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Dad lets his head fall back. Staring at the ceiling, he mutters, “Jesus.” Dazed, he walks over to the recliner and sinks into it. He buries his face in his hands. “Jesus. JesusChrist,Azalea.”
While he’s not very religious now, he grew up in a devout Catholic family, and I’ve never heard him talk like this. I’m silent as a lump grows in my throat.
An eternity passes before he looks at me again. “Did you tell Maverick yet?”
My jaw drops. I haven’t even told my dad that Maverick and I are talking again, much less that we’re dating. “How did you—”
“Because I always knew it would be you two,” he says, a tad sharply. “I knew since the first time I met that kid. But I never would have thought that either of you would be this irresponsible.”
My head bows under the weight of his disappointment.
“Did you tell him?” Dad asks again.
“No,” I whisper, chastened. “Not yet. I need—I just need to hear what happened with Marie from you. I feel like I need to know that before I can decide what to do about…this.”
Dad drags his hands down his face. “Okay.” He takes in a long breath and lets it out. “I understand that. But Zay-Zay—”
I relax a little at his use of my nickname.
“What I have to say is upsetting, and I don’t know if right after you find out you’re…” He can’t bring himself to say it. “I don’t know if this is the best time.”
Bile is sour in the back of my throat. “I’m already upset. Please, Daddy, just tell me.”
He works his jaw. I hold my breath.
“Alright,” he says finally. “Alright. I’ll tell you everything.” He looks me in the eye. “I blame myself for all of it.”
“MariecametoColoradofor school,” Dad begins. “She went to community college in San Antonio first, lived with her parents. They were against her transferring, but she couldn’t get an engineering degree there. She worked something out with them and made it happen. She was a teller at my bank; I went in one day and we started chatting, realized we were both students, and she gave me her phone number.”
I sit with my hands folded tightly in my lap, hardly daring to move or breathe out of fear that it’ll stop the flow of words I’ve been waiting my whole life to hear.
“That was August, and she got pregnant that winter. We made poor choices, obviously, but we also didn’t know much about sex and birth control. Her parents were religious, like mine. Maybe even more so. Having the baby—having you—was the only option in both of our minds.” He pauses. “You know I don’t still hold that view.”
“I know,” I murmur, crossing my arms protectively over my midsection.
Dad sighs. “Anyway. Marie. She wanted to continue school for that spring semester, but her parents stopped giving her money. We wouldn’t have been able to pay for that and daycare, so she went ahead and withdrew, took on as many hours as possible at the bank, and saved up. I had a full scholarship, and I refused to give it up.” He blows out a breath. “My mom…yourabuela, she had really drilled it into my head that I couldn’t squander opportunities like that, coming from a working-class background, being Latino. She was right, but in my situation, all that should have taken a back seat.
“You were born the fall of my junior year. Marie quit her job. I stayed in school, and I was working two jobs to pay our bills. That first semester with you, I did a paper route starting at four a.m. and then I would go to class until three; from there, I went straight to work the dinner shift at a restaurant. I waited tables and tended bar, and I got home around ten on good days, midnight on the long ones. I’d take a shower and go right to sleep, then do it all again the next day.
“It went on like that up until I graduated. Weekends and summers were the only times Marie got any sort of break. She was depressed; I knew it, could see it. She had struggled with her mental health even before getting pregnant, and this whole situation completely exacerbated it. I know now that she was probably suffering from postpartum depression and should have been seeing a doctor about it, but I didn’t know anything about that at the time. Neither of us did.
“When I graduated, I got a regular nine to five job. I dropped the paper route and the restaurant jobs, and I obviously wasn’t going to class anymore. I hoped that since I was around to help more, it would get better. Somehow, it just got worse. She resented me for what I’d done to get through school, and I’m embarrassed to say that I didn’t handle that with the empathy I should have. She snapped, and I snapped back. She talked about returning to school—theonething that would put a smile on her face was that, the idea of going back to finish her degree—and, God, I was such a jackass and a moron; I told her we still couldn’t afford daycare and that she just needed to stay home for a few more years.”
Dad stops for a moment, shaking his head in disgust at himself. I stay right where I am, silent tears streaming down my face. My heart aches for Marie. I’m angry with my dad. I’m overwhelmingly disappointed in myself.
If anyone’s getting trapped here, it’s you.
How could I have been so careless?
My dad, this man who I once thought could do no wrong, goes on. “The day she left…” And he stops again. “Zay-Zay, are you sure—”
“Tell me.” It’s a quiet demand. I barely recognize my own voice.
“The day she left, I came home from work and you…you were screaming.” His eyelids scrunch closed, as if he’s trying to ward off the memory. “It wasn’t a normal cry. It was haunting. I can still rememberexactlywhat it sounded like. It took me a minute to find you, because you were in the coat closet with the door shut. Marie was nowhere to be seen.” He looks at me with glassy eyes. “I’ve always suspected that your claustrophobia stems from that.”
I press a hand to my chest. It feels like the walls are closing in on me right here, right now.
“I took you straight to urgent care, just in case. But once we got there, it turned out your diaper was clean, and you were completely fine. You hadn’t been alone as long as I first thought. When we got back and I started looking around our apartment, I could see that all her things were gone. I called her parents to let them know, and then…” Dad shrugs. “I looked for her. It took a long time, but I managed to get a hold of her when you were seven. I apologized to her for my part in everything and I…"
