Restitution Cafe

A Short story to get me out of my head about writing fiction.

Yesterday was a blur. I went to work like I always do. I ate my tuna salad for lunch like I always do. I went to the gym afterwork like I always do and walked home like I usually do. I got home and ate a meal prep and chilled at home like always. Then it happened. The call that broke through my monotonous routine and cracked my life wide open. My dad had died. The dad that abandoned my mother when he found out she was pregnant with me. He didn’t want to ruin his perfect image by acknowledging he cheats on his wife. The NDA he made my mom sign ensured she would never go public. I don’t even have his last name. He is listed on my birth certificate as my Father but that is where his fathering began and ended. There was a moment when I was 15 and rebellious I decided I would reach out to him. Not believing my mother’s story about a contract barring us from contacting or speaking about our connection, I looked him up online and found an email address for his publicist. I sent an email explaining who I was and that I wanted to meet him. I told him that my mom was sick and could use his help. I even attached a photo of my mom and I to jog his memory. It was 30 days before I heard back from his lawyers. It was a cease and desist letter with a copy of the NDA my mother had signed. A reminder I was not wanted.

I get off the phone to process what I just heard. He is dead and I am now a millionaire. All I have to do is go to Boston and sit with the rest of his kids and wife for the reading of the will to claim my inheritance. Wow. For a moment I don’t know how to feel. Then I think of that money and I immediately want to quit my job and open that coffee shop I always dreamed of. The one that turns into a wine bar after 5pm and sells books and board games. I’d spend my days baking and reading and writing. My world is opening up until I think of my mother. her struggle, her broken heart, her illness, how her body attacked itself out of pure stress and heartbreak. She was diagnosed with lupus when I was 9 years old. From there she was in and out of the hospital. She hung on for 9 more years and died the year I left for college. She dealt with it all alone. Raising me, my crazy teenage attitude and phases. Me romanticizing my Father and even telling her how he would save me from her oppressive rules one day. She held me when I didn’t get into my first choice university and when my first boyfriend broke my heart. She encouraged me both times to keep going cause “God’s plan is always far better than ours.” She was my everything and she gave me all she had. Literally. If only she’d had this money to take some stress off her back. Maybe she wouldn’t have gotten sick and she be with me now. What I would give to have her back.

Do I even want this money? Why did he leave me so much? Guilt? Absolution? A dying man trying to get to heaven by wronging a right? Pffft too little too late for that.

I take out my laptop and google my father. America’s favorite basketball star. Family man, NBA record holder for most points ever scored, most games ever played and having two of his sons play on his team. Looking at his picture makes me sick to my stomach. Even more so cause I realize for the first time I have his eyes. I don’t want to see myself in this man. I don’t want to face his beloved family. But you know what? I deserve this money and I am claiming it in mine and my mother’s honor. They will hear my story, her story, our story! They deserve to hear how he left us to struggle and fend for ourselves. How even when she got sick we were nothing but a skeleton he wished to keep in the closet. We will not be a secret anymore. And I will open my coffee shop/ wine bar and call it restitution cafe.

My husband Wardell read this short story and decided to write one of his own, from the Father’s perspective. He didn’t name it so I have came up with one for the sake of this post.

The other side

I’ve never seen my self as a weak person . I’ve spent my whole life gathering strength. Strength From overcoming , from being resilient from defying the odds. To break and to grow , the sum of my existence . But as I lay here expending what little strength I have remaining . I fear that I have never been strong enough to overcome my environment.

The cost of being a prodigy is freedom. Freedom which I unknowingly exchanged so I could give my mom and my posterity a better life. I became the mast that makes their dreams possible , and for as long as I could remember basketball has been my anchor.

A anchor with a long chain . For what i sacrificed in freedom I have gained in experience. I have few regrets . There is absolution when you cede control . But love knows not control and cares not for absolution. And I loved her .

I blamed our love for not being strong enough but really it was me . Not stronger than the environment that enabled my behavior and not stronger than this legacy that was thrust upon me. When I found out she was pregnant I cried tears of joy. For an amalgamation of our love had become manifest. And in my daughter i see the life that I was robbed of. The life that wont even allow her my last name . And that is my gift to her. She will know no anchor. All of What my strength has afforded me shall be hers when I depart this life. May she know restitution .

This was fun and I plan to have more fun with my writing and take the pressure off of my storytelling.

Peace & Love

Tasha B.