My little brother didn’t understand.
He dragged a chair, stood on it, pressed his lips to the glass frame of the picture on the wall, and whispered, "Baba, come out.”
When my mother saw this, she panicked, snatched him away so hard the chair tipped over, and his knee bruised on the floor.
She wept, holding him, but not for the bruise.
Her tears belonged to something much deeper, the unbearable weight of being asked a question no mother wants to answer.
"Where's heaven... where's dad?"
And so... twenty years later...
Andrew says the gospel fooled him.
Growing up, it wasn't about who was, but what was.
So over and over again, he would look for certainty.
A life he lived not because he wanted but because his dad said so.
As for him and his family, well, you know the statement.
Today, Andrew is the guy in a suit posing as the pub attendant downtown.
He's been naked for rich, older women more often than he's been for his bathroom window.
He says it's survival.
He says the world called him to that.
That he's the one destiny wrote his story on a bad day.
So I dare you....
I dare you to call him.
Call Andrew and tell him what he's doing is wrong.
Tell him his good deeds will pay for his ailing mother's medication.
Tell him not working at the club will magically put food on his table.
Tell him...
Tell him to go home and be a good boy.
The world is kinder to good boys. Tell him. Lie.
Lie!
And so, when you come into my mother’s house today and see that picture on the wall, don’t tell me how handsome my father was.
Don’t tell me how strong he looked in his suit. Because all I see is the day my childhood ended.
All I see is the smile of a man who left us carrying the weight of his absence.
And maybe, just maybe, one day I’ll take that picture down.
Not because I’ve stopped loving him, but because sometimes survival means learning to stop staring at ghosts. No matter how hard it gets.
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