Tears on a Sunday Afternoon - Michael Presley [35]
“Why? What happened to you? A bitch cheated on you?” I asked, taking a seat on the couch opposite him.
Brian turned the TV on.
“Life isn’t fair.” Brian held his face in his hands.
“Brian, you put a little too much into pussy,” I said, without thinking why Brian was so distraught.
“I have a daughter.”
“A daughter?!” Brian had never spoken to me about children.
“It’s always very hard for me to talk about her.”
“Why, is she in Australia or something? Did the bitch take your daughter and run away with her? Because bitches will do that; this girl did that to a friend of mine. She took his son and left New York. He doesn’t know where the fuck she is. He has tried tracking her down but he can’t find her. These bitches are crazy.” I remembered my friend, Leroy, ranting and raving when his child’s mother took his son and bounced.
“I know where she is, but I can’t go near her. She’s in California.”
“So, why don’t you go and see her?”
Brian got up from his chair, put the empty bottle of Shandy down and went into his room. He returned a short time later carrying an album. Brian sat next to me and opened the album. The first picture in the album was Brian, beaming, holding a half-covered baby in his arms. He didn’t have to say it but the look in a man’s eyes when he is holding his child is priceless. He pointed to the picture. “That was when she was born. She was the most beautiful baby in the world.”
“She sure was.” I smiled, realizing that I had said the same exact thing about my son.
“This was when she was one.” It was a picture of a baby girl holding on to a crib. There were more pictures of his daughter in all different positions. Brian was in some of them and in others, it was only his daughter. The last close-up picture of his daughter was when she was in front of a birthday cake with the number two in the middle. After that, the pictures were taken from a distance with a high-powered camera.
“What happened after she turned two?” I asked.
“By the time Linda turned two, her mother and I weren’t speaking anymore. I had moved out and we could barely stand being in the same room together. Don’t ask me what happened between us. I don’t know. Whether it was her fault or mine is irrelevant. The shit simply wasn’t working. But she would always make me be a part of my daughter’s life. She would let me keep my daughter all the time and I thought it was going to go on forever.” When Brian stopped and looked up, his eyes were swollen with tears.
I felt sorry for him. “Did something happen to your daughter?”
He shook his head. “No, nothing like that.”
“So, your daughter is still alive?” I asked.
“Yes.” He continued to stare out into space.
“Why don’t you go see her?”
Brian closed the wallet and gripped it tightly in his hands. “My child’s mother met someone and he was very insecure.”
“That’s his problem. Let him go get counseling,” I said.
“She said I couldn’t see my daughter anymore.”
“Okay, bitches say shit all the time. Who gives a fuck?! What the fuck, she’s not God!”
Brian shook his head. “God she isn’t but she’s willing to go places even the devil won’t go.”
Brian didn’t have to say any more because I knew exactly what was coming next.
“That would have destroyed you and everyone around you,” I said.
“I would never do anything like that. God knows I would kill anyone that even comes close to my daughter with that. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. I have never held my daughter in my arms since then.” Brian started to cry. The tears were uncontrollable and unstoppable. It shook his body on this Sunday afternoon.
I put my hands around his shoulder to comfort him. “Your daughter is getting older and one day you’ll be able to talk to her and tell her the truth.”
“But I’m missing so much,” he said between sobs. “She’ll never forgive me.”
“Brian, there’s nothing you could’ve done. When a man is accused of sexual abuse, the accusation is a loss. It doesn’t matter who finds you innocent.