Confession
The room was crowded and dark. It was meant to be a nursery, and even now some of the furniture reminded the visitor of that: the brick-red bunk bed where my brother and sister slept, and then I; the yellowish wardrobes with the clothes of two generations of children; the desks, some of their drawers full of memories. But since then, the furniture have been joined by a circular coffee table, because there was no room for it anywhere else, and an armchair that converts into a sponge bed its covers half torn off, and two bookshelves.
We entered here that day. First Dad, then me. Adult and child. No one moved to turn on the light. Even though I stood right next to the switch, I made no move to flip it on. At seven, one can grasp a lot of things, even if it's just on tiptoe. I tried to look around in the darkness, waiting for Dad to say something, that we were going to play or that there was going to be a surprise. Yet with each moment of silence, an increasingly uncomfortable, gagging feeling clung to my insides. Dad stood in the dark, facing me. I couldn't see his face, I could only imagine his gaze as he spoke:
“I have to say something”
I only guessed he wasn't looking at me. The strip of light that cut the room in two through the ajar door was on his shoulder. In the next room, Mom turned up the TV.
I waited for him to go on, for that thing to come out of him. But in the meantime, I was being strangled by a strange thing inside. Maybe he said "must" because he just had to and she didn't really want to say anything?
I understood a lot of things at seven, but politics, for example, which, when it came up at the dinner table on a Sunday, always ended up in a red-headed sparring match, I didn't know where to put it. Would this be like politics?
My eyes were drawn to the strip of light. Just then, Papa shuffled past the door and the room went completely dark for a few moments, maybe a whole minute.
“I'm not spending New Year's Eve at home, I'm staying with another woman.”
Dad's voice reached me at the exact moment when the tightness and lump in my throat was at its highest. I didn't understand. Is this bad news? What is he talking about?
Meanwhile, Papa walked past the door and the streak of light crept back into the room. Dad moved and for a moment I saw his face. Then I knew: the lady was bad news.
“You can't divorce Mum,” I whispered.
Dad was in the dark again.
“You're angry, aren't you?”
“I don't care what you do, you're not getting divorced.”
I went over to Mum and knew I couldn't be a child anymore. And that room couldn't be a nursery anymore.
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