Azelma I never used to daydream about escaping. When I was younger, my favorite teacher, Mrs. Hwande, told me that after an animal has been in a cage for years and years, the cage follows them everywhere, constantly restricting their view to the thin line of the horizon. When I was with my father, I felt a caged animal. But the chains that he imprisoned me with kept me rooted, and far away from the storm that constantly blew over my head. Maybe I stayed so long because I knew that staying with him was the only thing that would keep from from understanding what had really happened to me, to us. Maybe from the beginning I knew that I would never have enough time. It was raining the night I left, and I thought I could feel the thunder rattling my bones. Other than the pounding of the rain and the drips of the water seeping through our old and worn roof, the apartment was quiet. Dad had been asleep for hours and all I had to do was take the bag from underneath the bed, tie the frayed laces of my sneakers and walk out the door. I thrashed and hissed at the bars of my cage; who knew that opening a door would be the hardest thing I would ever do. My clothes were soaked through in seconds on the way to the bus stop and I wouldn't have been able to discern the tears on my face had they not been burning my skin as they rolled down my cheeks, and I wondered, I hoped that they would leave searing scars. I remember how weak the street lamps looked under the amber glow of the rising sun. I remember the gray eyes of an old woman with plastic, pink curlers in her hair, staring at me as I cried silently. I remember hacking off my hair, lock by lock, in the dirty bathroom of a gas station and throwing it all away in trashcan. I remember the ground spinning under my feet as I walked across highways, across intersections, across state borders, as though I had left my body behind and my escape was nothing but a dream. It was raining when I left. And it was raining when I came home. I had finally come home.
