NONFICTION
Father-Daughter Dance
You
didn’t realize that you’d begin this essay talking about Grandma’s Boy from 2013. But alas, here you are. You couldn’t remember his real name even if someone promised to pay you. You only remember this:
Y’all had been college naptime buddies for a while (that’s the polite way to say it). It was around Christmas, or close enough to where both of you were sitting on the floor in your freshman dorm bedroom and he was helping wrap Christmas presents. He said something about his grandma, and BAM! The nickname Grandma’s Boy commenced. To be honest, how does one go so long sleeping with someone and not knowing their name? It gets to a point of no return. The no return where y’all get in bed, turning off the lone overhead light keeping you out of the darkness. You’re done wrapping Christmas presents for your family, friends, and even the apology gift to your roommate who all semester you’d asked more than once to “leave the room” or “don’t come around tonight” because of some nicknamed boy whose name you didn’t bother to learn.
Weeks later, when you’re in the CVS bathroom stall, peeing on a stick because you can’t stand the waiting till you get home, you’re more ashamed that if you’re pregnant, you wouldn’t even know Grandma’s Boy’s name when you tell him, “Congratulations, you’re going to be a dad!”
Slow
and steady is the pace of your heart after your hair is freshly washed, suds sopping up the past few days where you received the worst news of your life to date. It’s 2019. The first thing you did after the news was schedule the hair appointment. Some black girl rituals always work. The psychiatrist was a black woman. She was all black and bold and beautiful and cut to the chase when she read your new identity: Diagnostic Code 296.89, F31.89.
Dance
was what the boy who cheated on you wanted to do. And you both did, together. In your tiny apartment, on the beige carpeted floor. You could feel the shag between your toes to this day if you tried. You managed not to sleep with him, yet. You were trying out the whole “only if he’s my boyfriend” thing because, at this time, God’s Word hadn’t performed open surgery on your heart. The truth is, you’ve wanted to stop having sex for a while. God was truly in your life now, no longer as far away as you’d pushed Him. Yet, it’s been difficult to stop having sex. You can’t understand why sex feels like a high you can’t stop seeking. You didn’t find out that your newly minted boyfriend was cheating on you until the night after you’ve given in and slept with him. You found out while you were driving to y’all’s Waffle House date. His real girl from Michigan, his hometown, had to call you up on Facebook Messenger because she saw your “In a Relationship with Othello” post. Yes, that was his name. You can’t make this stuff up! His real girlfriend knew something was wrong. She said she “just knew it.” Before this moment in time, before the guts of her story spilled out and she told you everything, you and he had already made plans to go to an STD testing clinic after your Waffle House date. You know, “just to be safe.” By this point, you don’t care about the boy. As someone who’s gotten clam before, you ask if she has any sexually transmitted diseases or infections. That still, small voice is very loud in your ear. She says, “Well, I have HPV. But he knew this!” Again, you couldn’t make these things up if you tried. All that rings in your mind is: He knew this. It’s February 2015.
With
all cards on the table, you’re honest with your mother. It’s 2018. You lay it all on the line 7,000 feet in the clouds. You’re on an airplane, and you can’t shake it. Your racing and pacing brain is now remembering how, in 2013, your mother pinned your body to the bed and choked you out once you yelled to her: “You’re mean!” She later said she “saw something in your eyes.” Your brain is still running and picks up the conclusion that she thought she saw a demon in you. You pay for the $10 Wi-Fi to look up the history of exorcism, Scriptures, and anything that you can reference where someone is delivered from a demon by a person choking it out of them.
When you can’t find the line or verse, you’re shaking with tears, blurring the phone screen as you type up an email pouring out your pain. You’re not angry, just sad. You send it to her. Then you can rest; after sending it off, you delete it from your Sent Folder so you don’t have to remember being vulnerable. By the time the plane touches down, and you’re away, her response is already in the Inbox. She makes comments about knowing you’ve been mad at her and that you’ve never forgiven her. Statements that aren’t true or the point. But then, the freedom comes when she says that she knows you weren’t possessed, “it was just a phrase of reference.”
This is what freed you: knowing that when she saw you, she didn’t truly see a demon there. That when she looked at you, she still saw her little girl, even if pinned underneath her grip.
No
more tears have been shed over the symptoms that used to follow you like a shadow, all while you never knew. In 2022, you were freed from the diagnosis. In 2023, you called out to God, confessed, and received freedom from the trauma of the memories. You entered a season of Gladness.
Music
from the fueling of the Holy Spirit is what you hear in your soul when you wake up and release it out of your mouth. Peace penetrates your renewed mind. It’s 2024. God is your Father who has always loved you. You’re a prodigal that He’s kept His arms open wide for. The symptoms of bipolar disorder that plagued you are not the sum of your story. They’re barely even a portion now. When hypersexuality was ruining your life and hypomania plagued you. Before your family relationships were restored—and they are restored. When you reeked with depression, unbathed for days. He still saw you and wrapped you in His arms for a dance. A swaying and sidestepping with His daughter, whom He views as pure and worthy. All His.
Tiffany loves to travel and collect rocks and postcards along the way. She currently lives in Arizona with her sassy chihuahua, Maria. Her work has appeared in Microfiction Monday Magazine and is forthcoming in the international literary magazine Tears in the Fence.
Next (Lev Raphael) >
< Previous (Angela Townsend)
Image: Return of the Prodigal Son, Christian Rohlfs, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Heart of Flesh Literary Journal 
