| Genetics |
Daddy said there ain’t no reason to be scared and then he jumped. Momma wasn’t home when he did it, only me and Lucinda, but I don’t really think Lucinda counts much because she was three at the time. I on the other hand was fourteen, and that’s quite a difference. I remember it was spring but hot out, I remember I ate a bacon sandwich for breakfast that morning, I remember I had scrubbed the bathroom earlier in the day so all I could smell was Pine-Sol, and I remember Daddy said “There ain’t no reason to be scared” so calmly it was as if he were comforting Lucinda after a bad dream, not stepping off a window ledge.
They always call it “jumping” if you commit suicide that way, off a building or a bridge, but Daddy stepped out the window and off the ledge like he was stepping out to get some cigarettes from the convenience store down the street. He kissed Momma goodbye when she went off to work at seven that morning, he washed the dishes after we were done eating, he took Lucinda and me to the park, and then that afternoon he stepped out the window. Later on, we had the funeral.
Now I’m twenty-nine and it’s been exactly fifteen years since I last saw my daddy. Momma married again, to a man called Gray. Lucinda lives with them, on the other side of the city. She’s eighteen now, and even though she doesn’t call Gray “Daddy”, she doesn’t remember ours either. He’s just a photograph to her, and not even a good one because Daddy hated having his picture taken. “I belong behind the camera,” he would say whenever someone asked him to pose. I’m the same way, which is why I make my living taking pictures.
Sometimes when I see Momma, she’ll tell me how similar I am to my daddy. She’ll stroke my cheek and say it kindly, and each time she does, I see it more and more. We have the same eyes and the same lips, and he used to tug on the hair behind his ears the same way I do when I’m thinking about something. We both like strawberries with brown sugar and sour cream, we both read Dickens, we both like the color orange. We both had our children young and married young, and lately I have been terrified that I am going to end up just like him.
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