Sins of the Father: The Bloody Trail of Disenchantment, #1

TABLE OF CONTENTS

The Kite

The Legacy

First Warm Day in Spring

The Analyst

Sins of the Father

Hush

THE BLOODY TRAIL OF DISENCHANTMENT

Volume One

Sins of the Father

Some events in this collection of stories are based on real life. The scenes of atrocity and names of the guilty have been changed to protect the disenchanted so that they may continue on their bloody trail until fully healed (who knows if that's even a thing!?).Bad daddies herein are dead, and because dead men tell no tales I have...

For the record: there are good men in this world.

Men who are honest, committed, loving, and ethical.

These stories are not about those men.

THE KITE

I had a kite once. It was beautiful, with bright colors and a tail.

I was three or four at the time and the kite was bigger than I was. We’d seen them streak across the sky in the park on our afternoon walks and to me they seemed like perfect celestial beings.

Daddy and I had a routine then. He would put his house slippers aside and put on his walking shoes—which were fancy by today’s standards but not as shiny as his dress shoes. Then he’d grab his fedora and I would get very excited.

This meant he was going to the store to buy a cigar. Sometimes, Daddy would also buy me penny candy.

He did not buy me candy every single day. Mama would have never allowed that. Although, according to my mother I also had some input on the candy situation and would subtly inform him, Daddy, there is no candy in this house.

Mama says she witnessed this herself, and the man put his newspaper down, placed his reading glasses in his shirt pocket, and high-tailed it to the store to correct the situation.

A tragedy indeed!

The candy store he visited was a few houses and a bend away. Daddy liked the gentleman who owned the store. They were friendly. They’d chat about politics and current events for a minute or two.

If he took me along, after they had their little visit, we’d walk around the block, enjoying our candy. When we came back home, he or Mama would put me down for a nap.

Before I was ready for pre-school, the storeowner died. It was sudden is all I really know. I remember he was the reason I first saw my grandfather wear a suit and his aforementioned shiny dress shoes. We went to offer condolences; the body laid out in their living room.

That left quite an impression on me and I am not at all certain Mama explained it away properly or successfully. If anything, that was the first in a list of deaths that led to nightmares about drowning in a glass box thrown into the ocean (because somehow that’s what I assumed would happen when you died).

Inexplicably, Mama thought that telling me of a burial at sea would be gentler than explaining topping a box with six feet of dirt. I am not sure she understood that I believed that the word dead meant asleep because he was dead tired. Nobody bothered to try to explain death to me. Granted, it can’t be easy to explain this to a toddler. Still…

~*~*~*~

Our routine changed after that, and our afternoon walks extended to Main Avenue where Daddy found another candy store that carried cigars a few blocks away, across the park. 

It was a big deal for me because I got to interact with more neighbors, and see the park and the schools that I would attend later in life. My world expanded beyond my own block and my backyard, as it were.

Sometimes we would go into the park. Sometimes we’d veer past to another shop, and Daddy would get me a small, cold coconut. The shopkeeper would cut it on the spot, and I’d sit quietly drinking coconut water directly from the shell with a straw, while he and Daddy argued about something or other (they were the first pair of frenemies in my life).

Sometimes their arguments about nothing lasted longer than my coconut and I sit there gyrating my head trying to make my pigtails spin like tiny propellers.

This made me happy. That was my normal.

Usually, though, after I emptied out my coconut, the shopkeeper would take a machete to it and slam it on a slab of wood. It would break, and he’d hand me a half shell and a spoon so I could eat the sweet white meat inside.

Most days, though, we went to the candy store across the park, and the Cuban man who owned the store and Daddy competed to see which would be more obnoxious, each putting on more airs than the other and making the man’s wife roll her eyes in complete contempt.

Sometimes, boys would be playing in the park – riding their bikes, running and screaming and frolicking, cartwheeling, throwing balls around, and flying their kites. They were doing all the things I wanted to do. But it was the kite flying that truly fascinated me. One day, I knew, I’d fly my own kite just like the boys!

~*~*~*~

Anytime I spotted a kite, I would get excited and point it out to Daddy. I would make him linger so I could watch it twirl in the air. He would pick me up so I’d be closer to the heavens and we’d watch it kiss the sky.

To me, this was pure magic.

Daddy was a loveable, bearded giant, and when he picked me up in his arms, I felt powerful – like an extension of him. I’d play with his beard and watch the kites dance among the clouds, dreaming that one day I might have one of my own… I’d sing, as I did when I was happy, and tell him stories of me and my future kite.

It did not matter that it was a boy’s toy and the older boys would not play with me; I loved kites and would stare at them lovingly whenever I encountered one.

Watching them was as much fun as learning a new word.

In Spanish, a kite is called cometa, as in a comet. Another word for it is papalote, probably a reference to the fact that some were made of paper. In Puerto Rico, where we were living at the time, a kite is also known as a chiringa – a word that, to this day, tickles me to say it: Chee-ring-gah!

I waxed poetic about kites, inasmuch as a three year old is capable of such things.

Eventually, Daddy bought me a Gayla.

This is remarkable because the man did not buy toys, and this may have been the one and only time he did.

I sang. I danced. I covered him in kisses. I was ecstatic!

He promised we would go into the park, and fly my kite.

My own kite!

~*~*~*~

A man of his word, the very next day, he got his walking shoes and fedora, tucked the kite under his arm, took me by the hand and we waved goodbye to Mama as we headed for the park.

The park was a communal property, and it housed a baseball diamond for little league (which we named after Sandy Koufax), a basketball court, and plenty of green to run in. Fenced off to the side, it also included a community center. The public schools (grades K-6 in one building and 7-12 in the other) had separate gated entrances into the park. Later, this is where many of our physical education classes took place.

We stopped at the candy store, and Daddy bought his daily cigar and had his daily standoff with the stodgy Cuban.

We crossed the avenue and went into the athletic field. He started the kite off without a running start – either because the breeze was being very cooperative or because Daddy was a kite wizard – right on the spot, and because he knew how to manipulate the wind expertly, like magic. My Daddy was brilliant!

The kite started climb up to the sky rapidly and, it was beautiful. Truly magical! It took my breath away, and I watched it get smaller as it inched closer to the angels.

I was