Breadcrumb #610
DEIDRE ROBINSON
In the free fall of my nightmare, I never feel free. Only afraid. Afraid that my tall torso would be mere dust in the heaven of someone’s memory. Or that my falling was only failing into the mystery of life. My daughter left me behind.
It’s my decisions that killed her.
“Ms. Brown, we’re so sorry…”
Words no parent ever wants to hear. I don’t even know what happened after that. My heart is missing from me. Tu me manques. You are missing from me. I’m sorry. I failed you.
Your casket was charcoal grey. Just like your favorite suit. You know the one. You got it from the men’s section at Burlington and had it tailored even. You looked great in it, Savannah. I never told you because you made decisions that scared me. I…I didn’t understand. I didn’t want to.
“You got it from the men’s section at Burlington and had it tailored even.”
Sometimes, it’s the hardest thing for a parent to admit when they’re wrong. All I could remember was my precious little girl who always came home from school with dirt on her red dress with white lace trim and holes in her matching white stockings with red hearts and a missing barrette with one undone braid that only wanted to make Mommy proud. Even all those years ago when you had that note from that girl you were dating, I wanted to believe that it was some other evil influence on you. Not my baby.
Wasn’t it just the other day when you’d graduated from college? You finished what I could not. Oh, Savannah. You always had more courage than me. I did the best I could with what I knew. You were my blessing. My Savior. I thought if I sent you to church and the best schools and gave you everything that I never had that I’d be wiped clean. Made new.
Don’t you remember when you went to school and learned that song? You remember the one.
You are my sunshine
My only sunshine
You make me happy
When skies are grey
You’ll never know, dear
How much I love you.
Please don’t take –
Now all I have is this picture. It’s my favorite one. Mostly because it’s the one I kept near me when you went away to college. It’s the one I most clearly remember. When you were 17 and a senior in high school. You always hated this picture. Remember how you spent all morning working on your hair only to have it rain as we left the house and your hair ended up a big frizzy afro? You cried all the way home because I wouldn’t let you retake your portraits. There was just no way I was spending anymore money. I was hustling to get the money together for that anyway. I didn’t care. I just loved to show off my baby. My little girl.
You used to want to be like Mommy. Remember? You always wanted to sing like me. I even let you use one of my wigs and wear heels and a little bit of lipstick as you’d get one of my Avon hairbrushes and sick your little heart out to Tina Turner’s “What’s Love Got to Do With it?” I even got you a little jean jacket and skirt set because you wanted to look just like Tina in her video leaned up against the fence wondering about love.
I didn’t understand then.
I just thought you were a four-year-old mimicking a singer, like you did with Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston. And even Madonna. I didn’t know you were also crying out for me to love you. To love you for you and not what I wanted you to be.
You know how your grandmother always used to say that we need to follow the greatest commandment of loving one another like Jesus. I thought I was. I never grasped that you were a light. A soul that left behind a trail of light as a breadcrumb for me to remember. To find the way home. Back to love.
It was my decisions that killed her.
And me.