Emptiness

Today I am going to participate in The Scheherazade Project.

There are places I wish for emptiness that are completely filled. In these places reside my memories, and in place of my memories I wish for emptiness. This is a place in me where I wished emptiness resided.

One of my first memories of my father:

Red flashing lights through the curtains, I am not sure what they are a first but at some time I realize they are police lights, maybe my mother tells me. Screaming and yelling, I am in my bedroom with my mother and there is a man with a gun on the other side of the door. There is more screaming and yelling it comes from my mother and the man on the other side of the door, but there is even more yelling. I don’t know who else is making all the noise perhaps I am, but I don’t remember crying. The door is shoved and my mother lunges against it and it closes. She moves a white dresser in front of the door, and the door bangs open again though it only opens 6 inches at most. My mother slams the door shut again. The door opens and my mother closes repeatedly until the dresser in secure. A man is on the other side, and he really wants to get in that room. He has a gun. I know I saw the gun.

“Hurry, hide in the closet” My mother says, and she puts me in the closet and throws all manner of clothing and blankets on me. I am hiding in the closet under a great pile of clothes and that is all I remember.

Years later my father is telling me of a time he pulled a gun on a cop, and I said, “Yeah, I remember.” He is shocked and I tell him a little of what I remember and he replies in horror “You remembered that?” Though he did not verify if that was the time he pulled a gun on a cop nor did he give me any more details to fill in. I did not ask him if that was the time, I did not ask my parents anything. They just dropped random bombshells of information in my early childhood that I pieced together over the years.