Inklings 2021

I shrugged, not as a sign of annoyance, but because I didn’t know how I felt to be back. I never talked about Buffalo; therefore, I couldn’t explain to him why I hated this city. Filled with shame, I began to wonder if I was being childish. If I was being immature to look away from the car window when we passed the park around the corner from the house I grew up in. My family had made it a weekly routine to come to Jefferson Park every Sunday the year I turned seven, which was the year I started to notice the divide that was forming between mother and me. I vividly remember the loose grip of the worn out leather glove my father had gotten for me the first time he and I played softball at Jefferson. The graze of uncut dry grass uncomfortably brushing my calf as I jolted my body forward, proudly throwing a curveball, is a feeling that was tattooed on my lower leg. Mother, who had recently become unemployed due to a stolen necklace she had “allegedly” stolen from Mrs. Smith, stared at me, shaking her head and braiding my sister’s thick Colombian hair. From the corner of my eye, I could see the look of disapproval that shot from her eyes as she looked at my grass-stained oversized tee and Yankee baseball cap. The more and more she stared, the more powerful my throw became. After many Sunday afternoons just like this one, I later became captain of my Softball team. Finally forced to look out the car window as a precaution from feeling car-sick, I noticed no girls playing softball in the park, and the grass seemed perfectly cut. An odd feeling of pleasure consumed me when I saw no image of little girls proving themselves to their mothers with only a leather glove and oversized tee. I intertwined my fingers contentedly with my husband’s and replied to his awaited question. “It feels ok. Weird, but ok.” We pulled over at Buffalo Barbecue House, which was a diner right next to Jefferson Park. The diner was pervaded with a familiar smell of baby-back ribs that deepened my stomach the same way it did when I was young. As we sat down at the diner, our waitress handed us a Today’s Specials menu and scurried away. “Well, this is definitely an upside of moving up here! This barbecue looks fantastic!” Harold said as he curiously studied the menu while I carefully examined the desserts side. I ate my banana split in silence, watching my husband carry a conversation for the two of us while he munched on some corn-chowder. Even when I didn’t respond, Harold never stopped talking, which was my favorite thing about him. I never had to tell him that I hated silence. He just knew. I had grown up in a house overflowing with loud voices that overpowered each others’, accompanied by thick accents. But as time went on, the unbearable noise was soon drowned out by an even more unbearable silence. This unbearable silence was officially diagnosed on a Wednesday in the summer of ’97. That was the evening mother and Papá sat us down to tell us the news of their separation. “I’m moving out, Sandra, but you can come over whenever you want,” Papá said, grabbing my hands as tears rolled down my adolescent cheeks. My sister grabbed his hands and removed them from my grip. “This is your fault!” she yelled to him with a broken voice. “Whatever, we’re going. Vámonos, Sandra,” she said as she grabbed my wrist, dragging me behind her. Involuntarily following her body, I refused to turn around because I couldn’t bear to look at my newly-broken parents, which is why it didn’t hit me until years later that they were separated during my High School graduation.