DRABBLES: The Pataki's

A rainbow will form on the other side of a glass of water if it is left in the sun just so. The same won't happen with a glass of beer. People were always wondering why I called my mother, Miriam. I would do it to distance myself from her, perhaps as much to shield myself from her as in spite. Because I didn't need a broken heart. I don't want to become her. I don't want to go to great lengths to find excuses to be miserable. I don't want to blame a daughter or a husband for upsetting me just to justify the drinking.

Addiction is an all consuming passion. I know, because for most of my childhood, I've been addicted to Arnold. Largely the pursuit of him. But Arnold is gone now, halfway across the country with his parents who hate me. The bully girl. Poetry is my great addiction, instead. Plus letter writing. And basketball at 3 am. And rock guitar by 6 am on Saturdays. I bury myself in mind-blurring repetition in a cycle to both reach out to him and forget my one, true adolescent love. I know what addiction feels like. I can't quite seem to shake it still.

But I can't do what Miriam did. She says cruel things like, "I only had you because your father kept pestering me to have his son. Then he blamed me for you being only a girl!" There are plenty of words I could toss back. I could tell her that sometimes I wish I had never been born, too. To someone as worthless as her, no less. She is every bit a curse to me as I am to her in her mean moments.

I am caught half between being ashamed and proud of my Dad for putting up with her. Ashamed because he is the enabler. He gives her money for drinks and lets her drink herself into a stupor. He eats takeout pizza because there are no groceries in the house because of her. But he can not get her to stop. He yells, she yells, and I hide. Because my parents both love and hate each other.

So I am ashamed for my father the next day when for the sake of peace and no divorce, he zips his lips about the cup again. It is a great, dark secret no one outside our house must know. My mother, Miriam, and my Dad, Bob, both remind me of this in whispers before I leave out the door for school. I feel the burden of carrying their secret for them.

But there are occasions when I still feel proud about my old Dad! He may be a blowhard, proud, and ruthless but he has a heart. He keeps giving Miriam another chance, another day to change. He tries to keep our family together without the divorce my mother longs for. He tucks her in under a cover on a cold December night when she's fallen onto the couch even though he'll never get a thank you for it.

Every one portrays my Dad as a villain and maybe he is in his moments. His fists are made for swinging and his head must have an awful lot of post-fight head trauma in there judging by his spotty memory. But at least he's never slapped me because he's drunk. If he paddles me, it's because I made the principal ring our phone off the hook again. And in his own, strange way he shows me that by being a Pataki, I have reason to have pride. I own the last name of Beeper Kings and Queens! It is only too bad that I can't get him to care about my first name. I wish I could convince him that the dynasty isn't the only thing that matters.

I guess all this rambling leads me to one place. I could hide. I could take up booze like my mother did. She'd never know if a few bottles went missing. But I won't do that. I can't do that, because I like my glass filled up with water. I experience the pain knowing that on the other side of the bitter cup, I can revel in the beauty of the rainbow. The poetry, the music, the tears, the way my long arms and legs stretch out as I make the shot for a netless hoop at 3 am on a moonless night and the wind messes the feather earrings at my ears.

If I drank I wouldn't know the pain. The agony that makes me feel like dying sometimes. But then I wouldn't get the upper-swingside. The moments when it's all right. I can forgive myself for my failures for just a moment and think not about what I don't have, but what I do- a rainbow shimmering against the edge of a bitter cup. The world's great beauty resides alongside its pain and I need my eyes unobscured to see it. That's why I still try.