Back to Oui: The Question

Eight-year-olds are learning, fast, how the world actually works — socially, emotionally, logically. They're on the move. They can follow more complicated rules, understand cause and effect, hold two ideas against each other and feel the difference. They have a sound sense of fairness, even before they have the words for it.

The first trauma I can remember happened when I was eight. It wasn't fair. What I remember first isn't a sentence or a face — it's a color. Purple. Not the glorious kind, not royal, not anything I'd been taught to reach for. I knew purple the way a kid knows any color: background noise, one more hue in a pile of toys on the floor. But that night it wasn't background. It was a foreshadowing, dark enough to fill the hallway and then the living room.

Then a gold stroke broke through the doorway. My dad, back from some chore outside. Relief found me instantly. The purple didn't leave — it just made room for him.

I don't remember every word we said to each other. But I remember what came next.

He kneeled down to my level and asked, "Do you wanna come with me, or stay with your momma?"

He had never asked me anything like that before. And I'd bet he already knew what I'd say — he was my hero, and heroes know that about the people who love them. I loved my momma. I loved my sister. I loved my family, and I believed, the way only a kid can believe something, that we were a promise that could never come apart. But my dad was my blueprint. Even at eight, I knew that. He was me, in the way a boy that age still believes his father is him.

"I'm comin' with you," I said, rolling my eyes like it was an obnoxious question to even ask.

"You sure?"

That was the moment I noticed — he was purple too. Not the purple. But close enough to it, folded into whatever new arrangement was being built for me to swallow.

I froze. I'm not even sure I said anything back. I'd like to believe I at least nodded.

He stood, and I followed him to the door. The gold came back as it opened. It was cold outside.

One of the cars was already packed. I didn't say a word, but I knew, even then, what was happening. I never asked where my momma was. Where my sister was. Instead I told myself a story I needed to believe: I'm going with my hero, and he'll protect me, he'll take care of me, I'll see them again soon — maybe even for dinner. I was as naïve as an eight-year-old is supposed to be. Of course I was.

I was only eight. It wasn't fair.

I looked down and found a small suitcase already in my hand. We walked to the car.

Somewhere, the saddest symphony I'd ever heard started playing. I never found out where the music was coming from. Music had always been part of my life, but this was the saddest it had ever sounded.

We were leaving. We weren't coming back.

There had been a disagreement.