Like Broken Glass
As the sparkling stars twinkled gently throughout the sky, I tossed and turned. My mind would not stop thinking of the events that occurred throughout the day. You see, today was the day that my heart was broken for the first time. As a young man trying to get out of Brooklyn, I never thought I would have my heart broken. I thought we supposed to be tough. I was always told you were not supposed to be scared. “Men don’t cry” are the words my father told me.
The moon was beginning to tussle with the sun when I woke this morning, and if I’m being honest, I hate this time of day-- the sun burns my eyes. Yet it’s the time of day that is supposed to signify a fresh start. I hate this time of day. I looked around my room and my eyes landed on a picture of my dad and I last year at my first baseball game. I remembered that day like it was yesterday. I had thrown a perfect game, it was a great way to begin the season. My dad was so proud, I remember him saying “Kid, you’re gonna go so far. . .” those words meant the world to me. My father, just like me, is very quiet and shy, if you got a compliment from him you did something special. I wanted those words to be what I remembered of my dad.
As I opened my door, I realized that my hopes for my future would forever be tarnished, stained, destroyed by the memories of what caused the broken glass and the holes in the walls outside my door. As I looked around my house, the memories of my first heartbreak flowed into my mind like the Atlantic Ocean and flooded my brain, my God-given levees threatened to break, allowing my emotions to cascade down the hills and valleys of my facial landscapes. I looked at the shattered mirror on the floor and I told myself I would not allow these tears to fall. I looked around and I heard light sniffles coming from down the hall. Carefully, I began down the hall to investigate the sound. As I neared the opening of the bedroom door, I felt like all the air in my chest just had been removed, which I did not think was possible because there had been ten bricks placed on my chest by the boa constrictor that seemed to be claiming his territory around my neck. As I pushed the room door open, an overwhelming feeling of depression swallowed me whole.
“Ma... get up off the floor.” I whispered, and she continued to cry into the red stained carpet. “Mama... Come on get up.” I looked at her, with my eyes again beginning to betray me. I promised myself I would not cry. I attempted to pick my mother off the floor, it actually was not hard to lift her off the floor and cradle her in my arms like a newborn child. I placed her in the middle of the bed and tucked her in.
As I turned my back to her, she screamed out “AJ, how could he do this to me?” I thought about responding “Ma, he did it to us... Not only you. He hurt me too.” but I stayed quiet because I knew that I would break if I said anything. As I made my way to the front of the house, I could hear what sounded like Doritos crunching under my shoes. When I go to the living room—where it all happened, I stared at our family portrait shattered and torn up--adding to the chaos of the room, of my world. At that moment, the familiar serpent around my neck finally squeezed my last breath out of me. The barrier in my eyes finally gave way and with a loud wail, I broke. You see last night, my father Adrien Thompson Sr. came home from work, he cooked dinner and he told us he had big news. Excitedly, my mother and I sat with loving eyes and excited ears, waiting for him to break our hearts. He calmly looked in our faces and said “Karen, I’m leaving. AJ I’m sorry, but I’m leaving. Sorry.” Not quite understanding, we looked at him with blank stares as he got up from his seated position and retreated to the bedroom to grab the luggage he had packed.
As I chased after him, my mother stood and blankly walked to the closet door in the hallway. While I plagued my dad with questions “Where are you going?”, “Why are you leaving?”, “Was it something I did?” he only repeated the same word—“Sorry.” I was in such a trance that I did not hear the first set of destruction in the kitchen, however, by the time my mother made it to the hallway in front of her room—it was loud and clear.
She opened her bedroom door with my baseball bat in one hand and a bottle of wine in the other, staring dead at my father. As she took the bottle of wine and placed it to her full lips, she said “I was saving this for our 25th anniversary..” and then she flung the bottle toward his head, barely missing, as it combusted upon contact with their canary yellow walls and dripping down unto their plush white carpets. My father looked at her and walked around her towards the door. As he did so, she used my bat to break every photograph, mirror, vase, and table along the way.
Once we got to the living room, near the front door, my mother threw their wedding picture out the house towards my father and his car. As I watched my father reverse out of our driveway, I felt the first brick being placed on my chest. The more I looked around my house, the more bricks were being placed on my chest. Then finally, that lethal reptile wrapped around my throat when I saw my mom hit our family portrait and the glass exploded across the floor.
At that moment, I knew something was different. Not until now, that I revisit those events, did I realize that my father was the one who has broken my heart. And that my trust, like the glass strewn across my house, had been shattered.
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