Malagash 1.1 (Patreon)

“A weight will lift.” My father has a big cup of crushed ice that he keeps tilting side to side. It hasn’t melted enough yet. “A weight will lift,” he says.

He’s tired of having to say “I know” in that reassuring voice, again and again. “I know, Sunday. I know.” So he ’s found this new way of saying it. “A weight will lift. A leaf will fall. Fresh white snow will blanket this whole sleepy town.”

“That’s very poetic,” I tell him. He tilts his crushed ice again.

“Sunday, you are my daughter,” he says, holding out his hand for mine. I take it. “You are my daughter,” he says, “and it breaks my heart that the day has finally come for you to learn this hard and simple truth.”

His face is very serious, which is one of the ways my father smiles. He pauses, as though he’s searching for just the right words. He isn’t searching, of course. Nothing comes easier to my father than teasing me.

“The truth is that we, each and every one of us, get old and frail, Sunday. We, each and every one of us, lie down in the winter of our lives,” he tilts his ice, “to make way for the baby skunks and the excitable little porcupines which are born in the spring.” He says this in his hospital bed, wearing a flimsy bathrobe. His face is deadly earnest. He thinks he is so funny. “Poking their heads up through the frost, because it is their time now, my darling daughter. It is their time now to glitter in the sun.” Squeezing my hand like on TV.

“That’s very poetic,” I tell him again. 

“You said that already,” my father says. 

“Very poetic,” I say.

It’s my own fault for saying the same thing every day. I don’t want you to die. I don’t want you to die.

“Snow will blanket the town,” he says, solemnly.

“Snow in the middle of July?” I say. “Oh wow, like in a metaphor?”

“Sometimes the winter comes earlier than we want,” my father says. “Sometimes the sky—”

“Okay, enough with the—” I stop myself. This is infuriating. It is meant to be infuriating. My father smiles at the crack in my voice, takes a sip from his melting crushed ice. And once again, I can see that I am arguing against death itself. A stubborn child. A little girl. I don’t want a weight to lift. I don’t want a leaf to fall.

It doesn’t matter how stupid my father’s arguments are, how clichéd his metaphors. He’s on the winning side. The cancer is everywhere. In two weeks, maybe a month, we’ll have reached the end of this twisting garden path. And he will prove me wrong. A weight will lift. A leaf will fall. Fresh white snow will blanket this whole stupid town.

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In the month leading up to the publication of my novel Malagash (Oct 3rd! Click here to pre-order) I am going to be posting chapters here, in the hopes that you like it!