The Scientific Observation of Scraping My Knee
Nothing is worse than not realizing that there is something underneath this thing called skin that looks like fresh turkey meat but it’s called tissue, but you don’t wipe your nose with it, and then some liquid coming out of it that seeps out to slow, but way too fast for comprehension, and you have to sop it up like thanksgiving bread on gravy, all in 8.5 seconds.
At the age of eight was when I got my first scrape on my body. I was rushing to get home from a long drawn out day at school, but the ground was too big and fast under my little feet ; I missed a concrete step and fell straight to the ground. When I was a little kid this seemed like the worst thing in the world; scraping my knee and looking at this strange stuff coming out of me. But, I appreciate how I paid more attention to the process my knee was going through aside from the fact that I just scraped myself. I understood that there was something underneath my skin and there was something that kept all of this stuff inside. It was kind of scary; the fact that there was something underneath. I don’t know if it was more scary that something was underneath my skin or the fact that my skin was scraped off and the inside was coming out
The Skin
I’ve lived with my mom for most of my life, so it was at a very young age that I realized my mom and dad were two separate people. Most kids that have parents that have been together throughout their entire lives almost think of their parents as one entity; but I knew different. They were separated since I can remember so it was just me and my mom at the hospital the day I was born.
I wanted my parents to be together; what kid doesn’t. But as I got older I appreciated them not being together, but until then I was forced to understand why they weren’t. One day I was sitting in the living room with two pigtails in my hair fixed to the television playing a video game and it reminded me of my dad, because whenever I would go over to his house that’s one thing we enjoyed doing with each other- well- one thing that we could do without him getting emotional on me. But anyway my mom had on a swishy sweat suit and was swishing around the living room doing some straightening up that she never accomplished, and I unfolded myself from sitting Indian style and thought why not see if she wants to be with daddy and play video games. I totally ignored the fact that she just got married a year ago. I tilted my head to the side and asked, “Mom, why don’t you like daddy? He likes playing video games and so do you.” She replied with a hesitant and a comfortable uncomfortable slight chuckle, “I know Nashira, but there are other things.” I sadly fixed my face back to the television and kept playing the video game while still thinking of other things I could ask her that had to do with her and my dad; I was not satisfied. I did this often. I would come to my mom crying asking her why she didn’t love daddy anymore, but this time was the last.
After not getting the responses that I wanted from her, I kind of gave up after three years and a half and forced myself to understand why they weren’t together. It was time to grow up. Besides, she was married already.
When I didn’t live with him, my sister and I would go to his house every other weekend. We dreaded it; at least that’s the front I would put on. One weekend my sister and I were getting ready to go to his house and we met up with him at the usual place. My mom drove us there, and when we would get close enough it’s almost like she could smell his stench. That’s what it seemed like because her face would scrunch up around her nose like she smelled something disgusting. There me and my sister were in the back of the car exchanging smacking of the teeth and “man I don’t wanna go”. But, as soon as we got out of the car and saw my dad my eyebrows didn’t look so evil anymore and I even smiled. This time we had to go to the store with him and my stepmother before we got to his house. When we got into the store I offered to push the cart and I did it with a smile. As soon as my sister could steal a second to grab my face with hers behind my dad’s back she said, “I thought you didn’t want to be here.” I pretended almost like I didn’t hear her and kept pushing the cart hoping my dad would look back so it would help out my act to ignore my sister. Half the time I sat up underneath my dad watching boxing and asking him questions about the house because I was interested in what he was interested in what he was interested in; knowledge. My sister stayed in the room most of that weekend although she did come downstairs to eat. When we sat at the dinner table he would say a prayer in Arabic and it made me a bit uncomfortable. The dinner conversation was mostly between me and my dad; I didn’t like the awkward silence. Before I knew it the weekend was over and when it was time to leave I thought I was going to be alright. My sister made a b line to the door as soon as my mom beeped the horn. But me, I dragged my feet like they were full of metal and when he hugged me I didn’t let go. He didn’t either so he picked me up and once his heart was against mine I cried like a baby coming out of a mother’s womb that was about to be disconnected from the umbilical cord. I couldn’t help it. Just the thought of leaving him and him giving me that last hug and sealing kiss on my forehead before we left made me cry so hard.
The older I got the more I saw how I wasn’t like my mother. We were two different people. We were a part of the same autocracy but we were a dichotomy. I shared her physical features but not her personality or traits. I was connected to my creative side than she. I read for my own sake, sang for relief from my problems, and wrote to clear my mind. I had a love for music and everyone knew it. I left traces of my creativity all over scraps of paper or napkins and it was evident that I was in touch with myself because of I did what I loved and enjoyed doing. I never really saw this side of my mother. In her spare time she would be working on work, and when it wasn’t her spare time she was doing work. If she did have a journal of some sort, it was in private because she never mentioned it or had any pieces of paper or napkins with notes on it about herself until recently. In this respect she played the mom role; she would work so that we had a roof over our heads and go to sleep. Occasionally my mind would reach out to see where I got this love of art from and it had to be my dad, but that’s as far as it would go; no farther than thinking about him or sending out a text, because I didn’t have the right things to say.
Layers of Tissue
Living with my mom, of course I got her side of everything and I didn’t know anything else, but I did have a mind of my own. My dad would always call me or reach out to me in some way asking me if I got the money he sent me and my sister, and I would say no. Then he would tell me about how “someone” must have been taking the money because he sent it to me and it was not in the mailbox. I didn’t know what to think. My mom would tell me that there was no money in the mail for me from my father.
My mom was married to my stepfather since I was five, so he was the father figure in my life, if you want to call a man who came in the house every day from work, walked upstairs, spoke because it was the right thing to do, went into him and my mother’s room, and closed the door a father figure, then that’s what he was. My dad wasn’t around too much so my stepfather was the closest and fastest thing that came. I started to call him dad and everything, but my sister knew better and snapped me back into place. She may not have liked our dad but as soon as she heard me call him that she snatched me up and said, “ Don’t call him dad, he is not your dad so do not call him dad!” From them on I called him by his first name, Kelvin.
What was there to say? Hey dad, I know you’ve been absent for a while but I think I take after you more than I do my mom. It gets on my nerves that you weren’t here like you should have been and I have to find other people that are father figures even though you’re alive. I’m alright saying this to you. No ordinary 13 year old could say something like this to their father they were terrified of even though they never touched them to hurt them a day in their life. Yup; that’s what I did. I wrote him a letter.
The Blood Coming Out.
I had a conversation with my dad, and he told me that he moved. It was news to me, because evidently he had been there for a while. When I got there it didn’t seem to matter too much because I made myself feel right at home as if it were his old house that I made memories in. I didn’t know that they had two new dogs and that my two dogs that I grew up with were sold. Neither did I know that the little that boy that was “adopted” was my blood little brother born out of his marriage. But that’s beside the point.
I was watching the movie The Soloist that starred Jamie Foxx, and it got me more emotional than usual from watching movies; it was probably because it got in touch with a side I’m close to; expression through the arts. He was attached to his violin and it was the only thing he had that kept him calm. I tried not to cry because my dad was sitting to the left of me and I knew he would make me cry even more, or start to ask questions. I was going through a lot with my boyfriend and when the movie got through he looked at me as if he could feel I had pain behind my eyes and said in the most relaxing voice, “If you know that certain things keep you sane and relax you, why would you atop doing them Nashira?” I couldn’t give him a straight answer. We sat at the edge of the wooden table and this feeling I had was all so familiar. He stared at me with my eyes while telling me, “ You are a beautiful intelligent young lady and you deserve the best. You know who you are. You don’t need anyone to tell you who you are.” I am you, I thought. His eyes pierced a hole in my two water balloons and tears started rolling down my face. I tried to cover them up by not looking at him as if he couldn’t see me, but regardless he knew what I was doing. I was eight years old again and this was the concrete scraping my knee. Absence was the cure of my life. Being away from him brought me closer to him. He was there all along. He ran through my blood; I just couldn’t see it until I got scraped. My grandmother used to correct him and his siblings whenever they spoke grammatically incorrectly and she would make them wake up in the morning reciting the eight parts of speech; I’m an English major. My aunt Mickey is a lawyer and lived in New York; that’s what I want to be. Things made sense.
It Healed and Scabbed
After the talk I had with my dad, I felt more whole than I had ever been. I had another part of me that filled in the emptiness. My mom taught me how to survive and to be independent, and my dad taught me how to deal with things when that part of life wasn’t working out. My mom taught me how to work and my dad taught me how to use the brains I have to make that work, work. Even though things weren’t perfect, they made sense.
I felt like a child that went through the adoption process, looked for, and found her real parents.
Like all soars, I am fine and have a mark; my art. My art, my feelings, my emotions, my creativity, my writing is my mark, and it reminds me daily of who I am. My dad, he’s here more than he was before and I appreciate it. My mom is still here like she was before and I appreciate her. The only difference is what I knew then and what I know now. I like my scab.
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