remembering how the ball landed safely in his hands.

Maybe he’s forgotten what we were talking about.

Daddy? I whisper, gently touching his shoulder.

Some days his head hurts so bad, he just sits holding it in his shaking hands.

And we can’t touch him.

And we have to whisper.

And walk on tiptoe.

Does your head hurt?

My daddy nods. He’s a big guy, but he looks so small sitting there.

He reminds me of the ant I watched the day before— it had lost its whole long line of ants and was walking in circles,

its antennae searching the empty air for the friends it had lost.

Tell me that guy’s name again, little man.

Uncle Willy Daily, I whisper. But you all called him Waterboy.





Wishes


The year Daddy tore two ligaments in his knee, but made the touchdown anyway, he was home like this

for a month.

And we made so many songs and had so many laughs

and watched so many games that I wished it could be this way for always.

And now I know what people mean when they say careful what you wish for.





Too Many of Them


In the kitchen, my mom and Bernadette are talking about some other football players my mom knows.