The Felt
Rayna
Our house in Wilkinsburg wasn’t big or fancy, but Mama kept it acting like it was. Curtains washed and pressed, floor vacuumed in neat lines like Daddy mowed the yard. Pine-Sol lived in every room, like it paid rent. Daddy kept the porch light fixed and the hedges trimmed. We weren’t poor. We weren’t rich. We were steady — TV in the living room, a microwave that dinged tooloud, plenty of food in the fridge and gifts that still surprised us on birthdays and Christmas.
Only the house always seemed to know when it wasn’t enough.
The fridge would hum harder, like it was nervous. The kitchen light would flicker once, like it’d just swallowed something sharp. The air pulled tight in the corners, like the walls were holding their breath with me.
I was in my room, coloring a dolphin in my Lisa Frank notebook, when Mama’s voice creased through the plaster. Not the same voice she used to sing Frankie Beverly with. Not the honey voice that teased Darren. This one was thin and tired.
“Marcus, I can’t do this no more. I can’t.”
My blue pen slid outside the line. Ink bled into white.
Daddy’s answer came low and even, the kind of voice that carried its own warning. “Denise, let me finish. You always cuttin’ me off—let me get it out.”
I crawled to the hallway, my belly flat to the carpet, cheek to the floor, a kid with eyeballs on a hinge. Darren was there too, socks half-off, crouched like he’d promised himself stoneface. We knew the rule: don’t breathe loud, don’t make a sound.
Mama tapped the counter—tap, tap—when she was trying not to cry. Daddy sat at the table in his work boots, a tool bag at his feet. His shoulders held the way wires hold current—tight, taut, too much running through them.
“We had plans,” Mama said faster, as if speaking quick would catch lost time. “For me to go back to school. for us to travel. Paris. Jamaica. All the things we talked about when we was twenty-one and stupid in love.”
Daddy rubbed the back of his neck like he did before he measured wire. “I ain’t forgot. I been working so y’all got what you need. Roof. Heat. Clothes.”
“That was your dream,” she shot back. “Surviving. Paying bills. Acting like steady is the same as living.”
He softened, like he was trying to fold the heat into something manageable. “I thought making sure you never had to worry was love. It won’t be much longer before my business starts getting steady clients and I get bigger jobs.”
Her hands stilled. “Comfort ain’t love, Marcus. Comfort is silence. Comfort is this house bein’ clean and me feelin’ invisible. I don’t wanna just survive. I wanna feel chosen.”
He looked at the back door like it might open with an answer. “You the best thing I ever touched. You know that?”
“Then why I don’t feel it?”
The words landed and made the kitchen smaller. Darren shifted beside me, but his face stayed still. Daddy finally stood, slow. “Maybe I should go on and leave tonight. Don’t wanna keep hurtin’ you if I can’t give you what you need.”
Mama folded her arms like armor. “Maybe you should.”
It was clear but the way her palm pressed against her chest, that she didn’t want him to go—but her mouth never said stay. She never shared her truth.
My throat locked. I wanted to yell don’t go for all of us, but my mouth forgot how.
Daddy saw us on the floor before he left. He gave the little chin lift he always gave—pride and sorry mixed in one tilt. “Hey, Sparky,” he said, voice breaking.
“Hey,” I whispered.
“Y’all too cool to help your old man with this bag?” he asked Darren.
Darren stood, shoulders like he was carrying his own weather. Daddy patted him, then went down the hall. He came back with a duffel, set it down, and put his thumbs on Mama’s arms like he was memorizing the way her shoulders sat. “I ain’t quittin’ you. I’m quittin’ this way.”
She blinked fast, tears spilling down her beautiful face. “I know.”
He kissed her forehead and walked out the back door. The door sighed like wood that’s had too much weight put on it. That sound etched itself into me — the exact pitch of a family breaking apart quietly. The silence afterward was worse than their shouting.
Friday his truck came back, loud as ever. Darren dragged his feet, but I took the stairs two at a time, too excited and young to care about the dangers of breaking my neck.
Daddy let me drown my pancakes in syrup before we headed to the pool hall — an old spot with dim lights and chalk dust in the air, the smell of fried food and smoke like an old jacket.
