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Travis came back again today. This is the sixth time he’s visited in the last month. The sixth time in fourteen years. He heard about Anna through the news. He told me this on his first visit. I’m sorry, he’d said, unable to look me in the eye. I wanted to slap him across the face. Travis doesn’t care about the loss of one of his daughters. Not like I do, anyway. He’d never even met her.
He brought me a gift today. A pair of gold earrings. Stolen, I’m sure. Or fake. He handed them to me in a brown paper sack. He didn’t say a word, just gave them to me. It was awkward and weird. I don’t know why he did this other than that he’s very desperate for my help. My financial help, to be clear. Which, now that I think about it, confirms that the earrings were stolen and also are fake. Otherwise, he would have sold them.
I still have the jewelry he gave me when were dating. Cheap and inexpensive, but I loved them. Now, I hate them.
He’s different now, a totally different person than we were together so many years ago. Hardened. I know he’s spent time in prison, but I don’t think he knows I know that. He doesn’t know that I’ve kept up on him, even after he left town—left me. His latest arrest was for possession with intent to sell. I think it was his fourth arrest.
Every visit is the same. He tells me he’s matured and that he’s learned from his mistake—if you call abandoning a pregnant woman a “mistake.” But then he asks for money. Every time. He thinks Gerald is giving me money. I don’t know why. He couldn’t be more wrong.
My father hasn’t even called since Anna died. Scratch that, he hasn’t called since before that. Since mom died in the house fire. Do you want to know what’s crazy about that? I don’t care. I don’t care that he hasn’t called, just like I didn’t care when I found out my mother burned to death. There was nothing. No emotion. None whatsoever. In fact, I don’t care so much, that I don’t even care to write about it.
I don’t care about anything now that Anna is gone.
Today, I gave Travis all the cash I had on me, about seventy dollars, and told him that was the last time I was going to give him anything. I’ve given him about $300 since he started coming around again. Today he asked for more. Said he knew I had more money hidden somewhere. I asked him what he needed it for, and what he was spending it on. He beat around the bush and didn’t give me a straight answer. Luckily, the school bus pulled up to the curb before it got too heated, and he ran out the back door.
He wants money; money only—not a relationship with his now only living daughter, Sylvia. I can’t say that I blame him.
I also can’t bring myself to judge him. On the outside, Travis and I are very different. But on the inside we are very similar. Perhaps this is why I was drawn to him in the first place.
Travis doesn’t know. He knows the stuff my dad did to me, but he doesn’t know that I have my own similar struggles. Sometimes I think it’s for the best that he doesn’t know. Sometimes I wonder if the girls would have been better off with him. Sometimes, I wonder if I would have been better off without the girls.
After he left, I got drunk.
I am drinking more than I ever have before; way too much. I know this. But it is another thing that I can’t bring myself to care enough about to do something about it.
I have lost a child. I have held a dead child’s body in my arms. I have purchased one of those tiny caskets. I have had a funeral for a child. I have buried a child. Drinking is how I cope. It’s the only thing that numbs the feeling of sick inside my body.
I hate Sylvia. I hate that Anna died and she lived. I can’t hide it anymore. I know she knows. She’s always known that Anna was my favorite.
Something isn’t right with her since Anna died. She’s withdrawn, which I’d be lying if I said bothered me. She stays in her room all the time. Hardly ever comes out. When she does, we don’t speak.
Sometimes, late at night, I sneak in to check on her. Often, I find her standing next to the window just staring out of it. Staring at nothing. It’s weird.
Last week, she got into a fight at school. Kids are starting to pick on her.
I’m considering moving. Very much considering it. Leaving Texas and moving far away. Somewhere Travis couldn’t follow and take my money. Somewhere Sylvia could start over. Somewhere I could start over. I think about this a lot—starting over. Sometimes I think about becoming someone else. Pretending I am someone else entirely. Pretending that I never even had Anna.
23
Sylvia
Rhett is still digging in dirt when I return at dusk. The lot is vacant now, aside from two backhoes backlit by the setting sun. The other construction workers are gone, either at the bar or home with their families.
Not Rhett. He is all alone, same shovel in hand, same sweat-stained T-shirt, same grit in his eyes, except now, he is twenty feet further down the tunnel. The man has not stopped digging since I left him hours earlier.
My respect and admiration for the man triples with each new meeting.
He looks up as I park.
“Time for a break,” I call, climbing out.
He squints, looks around as if realizing, for the first time, that he is all alone. I wonder if he has actually been enjoying the work. Being outside, by himself. Being a productive member of society again.
He stabs the shovel in the dirt and dusts off his hands as I stride across the dirt.
“Ready to go sleuthing?” I ask, jovially.
“You changed.”
