THREE NIGHTS (Complete)

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

The Beginning

My name is Savannah Graham. Weston. That's where I grew up, on Toronto's northwest side of the city. I was an only child and lived with my unmarried parents. They were an interracial couple. My mother was white, and my father was black. I was the glue that kept them together, and the pawn my mother used to hold on to my father as long as she could.

Growing up school was tough, kids were cruel, often using racial slurs to address me. White girls showed friendly interest until they found out my father was black, and black girls didn't seem to like me at all. I identified with no one and felt like a misfit. I kept to myself and spent most of my days painting. My father recognized my talent for art quickly. On my eighth birthday, he bought me a wooden easel with charcoal, paint, and paint brushes, and I threw myself into developing my skill.

Painting made me happy. My father gave me life. He was always encouraging, always told me how much of an exotic beauty I was, and that it would be hard for someone to deserve me. He was extremely playful, always tickling me until my belly hurt. My mother didn't like it, she complained that I needed to get out and learn to fit in with other kids. She told my father that if he continued spoiling me, I would turn out spoiled and rotten. My father, ever defensive of me, would flare up cursing back and forth with her. He told her she was jealous and shallow-minded. Whenever he got upset, I would take his shiny, round head between my palms, and kiss the words, I love you on top. That never failed to calm him down; he'd wrap me in his arms, and promise to never let anyone hurt me. He always made me feel like the most important person world. My father was my hero—he was my world.

When I was thirteen, my father walked out on my mother, and in doing so he literally sucked the life right out on me. The day he left, I thrashed hysterically in my mother's arms, screaming, and crying, vile, and wretched, like an old, distressed chainsaw. My mother had to drag me from his car like a lifeless rag-doll, as I watched his blue Dodge Daytona vanish down the boulevard leaving nothing behind, but a cloud of tailpipe smoke. He was gone, and so was the other half of my soul. My life changed forever that day.

My mother provided no form of support when he left. She was more bitter than ever. Sometimes I felt like she blamed me. Her already meagre financial status crumbled. The rent was always late, because she quit her job, pissed that she had to take the bus now that the car was gone. Within six months, we'd become a low-income, subsidized housing statistic. It changed her for the worse, she seemed defeated constantly pushing me away, depressed and feeding her depression with brown liquor. She drank ruthlessly, while a steady trickle of men trailed in and out of her bedroom. She thrived on their attention and didn't seem to care much about what I thought. The only time she acknowledged me was when she needed something. I came home early from school one day and found her on her knees in the kitchen. She was giving head to a guy who didn't look much older than me. My life was humiliating, and meaningless—a monotonous cycle of unyielding disappointment.

I lost interest in painting, but went to school and got okay grades. From there, I rushed to my part-time, cashier job at a local grocery store. I used that money to take care of any needs my mother didn't take care of, mainly groceries, and my personal items. By that time, I was seventeen, and mountains separated my mother and I. We didn't fuss or fight, because we stayed out of each other's way. My emotions were brittle, my heart hardened, and day after day, I sank deeper into my depression.

I woke up one morning, eighteen, and alone. That day, after having knocked on my mother's bedroom door several times to no answer, I turned the doorknob, cautious not to barge right in. The last time I walked into her room without knocking, I was facing a naked man, ass up, with his head between her legs. As I stepped inside, I sensed something was different. The room was dark, and there was an eerie chill around it. An empty Jack Daniel's bottle and a flurry of pills were scattered across the nightstand next to the bed. I called out her name again, but still, there was no answer. She lay motionless, half covered, with her head propped up on her pillow. Her feet were exposed and looked unusually pale. She was lying on her back, and her face was turned away from me. I shook the arm that hung limp off the side of the bed. It was cold and rigid. A wallet-sized photo fell away from her half-curled fingers. My heartbeat quickened and thumped hard against my rips. I reached down and picked up the tattered-edged picture. It was a younger version of my father. I had never seen it before. My blood pressure rose.