It is better that you go through a short period of sadness and even anger than live the way we are aIl living now
Matt
.
Matt?
He didn't even sign it Daddy, I thought. The letter shook in my trembling fingers. I put it down so quickly someone would have thought it burned. It did burn, but it burned in my heart. No one spoke, and then Brenda suddenly began to laugh. She laughed so hard tears came into her eves and ran out the corners.
"How can you laugh now. Brenda?" Mama asked. astonished. Brenda continued to laugh.
"Brenda!" Mama cried.
Brenda stopped laughing and took a long, deep breath. "Don't you see. Mama? Don't you see?"
"See what?"
"Uncle Palaver did it. He made the stranger disappear. He's a wonderful magician after all."
4 Daddy's Secret
. Anyone who would have stepped into our home or seen our faces would surely conclude we were a family in mourning. Even Uncle Palaver, who seemed always to move within a bubble of childlike innocence coated with optimism and joy, held his head down, his eyes dimmed and dark. He did all he could to comfort Mama, but she was inconsolable.
Despite what he had done. I didn't want to hate Daddy. I tried hard to push away those feelings. I felt more like someone who had been struck in the head, stunned, confused, and very lost. On the other hand. Brenda hardened even more, trailing bitterness behind her like someone tracking in mud wherever she went.
"Let this be a real life lesson for you. April," she told me the following day. She was sitting in the living room, gazing out at the driveway and the basketball net and backboard where she and Daddy had played so many times. As if it knew how to dress our mood, the day was overcast and dreary. Shadows splashed all around us in a melancholy downpour.
Brenda didn't look at me when she spoke. She kept her eyes fixed on the memories, I imagined. because I saw a different scene out there as well. I heard Daddy's laughter, saw him shake his head with surprise when Brenda dribbled past him or made an almost impossible shot.
"We've got a real WNBA star here, April." he told me.
I was jealous of their relationship, even though it was full of competitiveness. At least they were doing something together. All I could do was fetch the ball when it bounced off to one side or another and pass it to them. I was like a puppy waiting for a pat on the head. Sometimes it came; sometimes it didn't.
"The worst thing you can do," Brenda continued, with her eyes still fixed on that basketball net. "is give yourself completely to anyone like Mama did. You can see what good that's done her. The truth is, there is no such thing as a perfect love."
She turned to me. I was afraid to speak or move. I had been wandering about the house all day, standing far minutes at a time in the doorway of Daddy's office, staring in at his desk and his books. He had taken or destroyed pictures of himself, but the room still said Daddy to me, even though it was resoundingly empty; it was truly as if Uncle
Palaver had made him disappear.
How could I still sense him so strongly if he wasn't going to reappear? I thought hopefully.
"You want to know why there can never be a perfect love. April? I'll tell you why," she said before I could utter a sound. "We're all too selfish. That's why. Down deep inside, we're all too selfish. We can't resist pleasing ourselves. Just remember that. April. Brand it into your very soul," she told me, and turned to look out the window again.
Mama was in her bedroom, the door closed, Uncle Palaver was in the guest room, probably trying to come up with some plan, some way to rescue the situation. I had cried as much as I could. My eyes were bankrupt.
"Maybe we can find out where he went." I said.
Brenda turned to me again, and for a moment. I thought I might have made a good suggestion. She looked as if she thought it was possible. Then she smiled, but it was that cold, plastic smile she could put on to signal she was about to throw a ball of thorns into someone's face.
"What for. April? To beg him to come home? Do you even want him to come home after this? Well? Do you?"
What could I say? I did. I wanted him back so we could change him, make him see how wonderful we rere and how wonderful his life had been with us. I still believed in us.
"This is one of those life experiences that should help bury your childhood. April," Brenda said. "The days of candy canes, gumdrops, and bubbles are gone. You're going to grow up very quickly now. When you realize how alone you really are in this world, you grow up or you perish.
"It's a lot like that out there on the basketball and volleyball courts. You depend on your teammates, but you have to deliver, and they have to deliver, or you lose. It's as simple as that, winning or losing. In the end, you know what only matters? The score. That's it. April, the score. All the rest of it is... is baloney. Forget that stuff about 'It's not whether you win or lose but how you play the game that counts.' It doesn't count in the end. People respect winners, not good losers.
"We're not going to be good losers," she vowed, "Believe me, what Daddy has done is not going to make me a loser." She looked away, and then she turned back to me quickly, suddenly looking more like grouchy Daddy. "I don't want to see you moping about here and crying in the corners. either. Mama doesn't need it. Not only are we going to hold together: we're going to be better than ever. You hear me?" she practically shouted at me.