Today’s
Prompt: “Forgiveness is not an occasional act, it is a constant attitude,” said
Martin Luther King Jr. imagine a character who needs to forgive someone. Who
does he or she need to forgive? What was the nature of the injury? What were
its implications? Does forgiveness come easily to your character or is
retaliation a more natural impulse? Does your character try and fail to forgive
initially? See how your character’s desire to forgive creates obstacles and
ultimately, fuels your plot.
Word
Count: 1,152
“He
ought to have known better. It’s supposed to be his job.”
No answer.
“Damn,
I should have killed him on the spot. I should, too.”
“It
would have increased the fatality by one. That’s bad arithmetic.”
“It’s
good equation, though. It is too, considering who’s involved. Leaving him alive
creates a chemical imbalance.”
He rolled off the bed and walked around
the room in an arc heaving heavy sighs. He turned around abruptly, retraced his
steps and sat on the edge of the bed.
“You
can’t resolve this issue with a mathematical formula.”
“My
point,” he said. “Is I didn’t fulfill my obligations to him.” He stabbed the pendant
lying in a tangle beside the bedside lamp.
“Let
it rest now.” She reached out and touched his hand. “Come to bed.”
He took her hand in his but kept his back
turned to her.
“You
know what, everyday I remember that cussed day, every night the memory of it
weighs down on me, and I feel like I played the role of the actor who forgot
his lines at the defining moment of the play. The jerk who ended the play
before it truly ended.”
She remained quiet. She’d heard those
lines rehashed over and over again these past months she might as well live in
an echo chamber.
“And
they say, I’m supposed to let it go.” He was off the bed again. “Just turn off
the emotion, kill the memory. He was a part of my…” He reconsidered. “Our lives. Do you know how it hurts
every time I check in his bedroom and he’s not there? Do you know how that
takes it out on my feelings? I miss the non-stop racket that Home Theater of
his produced. I miss 2Pac, Twista the whole lot of ‘em noisemakers, I’ll give
the world to hear a skit performed by that noisy rapper… what’d he call the
fella when I approached him about his taste of music?”
“Lil’
John?”
“Gotta
be him. Lil’ John that should have been long gone. I miss the rich stew of
complicated confusion which flowed from his room and rocked the foundations of
this house.”
“He’s
gone,” she said. “Someday, you’re gonna have to face it on life’s terms. Why
not today?”
“The
manic son of a bitch who thrust this misery on us is out there on the streets
free as air. And all I have… all I have is a memory.” He pounded his fist into
the wall.
“Torturing
yourself ain’t bringing him back. Quiet down a bit.” She extended her hand.
“Come to bed.”
He loosened up a little bit and climbed
into bed beside her. She reached under the sheets and held his hand. They both
lay there each on his or her side and stared through the ceiling—they weren’t
really looking at it. Their minds drifted off to some other place—a
not-so-distant-past—to the time when a teenager, their little boy kicked
football all over their yard and made a real mess of the neighbors flowers.
The
young man who had shared his dreams with them, the same with whom they’d both
shared their hopes and joys. He’d been the strength of their marriage, a kind
of breathing license. And though, he was gone, their union was not weakened by
his absence but each half of the couple knew they’d both lost a chunk of their
real selves. An essence they might never recover.
“You
know, sometimes, I wake up in the nighttime and I hear him as clear as the
noise his home theater made while he was here, laughing and kicking that
over-sized ball of his all over the house. The laughter wafts into the room
like breeze through the drapes. Sometimes, I wake up and rush to the window but
it’s mostly to erase the misconception; to prove to myself it’s all a dream.
I’m not going crazy, you think?” He snuffled.
“I
hear him too,” she said in a whisper.
“You?”
He was propped up on his elbow, studying her. He reached out and plucked off
the lone tear breaching the edge of her eyelid. She was crying too.
“I
never hear the bus plunge through the fence, tires screeching, coming for him,”
he said.
“Me
too. Those are the best memories I have of him. I know I wasn’t home when it
happened but this memory I’d love to keep. Forever.” She sat up on the bed and
wiped his tears with the sleeve of her pajamas.
“If
we could have him back. For one day. It would settle every issue.”
“We
could, you know?”
He gazed at her but the point was lost on
him. “I don’t get it,” he said, his voice gruff as he struggled with emotion
overflow.
“Forgiveness.
Then every time we remember him. Every time, we hear him play football in the
yard (if we would be hearing from him anymore after forgiveness has done its
work) it would be as it really ought to be. No memory of death; of a DUI driver
behind the wheels of a bus beating a path through the fence of the house
rushing in for our son, knocking him into the ground like a hard tackle,
dragging him several meters across the lawn then spitting him out like mangled flesh.
Left for dead, because the driver was probably, too blitzed to assess the
critical situation in time. No memory of bitterness and no time for it either.
Who wants bitterness after you’ve experienced release? Not me. Forgiveness can achieve
that level of freedom.”
He fixed his gaze on her, through her.
And after staring for roughly, the length of eternity, he lay back and dropped his
head on his pillow. She almost gave up hope that this night might be a rehash of
every other night’s drama, when his voice drifted to her in undertones.
“Did
you say something?”
“I
said I’ll think about it.”
It was the reassurance she needed. It was
enough. Not long after she dozed off.
He doused the bedside lamp. Then he fell
asleep not because he wanted to but his eyelids defied motor control and slammed
shut and of course, consciousness needed his break.
In the middle of the night, he woke to
the sound of a ball bouncing off the wall. He crept out of bed and went to the
window. His son was there as clear as day, playing football. He glanced up at
him and waved, he waved back and hurried outside. When he got to the spot where
his son had stood kicking the round leather stuff against the wall, he was
gone. The ball, however, had been left behind.
“Goodbye,
son,” he said. He picked up the ball and walked back inside but not before saying
the magic word,
“I
forgive. By all that is just and true, I forgive.”
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I
am aware that not one of the characters in this story bears a proper name. It’s
absolutely intentional.
Eneh
Akpan
June
8th, 2014
