I Told U So!

Dear Leader,

Please understand that I am going through with this ritual until the very end. I don’t see all the hype. I mean, what’s to give up when you’ve got something that you’ve been hanging onto since you were a wee baby?

I’ve always seen mothers, fathers and siblings—old enough to dunk the baby into the bathwater—all watch as the baby’s being put into the water. Sure, it cries, but the priest always calms it, ensuring safe and easily returned to the parents. I even yelled at the person telling me this ritual of “dunking humans in the bathtub,” as they put it, to leave me alone.

Don’t see the point in leaving such an ordeal. It’s our way of life. Agree or disagree, it’s us!

Anyway, if you so kindly shut your mouth and listen, I’ll explain to you why we do this weekly. Every Sunday, we gather around, ensuring the baby’s not going to drown. Aunts, uncles, the whole fam. Sometimes, we even include great-grandparents! But we always—always—pour the water right on the baby’s head, no more than the forehead. The priest even cups his hand so that the water doesn’t get in the baby’s eyes. What a sweet gesture!

Better than your “advice”!

Anyway, I’d love to explain why we do this ritual every year when a baby comes around the eligible age when he/she can be baptized. Baptism in our church has never been turned down, ignored or missed. Even complete strangers attending our church witness such a beautiful miracle. The miracle of a baby, and the miracle of it being given new life.

A new perspective towards reality.

Someone taps me on the shoulder. I turn, but no one’s there. I’m sitting in a church—

Wait! A baptismal. I watch in awe as the baby’s being held above the water, the priest cupping his hand so the water doesn’t get in the boy’s eyes. Awe, what a sight! Tears well; I wipe them, smiling so gratefully.

“Thank you—”

Someone taps me on my shoulder! I grit my teeth. My eyes are glued! Still, someone taps me on the shoulder. I jerk around. “What!” I growl. But no one’s there. Was it an angel? Or someone playing hide-and-seek? For once in my life, I do the unthinkable. I turn around, searching for the person who so heartlessly distracted me from the most important moment in my life. I actually get up, ask who’s bothering me.

“Who’s doing that?”

I think I yelled because the parents stare at me in confusion and wonder. But I keep looking. For an hour, I search—

A scream pierces the air. The mother, horrified, is clutching her baby to her chest, dashes down the steps and crashes through the double doors. The father is shaking his head, eyes wild, and then he leaves. I rush over, the water—clear as water should be—an inky color. I rush to the priest’s office, open a drawer, grab some ball-point pens and dissemble them so that I can fill them. I proceed to fill the ball-point pens. They’re absorbing the ink like someone downing a whole water bottle! I reassemble the pens, grab my writing and use each pen to test out what had happened in the first place.

“It says Permanent Black.”

The priest sits on the same pew. “It didn’t say that before!”

I test it. Out comes a black blacker than the ink I write with when I’m signing a document, taxes or W-2 form. Blacker than night. Blacker than my grandmother’s bathrobe she slips on every night.

“Use the other ones.”

I said I did. One was sunset orange, the other cream, the other mahogany and the final was butter. The color of butter, mind you. I was looking at colors only a canvas in the Hall of Art Fame could boast. The priest and I looked at each other. “What are you going to do, son? I haven’t all day—meetings and emails and calls take up most of my Saturday afternoons. Yes, I even work on the weekends sometimes.”

“I could write you letters.” He chuckled but said no. I deflated a little.

Gathering more pens (he said he had many, many more), I got up and went home. That water, though. I wonder…did the water and tapping belong to the same person?

I dreamt that night about a shining figure. My dream self smacked his forehead. That’s why I couldn’t see the figure. I had been distracted by an angel! And that water. I asked. It said why water turned an inky black, but before I said I didn’t understand, the angel left, and I woke up. The following Sunday, when the woman dipped her baby in the water, she looked as if she was about to faint. The father, a week later, did faint at the sight of the inky black water. I scratched my head, waiting for the congregation to leave before heading up there myself.

Heading home, I still couldn’t get the inky blackness out of my head. It bothered me so much I returned. But the doors were locked. I threw a rock, breaking one of the stain-glass windows on the side of the church and snuck inside. With a flashlight, I saw the water. It was the same black color.

I blinked. Maybe I needed to get more pens. I snuck into the priest’s office, got more pens and filled them. Going home, I wrote about my misadventure. The next time I snuck in, the water was grey. When I wrote about how I had that dream, the water was white—pure white, like confectioner’s sugar white. Each color made me write my experiences. Soon, I felt guilty, confessed to breaking one of the stain-glass windows and managed to not only pay for my crime but also redo the window. Working on these windows was hard, but I squeezed enough time in between my fishing job to fulfill my promise.

Someone said the following Sunday that it looked like a baby being baptized. I froze. Did I mean to design it that way? And they added that the water was…you guessed it.

Black!

My dream self told the angel I knew I needed to quit obsessing that it was my way or the highway. I nodded, using the pens to write a good story, submitting it to the newspaper’s short story contest. One of the prompts was, write a story based on a certain event in which you couldn’t escape the issue, no matter what you had done. And I won. Second place! Won five dollars. The winner got a hundred.

I shrugged. Still make more than that at my job down by the bay. As a fisherman loading fish onto his boat and then hauling them into the tackle shop to be frozen, packaged, shipped and eaten by locals or strangers in a strange land. Whoever they were, let’s hope they enjoyed that fish.

Because I hated fish. I just worked.

“Wow! I love stories. I heard you won 2nd place in that contest.”

I jumped. A girl standing behind me in line at a convenience store apologized and introduced herself. She looked at me like she knew me from somewhere. “Aren’t you…CJ from that picture in the newspaper? The section that has college students entering free short stories?”

“Yeah!” I laughed, and Parker and I talked for hours. At home, I jumped up excitedly. She took my number! And wanted to continue our conversation on Facebook! I secretly knew Parker was as lonely as I, that she wanted a friend like me. But I also knew Parker didn’t care what people thought. I told Parker I dreamt one night of an angel. She looked at me like she had never met anyone so weird. But good weird. I grinned.

Parker always ignored my sarcasm or embarrassed gestures. The following October, we sat at a local park to hand out candy, the trick-or-treaters stopping by to receive some Hershey’s chocolate bars and Snicker’s. “I was thinking…maybe ice-skating?”

“I was thinking of something else…” She pulled out my phone number, and I was surprised she had kept it. “I can’t accept this. My older brother doesn’t want me texting guys he doesn’t know.” Parker folded her arms. “I’m sorry, but we might not be able to do that.”

I didn’t know what to say.

Her phone rang. When she hung up, she left without saying goodbye. I didn’t know why Parker never made her own decisions. I mean, sure, her brother wanted to protect her. But she sounded like she was under his control, like he never even let her out of the house. Like she was chained to the table, forced to eat broccoli. Or something evil like that.

When it was midnight, I headed home. Luckily, I lived within walking distance. Eating candy, I crafted a world I could actually enter! Opening the creaky wooden door, I was surrounded by fantastical creatures. Each color created a different world, literally inviting me.

Parker had come into the convenience store when I was purchasing a Diet Coke, some cookies and a sandwich. We were joking around, but I stopped laughing when I noticed huge bruises and red welts on her cheeks, arms and neck. Fiery wrath filled me; I ran out, broke into Parker’s house and screamed at her brother, beating him with my fists. He defended himself verbally and physically, but I was taller.

“Stop, you’re going to kill him! You’ll be convicted of murder. No!”

Parker tried prying me away, but the harder I hit, the better I felt. Finally, the blows stopped. I backed up, panting. “You ever hurt her again, I’ll make sure you’re not waking up tomorrow morning.” I stormed out of there, calling 9-1-1. When the police arrested her brother, I watched, Parker begging me to come with her. I came. I watched the police ask Parker questions. Tears streamed down her face. I vowed to protect her.

I offered to take Parker home when she stopped crying. Soon, she agreed. When I told her she couldn’t be alone, no matter what, I asked Parker whether she had close relatives she could live with until… Until what? I barely knew her. Parker looked older than me, a college grad. I was just some drop-out. I didn’t do anything but write stories and sell fish. And stuff those five dollars in my piggy bank. I was nobody, much less someone who had the right to take over the life of someone who had been abused by her brother. Why, I asked gently, would he do that?

Parker didn’t answer. I didn’t pry.

One day, she showed up at my house. I opened the front door and then screen door. “Can I…can we go somewhere?” I told her to make herself comfortable on my couch, gave her a glass of ice-cold water and offered her something from the pantry. She thanked me for the licorice. Even smiled. I jerked a nod, and as she picked at the red candy, I wondered whether she was open to going with me to a fantasy world.

I decided to invent a new one. Using the Valentine-day red ink, I created a world all my own. We went, Parker absolutely loving every minute.

One day, she said she missed her brother. He was her only family, she said, and as we sat together at a restaurant, I learned that Mr. and Mrs. Ching abandoned them after her brother refused to go to college. When they lived together, her brother and she wouldn’t get along. At all. Some days, the beatings got so bad she left in the middle of the night while he was passed out, drunk, on the couch. Parker fled to a neighbor’s house, and I asked whether she could live with that neighbor until things got better. She said she just needed to think things over. I thought of asking whether Parker could move into the house down the road that was for sale, but I didn’t push.

One morning, she appeared at my doorstep. “Hey, you don’t have to wait.” I yawned, opening the doors. Parker came in, apologizing. “No, please. Come in. My door’s always open!”

“You’re so kind.”

On Parker’s birthday, she screamed in delight, covering her mouth with two hands as her eyes filled with tears. Hugging me, she exclaimed that I was beyond generous as I handed her that house’s keys. Soon, I became head manager of the tackle shop, while Parker became vice principal of the high school. I continued college, getting a Master’s in business. We celebrated our accomplishments by the lake with some fish, chips and store-bought cake.

One fall evening, as we strolled down a leaf-strewn cobblestone walkway, I told Parker to stop, pulled out a black box, knelt down and looked at her in the eyes. “Will you marry me, Parker?”

She nodded vigorously.

Our winter wedding was a few hundred miles away from anything familiar. It was glamorous. After our honeymoon, we had a son. He grew up not unlike me, but something was off. As I took Colton around my tackle shop, suggesting he should work as a fisherman, he declined that idea. He went off to college. When we received the news that Colton had run away from campus, we did everything in our power to convince him to return to school. He disrespected us. We cried many nights, holding each other tight, praying we would see our prodigal son come home. I dreamt Colton came home. His eyes were shining, and a huge grin on his face spread from ear to ear. I couldn’t be prouder. But in the morning, I awoke to my arms around Parker. She told me she had the same dream. We just prayed it’d come true soon.

One day, someone knocked on our door.

“Colton! Come on in, man!”

We didn’t judge him. We listened. And I wrote a story about it all, entering it. It earned me a fifty dollar gift card to Walmart. Colton returned to college. One night, I got out of bed, unable to sleep. A second later, Parker asked whether I was okay.

“I fear for Colton.” She swallowed heavily.

“Why? I’m training him to be a fisherman while he’s pursuing his Master’s.”

“He could run away again.”

“Do you think something’s up?”

“I don’t know, CJ. I just…don’t know.”

Colton approached us at breakfast; said he had been diagnosed with some depression disorder. He struggled to fit in with his roommates, he didn’t always study for tests and he hated his degree. He just wanted to be home. He worked his hardest at the tackle shop on the weekends, but Colton seemed to hide something.

“You know you can tell us anything.” We encouraged over lunch.

“I…I met your brother, Mom.”

Parker and I looked at each other. Her abusive brother? We asked whether he was even allowed to do that. He claimed he went. Parker and I drove to the prison. When we left, I came to the conclusion that Colton wasn’t interested in college because he was involved with Derek. That’s why he ran away. That’s why he wasn’t really talking to me at the tackle shop. He buried himself in his work to avoid the truth—the truth he was talking to the wrong person. I told Parker my suspicions over dinner while Colton worked late at the tackle shop.

When Parker and I were in bed, the light went on.

“I want to start a ministry for troubled kids. I want to end abusive relationships. Derek and I have been talking, and we decided that when he gets out in fifteen months, we’ll start an organization to end abuse. All kinds, not just domestic.”

We couldn’t have been prouder. Especially me.

Colton never wanted to join Parker and my fantasy adventures. When questioned, he didn’t say why.

I had the feeling he didn’t like me very much.

Very much at all.

His attitude was as black as that inky water back at the church. His heart was even blacker. He always held alcohol. Bags of drugs made his pockets bulge. I secretly shut down the organization, ordering him to admit he was a hypocrite. He ran away after cussing me out. When we found him in a forest with a gun to his head, saying he couldn’t take the depression anymore, we carefully told him he could do whatever it took to get better. He didn’t want our help. I wrote a fantasy world, escaping with Parker. We were determined to get our son back, regardless of whether we had to invite the smoke horse and knight made of armor to our world. Once Colton was able, we helped him get acquainted with some single women. He wanted nothing to do with anything related to dating.

One day, we found Colton’s body floating down the river, face down. Authorities said he had drowned himself. I wrote a sad story, the newspaper hailing it as the darkest they’ve received. I published it as a dark fantasy novel. Parker and I visited his grave daily. I asked Parker whether her brother was influencing our son. She said that he had the tendency to lie.

I told him that our son was dead because of him. Parker forgave him. I just wrote. With as many blood-red, black and morally grey ink as I could. One day, we moved into a mansion, my writing success skyrocketing through the roof. Her promotion to principal made me glad. But I never upheld it like I had my ritual all those years ago.

That ritual was forgotten. Or at least the worship of it was as we baptized our adopted teen daughter.