MELINA
Last night was a rough night, but I could get some sleep once I slept in Joey’s bed. When I woke up, Joey wasn’t in bed anymore and I smelled food cooking. Swinging my legs out of my bed, I get up and follow my nose to the kitchen to find Joey cooking breakfast. He places the pancakes on a plate with eggs and salmon cakes. “Good morning sleepy head. We have a long day ahead of us.” I smile and grab a plate and sit down at the table. I dig into the salmon cakes, and it tastes incredible and for a single minute, everything is fine. When I look up, I glance into Joey’s brown eyes and reality hits me once more. I will never see my parents, my friends, and the crazy part of it is I don’t know how I died. Joey and I eat the rest of our breakfast in silence, and we get up and clean the kitchen. After we clean the kitchen, I look at Joey and ask, “So, what do you have planned for me today?”
Joey dries his hands. “We are still exploring your past and how it connects to the events leading up to your death.” I roll my eyes and he sees it. “I know you don’t want to relive the past, but you can’t move on if you ignore your past. You have spent years blocking out the ugly parts of your past and repainting them with beautiful strokes.” I look down at my hands and twiddle my thumbs because he is right. While my parents seem like the perfect picture on the outside but inside, we have some deep problems. Instead of therapy and addressing them, we bury them and plant flowers over them. My brothers Malcolm, 28, Malik, 27, and Marlon, 26, keep reminding me I have it better than they did. They allege when they were younger things were rougher with our parents and they saw more of the fighting. They claim that when I was born, everything settled down because they were trying to make up for their past errors.
I always wanted to ask my parents why their marriage magically got better when I was born, but never got the chance. Joey waves his hand in front of my face. “thinking about your past?” I meet his eyes and nod my head. “You will get all the answers you seek, and I promise when this is over, you will feel better.” I don’t know for sure if I will feel better, but there’s nothing I can do to stop this. We go to our own bedroom to get ready for the day. I take a hot shower and open the closet and, after shuffling through the clothes, I see the clothes are my size. I wore dark blue sweatpants matched with a blue short-sleeve shirt and a hoodie. A knock sounded at my door and I open to reveal Joey wearing blue jeans white t-shirt and leather jacket. He is a walking cliché, but I can’t make a Grease joke due to him dying years before it came out. Wait, he can read minds. Is he reading mine right now? I grin and think back to the grease opening scene. I am brought out of my thoughts by Joey laughing.
“Was that actually a movie or something you made up?” I grin. “it was a movie and an iconic one at that. I used to watch it with my mom when I was younger. It is still our favorite movie.” Thinking of my mom makes me sad because we will never get to sit on the couch on a Friday night watching our favorite movies and eating popcorn. Joey tries to take me out of the funk. “I’ll take it easy on you today.” He reaches out his hand and suddenly we’re transported to a memory with my mom and me. I look around and notice that we are in the park, just the two of us having a picnic. We look happy as we are enjoying our meal, so I’m not sure why I would block this out. Joey mentioned we were going to be looking at memories that I blocked out and this memory is happy from the looks of it. Joey walks over to a nearby picnic bench and sits down and I sit next to him. “So why are we watching this memory? Because I thought we were dealing with memories, I blocked out?” He puts a finger over his lips and points to my mom and I we tune in to the scene.
“Baby, there is someone I need you to meet but I am going to need you to not to tell daddy or anyone else. Can you do that for mama?” I look to be around 6 or 7 “I thought keeping secrets was bad.” My mom smiles and brings me close for a hug. “some secrets are dangerous, but some secrets prevent hurting other’s feelings. This is one of those secrets where it will hurt our family if anyone else found out.”
Me being young and trusting, I nod and my mom smiles. My mom looks beautiful. She had my brothers and I rather young and if I was 6 that means my mom was around 38. A tall white man with a muscular build with black hair and hazel eyes comes towards my mother and I. He sits down on our picnic blanket while I am picking daises in the park, and he kisses my mother. He must be another one of my mother’s lovers, which after the first memory I take it my mom still had her infidelities even after my parents go back together. The more I look at these memories, the more pissed off I get at my mom for constantly cheating on my dad when he has done nothing but taken care of her.
“Okay, so I get it. My mom cheated on my dad, and I kept a lot of her secrets. I never cheated in my relationships, so what does this have to do with me?” Joey drinks a can of coke which baffles me because I don’t remember him ever going to a store. Then I remember that somehow, he can conjure up food and just about anything. “Keep watching” Joey conjures up a Root Beer and holds it out to me, which I take. Little me runs back to my mother, and she hugs me and the unknown man holds opens his arms and I hesitantly walk to him and give him a hug. I study them and it almost looks like we are a cute family, and my eyes go wide. Joey brought me back to this memory for a reason and could it mean that this man is my dad? I don’t think he is my dad. I mean, I am lighter than my brothers, my hair is also curlier, and my eyes are hazel. My mom has green eyes because she is biracial, so I could’ve easily gotten my eye color from her family. Tears filled my eyes, and it’s possible that my dad isn’t my dad because of my mom’s history. I wonder why my mom stays with my dad if she was just going to cheat. Joey looks at me and rubs my back. “what you are thinking is correct. This man is your father, and this is the moment where you and your stepdad having problems.” I hug Joey and he hugs me back. “Do you want to see why your mom isn’t faithful to your dad?” I nod and we disappear once more.