Yellow Sky

Miguel Vernis

 

Just another fool parading in a false triumphant masquerade, dancing where there’s no music. I hope to see You become the better. I hope to see all your dreams become as concrete as these bathroom confining walls.

The fading mustard-yellow walls seemed to be more enclosed than ever. It didn’t help that the three-piece mirror he stood before took most of the space in his shanty half bath. He felt the world changing as he stared into his reflection. The ribs in him stuck out and made a bumpy texture as he ran his weak hands from his chest to his thighs. There were no windows and only a brief crease between the door, and the floor let in a slight, cold draft that made its way to his cold toes.

If ever this body, where my true entity resides...and this pale-face reflection of mine...would just speak and smile on its own...or even talk...what would You say? I know You would say, “Are You happy?” Just another fucking question to add upon the millions of questions I have that are long due to be answered by any person other than myself.

He stood before the mirror long enough for the humidity of his present shower to completely fog his reflection. He couldn’t see himself anymore—this he liked. His hands began to shake. It was time. He took a deep breath—then, he completely stopped. He heard the main door in his apartment open and then slam shut. His heart became beat-less and his ears perked in attentiveness. Small footsteps began to approach—Is it them? he thought.

“John?” a little voice cried. The little girl, his daughter, knocked on the bathroom door.

His heart pulsed again and his nightmare became bliss. “Regina? Is that you?” He unlocked the door enough to peek his right eye out, and he saw her standing with her blue backpack that had dangling key-chains tossing around. She was rummaging through his dusted paintings. They were the last that remained.

“Can you walk me to school please? Mom wouldn’t wake up! I’m already late and Mom said I shouldn’t be walking alone to school.”

“Your mom’s right, you know? How did you get in?” He shrugged that question off. “That’s beside the point. Ima have a talk with your mom today. I’ll walk you to school. Wait a second, okay?” He rapidly put his clothes on and turned off the shower and the lights and took a last glance at the bathroom set-up before leaving.

Halfway to school, as John and Regina walked along the broken concrete sidewalk, he had to stop for breath and a five minute break that allowed him to regain his equilibrium. This was a malfunction that he had recently discovered.

“I’m eight now. I can walk to school alone, you know.”

“So you’re all grown up now, huh? But no, no you can’t. You should always be with someone you know. I’ll always be there if...” He stopped himself. What stopped him was not the crosswalk lady that seemed to be shaking her head at the sight of him walking his daughter who was late to school for God only knows what reason this time, but he himself had stopped his statement to look at his daughter, to look at a part of him that was now part of this life. She had his smile, his curly brown hair, and the green eyes of her mother. Her mother, with the pharmaceutically nurtured back, was what he was ashamed of, not what the crosswalk lady with the pruning face who was tightening her lips in disgust thought about him in his blue jeans and plaid jacket.

“Look, Regina...”

“John,” Regina interrupted. “What’s shame?”

“Shame? What? Why?” His cell phone began ringing. His fingers began twitching uncontrollably and he felt anxiety rush through his body like a child or Regina on her first and only trip to Disneyland. Regina noticed his trembling as well. “What have I said about calling me ‘John,’ huh? Try calling me ‘Dad.’ Please?”

Her eyes begged an answer like the judges in court. Yet hers were in the shape of her mother’s. But hers were sweet and innocent and they weren’t bleeding with manipulation.

“Shame is a burden.” He knew she wouldn’t understand that word so he said it.

“So I’m a burden.”

His plan backfired; it always did. “I’ll explain it to you when the time comes, okay honey? Please go to school. Your crosswalk lady is looking at me like your mom when I don’t give her her money.”

Regina laughed. It surprised him that she even laughed. “Daddy...” His heart stopped when that word entered his ear. It was a beautiful yet rare sound. “That’s not funny.” She gave him a hug and crossed the street and he watched her go until she vanished from where he stood. It scared him knowing that he couldn’t see her; on the other hand, he could see all of life’s damnations being prone to her vulnerability in her youth.

The Phone, he thought immediately. No missed calls? He was more use to this malfunction than the loss of breath. The phone rings when it shouldn’t and doesn’t when it should.

He looked around and began walking west to his habitual rendezvous. He was desperate this time since his plan had backfired. Within minutes he was at the street intersection and after hours of waiting, his nails were narrowed to the rim of his flesh. Where is he? Why isn’t he here? He ignored his untied shoes; they were of no importance right now. Instead, he walked in circles as his dependence sunk past his normal cravings. His palms began sweating. His newly smoothed, cracked fingernail tips began pulling away at his frail hair. He looked across at every corner. Nothing. His connection wasn’t there. His body hungered the fix of the day. Again he checked his phone as it shook within his crippling hands. Isn’t thirteen voicemails enough? His heart kept beating fast. It’s an addiction, he thought. And it took until now to know he was sick. But that didn’t matter right now. The only thing that mattered was his remedy. He wanted the pain gone before he would fall. Fall into a web of hopelessness and into deeper debt with the dealer he feared would soon break his door, break his stuff, break him. He saw himself clinging to the spoon at home like a weak fool, and he predicted right. He would be home in thirty minutes. He would be fixed. But his last breath would not be regained in a five minute break.

 

He found himself coming back to a familiar world where pain was the element of life and staying alive caused it. He that dies pays all debts. That quote had come up with the first thoughts of realizing he was alive. He’d been here before. It wouldn’t be long until the doctors would say he had just had an overdose. He closed his eyes when a sudden sound made them open:

“So...I’m your burden, huh?”

He was in no state to answer, but in the perfect state to know that his daughter was the one holding his hand. He also knew that there weren’t two pairs of green eyes in the room, so he looked straight through the window unable to really put an effort to move.

“Mom calls it shame.”

He raised himself to sit straight and speak to the window and out to the dying day outside. And with the little strength he had in him he spoke.

“Shame is in the world, Regina. It’s the pain triggered in your back or a pill you swallow that leaves that bitter taste in the throat of your mouth. Look,” he said, pointing at his stomach. “Shame is my own stomach. Under-nourished. A lack of self love.”

Across the room and through the window, the fatiguing brightness in the yellow sky simmered ever slightly to nightfall. He was unable to move as the earth was endlessly spinning. He could see the last remaining brushes of pink streaks glossing the sky as the falling sun was sinking and robbing the day of its beauty. Meanwhile, he was here.

“I’m stuck with you, Regina, and that’s fine with me. I can’t say you’re a burden because I’m the one lying here unable to hold your hand. I’m the burden. When you reached for my hand, I understood...”

He thought about the questions the doctors would ask. The explanations for the set-up in the bathroom where he last remembered falling. The pills. The fix. The suicide. He suddenly remembered—before he attempted to fill his mouth with death—waiting for those little footsteps to come in and rescue him once again. This time, they never came. And death was never washed down with a glass of water gripped firm in his hands. His eager and stupid fix had stopped his heart. It had stopped him from his art. Nothing, however, had stopped a frantic mom in search of her daughter to stroll into his once blooming artistic apartment and finding him unconscious. That didn’t matter now.

“...I understand,” he continued, “...that acceptance is in the world.”