All Good Things
It’s red.
It’s less than a foot in length, and adorns stationary scarlet wings that never
had the ability to fly. Behind the black plastic cockpit is a sit for pennies,
a centimeter in width, with only a slight and minuscule area below for holding
coins. I don’t remember ever actually putting any money into it, even though
I’ve had the damned thing for nearly eight years, and I don’t plan to start
anytime in the near future. As a matter of fact, I never even played with that
stupid toy plane when I was a little kid, and it’s probably been sitting in its
perch on the high shelf of my closet since we moved to my current place of
residence in
Curious. Through all the extroverted years past, and all the toy trains, and plastic Power Ranger action figures I once had in my possession, that stupid little Texaco model airplane that’s sitting atop my wooden shelf is the only tangible thing that I still have of my childhood, and it’s the only thing I vividly can remember, wing to wing, and from stern to face. More peculiar still is how my brain has prioritized my memories. I don’t remember how to get on the secret levels of Super Mario World anymore, even though I played that game every day after school for three years straight, and I cannot recall exactly the steps were to my tap dance solo during the recital in second grade even though, at the time, I had made a point to burn each movement perfectly in my six year old brain.
Nevertheless, I remember that stupid crimson Texeco model airplane. I remember how I got it, who gave it from, and why. The rest of my childhood is a blur; a collage of faceless memories gone with the winds of puberty, frightening voice changes, and hormones. Somehow I left tap dancing and Super Mario World on one of the numerous U-Hauls we utilized back when we used to move a lot. Still, I made sure I kept that obscene bothersome airplane.
Why?
My father
had given it to me while we lived on the dilapidated block of
My father...
He was a tall strapping black man with salt and pepper hair cut closely to his scalp, and skin as dark as pure obsidian. He always carried a kind face and loving smile and the only things that I can think of as being an annoying about him was the fact that he was addicted to the lottery, and more prominently: the fact smoked his life away, one careless puff at a time. In fact father smoked cigarettes every day of his life to the point where his hands and teeth had a permanent yellowish tint to them, and his eyes somehow shared the same golden hue. One time, my mother and I hid his cigarettes, because the one thing my mother would not stand for in her house was nicotine. We all laughed that day as he frantically searched for his pack of Newports, not truly upset.
We laughed.
He never called me “son,” or:”Kyle or any stupid nickname (thank God,) and referred to me simply as “buddy.”
“What’s up buddy?” he would say.
“How was school buddy?” he would question.
“Good morning buddy,” were the first words I heard when the sun came up.
“Good night buddy,” was the last thing I heard before I went to bed.
God bless the soul of that simple, simple man.
I never saw much of my father because of the fact that he worked for a meat packaging company downtown, and had accidentally cut himself many a day or night just to make ends meet while my mother went about her job as a nurse for the elderly. On Sunday, the only day he had off, nobody would bother him. We, my mother, sister, and I, would just leave him alone and let him watch him gulp his beer down, or watch him stare at the Eagles game unblinkingly with his watery yellowish eyes. I don’t think he would of minded if he sat down with him, but we left him alone as a sign of gratitude for all that he had done as a provider. It was our way of bandaging the bare wounds on his hands, although I never heard him complain about them once. He was perfectly content being a good provider and father for us, so that we never woke up on Christmas, and found a total lack of presents under the tree like so many of our North Philadelphian neighbors. A hard worker was that man, my father, and he was happy to provide for his wife, his son, and his daughter no matter how much it hurt. In his hands we never were poor; hungry or cold, and in his hands, those scared but strong black hands, we were held together adhesively as a family.
I was too young to understand things, however. I didn’t understand the severity of the situation when he and my mother would have hour long screaming matches upstairs, or when my mother would kick him out of the house, and I wouldn’t see him again for days, weeks, or even months at a time. I don’t know where he went all those times, I just always sort of took for granted that he was coming back, that my mother and he would make up, and that we would remain a family, solid, together, and unbroken.
Usually when he came back he brought us presents- something like gargantuan bags of candy which we swallowed whole and greedily, to the disapproval of our mother, who warned us that we were going to end up like her, with fillings in every other tooth. She and my father would give each other deep meaningful glances that said more than their arguments ever did, though I was too busy mutilating my teeth with huge blocks of Heresy’s chocolate to notice.
On one such day, my father brought home a red plane he’d picked up at an airport after one of his long absences. Since, at the time, I was fascinated with forms of transportation – trains, buses, aviation and so forth – I hugged him, and took it up to my room. I was going to start playing with it, but dad shook his head smiling. He told me that it was a bank, and that I should drop spare change into it so that I wouldn’t have to bother my mother for funds for my sweet tooth all of the time. I nodded my head, saddened that I could not play with the surprisingly fragile toy, and stuck it in my closet somewhere. I immediately associated it with my father.
It was the last thing he ever gave me.
My father
couldn’t read. He had come from the south to
“You have no idea Kyle, your father would be so proud.”
This was the
same woman who, one day, called me downstairs after another screaming match in
our new house, on
It had been dark in my room because the light bulb had gone out, and I hadn’t bothered to tell anyone. I was sitting there, in my pajamas lying on my mattress watching getting ready to go to sleep, snuggled up with my giant beige teddy bear that my mom had brought me. I must have been drifting off already, because, the next thing I remember happening was my mother calling up the stairs frantically for me as though my life depended on me getting to the bottom of those stairs as quickly as I could. I jumped out of the bed onto the warm red carpet, crossed the room in an instant, and dived through the doorway and soared like a pin missile through the upstairs hallway, nearly fell down the steps from running so fast, leaped over the last five, and looked at the doorway. My mother stood there looking very angry, her nappy black hair messier than ever, standing there, not much taller than me, her sleek bifocals hanging off of her squashed nose, all while she wore a red and gold robe and slippers.
The great brown door was ajar, as well as the brownish metal door that stood at the end of the vestibule between the two. The wooden floor was cold and I looked around our living room with the most horrible feeling that I had done something very wrong for my mother to yell at me like that.
Dad was nowhere around.
“What’s wrong mom?” I asked looking around for the fire. I was all ready to contest whatever wrong she thought I had committed, even if it had been the truth but she cut me off.
“Say good-bye to your father,” she sighed, and somehow, in my seven year old mind, it clicked that something very serious was going on, and I ran outside, without shoes, socks, or anything into the chilly night, jumped painfully down the front steps onto the cold white pavement a beneath the leafless tree that stood right before out steps and watched, wide-eyed, as a shadow suddenly rounded the corner, two houses down, without a word.
That was the
last time my father ever stepped foot in
How could he abandon me? How could he leave his own son behind, the same one who he patted on the back and hugged when he cried? More importantly, how could he leave his family behind, with children he had brought into this world and a wife whom he had sworn his life to until he croaked, fell over and died? I can just see him now, in France or something, choking on a cigarette, falling over himself and dying, the dormant wounds on his hands suddenly springing open again, gushing out their thick scarlet treasure, breaking the bonds between life, Earth, and his very soul. If he could sit there and not have a problem with his hands being carved like a Thanksgiving turkey while he prepared some meat for some fat carnivorous man across town, why couldn’t he be a man and take care of us? I bet he doesn’t even care about me, and I don’t care about him.
At least I think I don’t.
It’s red. It’s less than a foot in length, and adorns stationary scarlet wings that never had the ability to fly. I never touch it, and I never put pennies into it even though it’s supposed to be a bank. It just sits there watching me as though its propeller held piercing hawk eyes. If I just got rid of it, I would be able to finally clean up my closet, and to put all of the books where their supposed to be. I mean, if I just moved to the top of a dresser, or gave it to Goodwill or something, I’d finally be able to say, truthfully, that I’m not so un-cool that I still have toys in my room.
I don’t touch it though. I let it keep starring at me through that closet, and I stare back waiting for it to blink. Once or twice I thought about taking it down and playing around with it and this triggered some insatiable urge for me to be a kid again for some reason. Since the day I got it, the most I’ve ever done with it was play around with the propeller, flicking it into a spiraling cycle with my thumb and middle finger, watching it go around and around, and feeling somewhat empty when it finally stopped spinning. I think to myself how much I wish this thing would spin forever, and think about how cool it would be if it did. Then the wings can straighten themselves, and the wheels can lubricate automatically, and start to move.
It can start racing on an invisible runway, finally breaking loose from the ground, which wishes so much to keep its grip, keeping it from flying free. I can somehow shrink myself so that I may fit inside of the cockpit, and fly all over the world, that plane and I, living together, and dying together, and I’d never let go of the steering wheel, listening closely waiting for it to somehow whisper the word “Buddy” in between the obscene roars of the engine. I whisper back:
“Don’t you dare tell me where this ride ends.”
And, at least in that world, it never does.