Her father was sitting at the piano. He was still, just staring at the wall.
Roisin walked over and draped her arms around his neck. He touched her arm and leaned into her. She was surprised. It wasn't that her father wasn't affectionate, it was just that usually their positions were reversed. She sat on the bench next to him, silent for a moment.
She heard her mother rummaging in the cupboard downstairs and low voices talking quietly.
"Well," he said after a bit, standing up. "We always knew this day would come." Roisin loved hearing her father talk, the slow drawl of is smoky voice. But now he just sounded tired, sounded old.
He made his way downstairs, leaving Roisin sitting alone on the bench. Her father normally carried himself with pride, but she saw the slump of his shoulders that she knew the man downstairs wouldn't detect.
Roisin, the sleuth that she was, tried to listen at the top of the stairs, but she was not able to hear anything. Her mother was concerned, then annoyed (at her father. She knew that tone well). The man was apologetic (for what? Bleeding on their couch?). Her father sounded...not annoyed. Angry. It wasn't a thrashing, raging anger. It was a controlled threat in the voice.
He appeared at the bottom of the stares and looked at her, anger in his eyes. She had never seen him look like that before. It scared her. "Bed. Now. Go." He seemed to upset to even talk in full sentences. She hurried to her room.
She worried for a bit about what was going on downstairs. Would there be violence? She sincerely doubted it, her parents were pacifists. But a teenager can only worry for so long. The voiced quieted. The lights downstairs shut off. Steps came up the stairs.
Her mom poked her head in her room. "He's staying the night." She whispered as her father walked past. She rolled her eyes. "Your father's in a pet. Ignore it. Just try not to clomp down the stairs in the morning." She closed the door behind her. It opened again in a few minutes.
"Love you." Her father whispered into the darkness.
"I love you too," she replied. She could hear it in his voice. All traces of anger were gone.
Her parents were talking in their bedroom. Now she had time to think. Not about her parents guest (an annoying roommate from college maybe?), but about her.
As a child she never realized that other families weren't like her. She never noticed the difference. When she was a child her mother took her to church because she begged. "Sophie goes to church every Saturday mom!" she whined. "Sophie's Jewish dear. That's Temple.". "I want to go to church!" she had yelled and stormed off. Her father had just raised his eyes heaven ward.
"When I was a kid I tried to get out of church, and she wants to go?" He groaned. "I'm not going. Have fun, dear!"
Her mother took her to a church on Sunday (she couldn't remember the denomination). She had enjoyed it for the most part, not that she knew what was going on. She liked the singing and everyone sitting together. They went a few more times. One Sunday her mother was talking with some people on the front steps.
"And you're daughter, such a beautiful chocolate child. Look at her hair!" they all touched her curls. Chocolate child? She wasn't candy! "Her father must be white. Maybe Asian, look at those eyes!"
"I don't want to go back!" She begged, tears in her eyes. She crawled onto her fathers lap and buried her face in his neck. He rubbed her back soothingly.
"Don't worry baby, people, they just ign'ant is all. They've never seen nobody as pretty as you. You don't have to go back if you don't want to." And that was the end of that.
Their religion was that on the ground beneath their feet, the smell of the air. Some people had called her parents hippies. But they really weren't. They just didn't fit those people's boxes.
School had been better at least. She had inherited her fathers eyes, and some people tired to "jump her" as the girls and middle school would say, stalking behind her on her way to class. But most people had gotten over her. She was just a regular person to them. She had made some friends. But no one really "got her" besides her family.
No one at school wanted to go to punk concerts or go and just wander the streets, looking at all the weird people.
Some people bitched. "You trying to be white?", "you trying to be black?" She wasn't enough of anything for anybody. Punk music? For a "black girl" like her? Who ever heard of such a thing! Why, the nerve of that girl! At least music didn't care what color she was, if she wasn't "feminine" enough, if she was a mutant or not. Music didn't care. That piano didn't care.
When she crept down the stairs the next morning there was no one on the couch. She walked into the kitchen and the conversation going on between the three adults halted and they looked at her. Awkward moment.
You can guess, but you won't find out for sure until the next chapter. Enjoy!