My father was a thief who stole my mother's soul.

The larceny began one night behind the soda shop. Mom thought herself ugly, so when he sweet-talked her, she shut her mind and allowed her heart to sop up the whimsy, her future pilfered by the foreign delights of lust.

They were married in a private ceremony. Grandpa Randall might as well have signed the papers himself. His faith forbade an unwed daughter becoming a mother.

My entrance into the world nearly killed her. I fussed in the nursery while Mom recovered. She begged to hold me, but the nurses pronounced her too weak. My father worked, but not in the sales office like he told Mom. No, he worked his baby maker inside one warm hole after another on the bed with the iron-bar headboard in our basement apartment. His mother washed the sheets for him before Mom and I arrived home.

Within a year, my father abandoned the secrecy of his sinful wanderings. Mom cursed his name and he beat her for it. I screamed continuously. Some people don't remember being babies, but I cannot forget how the salty smell of tears filled my nose like the putrid stink of brackish pools on a derelict beach.

‡

On my first day of kindergarten, my father accompanied me to school. I remember he handed me a paper bag with a bread-and-butter sandwich and an overripe banana inside. He tilted his head and smiled.

"Mabel," he said.

"Yes?"

"You're going to meet plenty of boys in school. But I want you to remember that I'm your man."

The bell rang and the parents hugged their children. My father got down on one knee and kissed my ear. It made a loud slapping sound, and the suction from his mouth tugged on my eardrum with a painful pop. I heard his breathing, fast like he had been running. As the teacher called us in, he whispered, "Forever."

The smell of his breath, coffee and sugar, lingered in my nose. I tried to erase him from my mind, but he seemed to hover behind me.

I threw up that first day, right after Miss Gage brought us to the carpet for story time. The pungent odour of vomit chased my father's stink away. The custodian cleaned the mess and Miss Gage sent me to the office. The secretary called home. Mom picked me up.

"Does your stomach hurt?" she asked.

I shook my head.

"Were you scared of the teacher?"

"Miss Gage is nice."

"Oh."

I thought she would say more, perhaps ask about my fear, but she tugged my hand and led me home. She cooked pancakes from a mix, using water instead of milk because the milk truck skipped our apartment when we couldn't pay. We didn't have syrup, only butter. Grandpa Randall brought us butter on Sundays on his way home from church where he prayed for us.

Before my father returned home that evening, Mom cradled me close and wrapped a soft blanket around us--a pink one with ribbon sewn on two sides. "I want to show you a secret," she said.

She took me inside the broom closet beside the fridge. "Here," she pointed at the far wall. With a hard nudge of her shoulder she pushed and the wall opened inward.

I stood with my mouth open.

"Sit," she said.

I crawled into the small space and settled on the floor with my blanket around my shoulders. It smelled of her. She snuck in beside me and closed the door.

In the menacing darkness, she said, "Watch."

Slowly, hundreds of pinpricks of amber light glowed and brightened. When they burned vibrantly enough for me to see Mom's face, they began to fall, inching to the floor where they trickled into a pile around us.

She reached out and cupped a tiny handful of amber brilliance. The light reflected on her cheeks and in her eyes. She was crying. I rarely saw her cry.

"These are my tears," she said. "I keep them safe here, in my tear closet, so that your father won't find them. Would you like to share them?"

I nodded.

"Take a few in your hand."

I grabbed for the pile and the lights scattered.

"Slowly, Mabel. Be gentle."

She guided my hand to the floor. I breathed slowly and tried not to wiggle. A few lights skimmed down, nudged at my fingertips, and then moved away.

"Easy," she said.

The lights snuck close once more and moved into my palm. I felt sadness, as though my world had filled with sorrow and I had to cough it out of me. Tears filled my eyes and I encouraged them, crying and sobbing. My entire body shook.

Mom hugged me, still holding the blanket over my shoulders. She cried too, not vehemently, but more than I had ever seen.

I don't know how long we wept, but when the two of us stopped, my body drooped with relief. All around me, amber lights sparkled, pulsing bright, then dim, then bright again. So many tears that the closet warmed from their brilliance.

"Mom?"

"Yes?"

"Do you come here a lot?"

"Not much."

"It's beautiful."

She nodded. I held her and closed my eyes. When I finally opened them, the lights had all faded away.

"We'd best get back," she said.

‡

Mom walked me to school for the next two months. But when the pancakes thinned and my lunch turned into a slice of bread, she took a job with the phone company. She reported at half past seven, so my father had morning duty. He would hug me and rub his unshaven face against mine to awaken me. The whiskers burned, scratching my skin like hundreds of dirty needles. The first time he did it, I told him it hurt.

"Love hurts," he said.

"Why?"

"Because men are strong and women are weak."

"Mom's strong."

He glared at me while he chose a skirt and blouse from my closet, sniffing them before he tossed them on the bed. "Get dressed."

I changed while he made my lunch. Then he brushed my hair, yanking out the tangles and swearing while I bit my lip. After he finished my second pigtail, he sniffed my hair.

I hated his nose most of all.

‡

I lived for Sunday mornings because I would wake with Mom snuggled next to me. We would take our time rising and talk about what I had learned in school during the past week. I considered telling her about my father's sniffing, but I didn't want to waste our time together with sad thoughts.

Most Sundays, my father slept late and spent the afternoon bossing Mom around. She would bring him his coffee and aspirins, and make as nice a Sunday dinner as she could afford.

One Sunday in June, we woke early and Mom showed me how to make pancakes. My father wasn't home yet, so we giggled and played. Mom put red food color in the batter so we would have pink pancakes for our girl-time.

We sat down to eat them, heaping extra butter on, when he arrived.

"My head is splitting," he said. "Where's my coffee?"

"I'll put it on," said Mom. "The pancakes are ready."

"I'm sick of pancakes." He slapped her hard across the cheek. She fell from her chair at the kitchen table, her elbow catching a glass on the way past. It smashed on the floor.

"Clean your mess," he said.

When she stood, the broken glass cut her feet. She didn't cry out. Her feet left blood-stains on the floor.

"Now you're making it worse." He slapped her again. When she fell backward, the glass cut her hands.

He pointed a finger at her. "Don't cry. I can't stand your crying. You're so weak."

She shook her head and reached for a cloth to clean up the shards.

I hurried to the broom closet and brought Mom the dustpan.

She took it from me. "Go to your room. Stay there. I don't want you cut."

Stepping carefully in my slippers around the glass, I did as she said. I left my bedroom door open a crack and watched her sweep the glass and dump it in the garbage. When the floor was clean, she rinsed her hands and feet in a basin, vigilantly checking for shards. My father paced in the living room, complaining that she was taking too long with his coffee.

She needed to cry. I could feel it filling my head. The tears waited. I added my own fear to their power and willed her to sneak into her tear closet.

The coffee percolator hissed and gurgled as Mom poured the steaming liquid into a mug. She hurried it to my father.

"Finally," he said. After taking a sip, he looked up from the couch and caught me watching.

"Shut your door."

I did. I considered sliding the bolt lock, but feared his anger. Tears tingled under my fingers. I pressed my ear against the door and listened. Between his slurps, I heard the gentle clunk of the tear closet's secret door.

"Where's the cream?" He slammed the cup down. "Woman?" His footsteps moved towards the closet. "What are you doing in there?"

A slam.

Millions of tearpricks jabbed all over my body. Mom begged him for mercy. I didn't dare open the door. Instead, I sat in the far corner of my room, hugged my knees to my chest, and sucked on my pink blanket while I rocked back and forth. He yelled and he hit, but he never once mentioned the tears. Their pain kept worsening all over me until, exhausted, I collapsed and slept.

Mom left for work before I woke the next morning. While I dressed, my father sniffed my discarded clothes, including my underpants. I couldn't understand why anyone would want to smell something that had touched my bum.

I looked up at him and he smiled. But it wasn't a happy smile. I wanted to cry, but the tears wouldn't come.

As he yanked a comb through my hair, I asked, "How long will Mom work for the phone company?"

"Until the day she dies."

‡

In November of the same year, Sean Pensky arrived in our grade-two class. He was about an inch taller than me, skinny, and he had a bad mouth. It always said stuff he didn't mean, or so he told Miss Howard.

One day at recess, he ran up to me on the playground. I was skipping by myself, and he yanked the pink rope out of my hand and said, "You stink."

"Do not."

He threw the rope over the fence onto the baseball diamond where the big kids played. "Do too."

"Get it back."

"No way."

One of the big kids grabbed my rope, then another joined in, until they were playing tug-of-war. The game ended when it broke.

"Thief!" I shouted at Sean.

"I didn't steal anything. Your stupid rope's right there."

I shoved him. When he shoved me back hard, I fell down and scraped my knee. A teacher took me to the nurse's office to slap on green goo that smelled like the dark hallway at the hospital where Mom would get stitches. The office called home.

My father picked me up. He stared at my knee. "Looks sore."

I nodded.

"I'll kiss it better."

"It doesn't hurt that bad."

He signed me out and smiled at the secretary. She smiled back. He covered the wedding ring on his finger.

As the school doors clanked closed behind us, he said, "I'll kiss it better at home."

He kissed more than my knee. He touched my private places and smelled them too. His whiskers scratched and scraped me. His tongue dirtied me. I wanted to cry, but I couldn't. He had stolen my tears, just like Sean had stolen the skip rope.

The next day at school, I hunted for Sean at recess. Before he spoke, I punched him. He collapsed like an old shoe. I kicked him. He screamed and cried, begging me to stop.

"I'll steal your tears," I shouted at him.

The principal dragged me into the office and made me tell my story. He said that stealing my skip rope was wrong, but hurting Sean was worse.

"Is there anything wrong at home?" he asked.

"My father loves me."

"Your Mother's on her way from work."

"Mom?"

He nodded.

I waited in the office. When she arrived, she stared at her shoes and apologized to the principal. They called Sean down from class. I apologized to him in front of everyone. Mom signed me out and handed me a rectangular, yellow ticket.

"We're going for a ride," she said.

We walked from the school in the opposite direction of home. Mom took me to a stop where a red bus picked us up and took us downtown. From there, we walked to the phone company.

"You can stay here for the rest of the day."

"Really?"

She nodded.

I sat on a stool beside Mom. She wore a headset and answered all sorts of questions. Her voice sounded full of hope. Not sad or hurt like at home. When she had a break, we walked to the ladies' room holding hands. For the rest of the day I felt elated. On the bus ride home, a tear slipped down her cheek.

"You found your tears?" I said.

She nodded. "Your father didn't steal them. They're safe."

She cried and hugged me and I cried too. We wept so much that a lady sitting a few rows up came over and asked if she could help.

"We're more happy than sad," said Mom. "Glad to be together."

The lady gave us a funny look, but left us alone. Mom and I stayed on past our stop. After a while, the driver parked the bus. He opened the front and back doors, and then approached us.

"End of the line. You have to get off or pay again."

"Oh," said Mom.

I thought she would pay our fares, but she didn't. Instead, we exited by the back doors and started walking, but not towards home.

"Where are we going?" I asked.

"Away."

"For how long?"

"Forever."

I asked her if that was the same as how my father had said he was my man. Forever. She stopped walking and sank to the ground. Her skirt slipped up, showing her panties. I leaned forward to smell them.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"He sniffs my underpants, to make sure they're right."

Her face turned white, like the chalk they painted on the grass at school for the baseball diamond. Her hand shook as she stood and pulled me beside her.

"Come on," she said. "Hurry."

I wanted to ask her where we were going, but I don't think she knew.

The sun dropped low in the sky. We continued walking. Mom limped and said her shoes hurt her feet. I told her to take them off, but she wouldn't.

The street lights came on, illuminating the bridge over the valley. Brown water, the color of Mom's high-heeled shoes, flowed far below. Miss Howard had taught us the name of the river at school, but I couldn't remember it. Mom walked us right to the center of the long bridge. We were up so high, I felt like a bird. The wind roared in my ears. Cars sped past on the road beside us. She stopped, gripped the railing, and looked down.

"Isn't it beautiful, Mabel?"

I nodded.

"It's a long way down," she said.

"I'm scared."

She sat down with her back against the railing and said, "Me too."

The cold made me shiver, so she wrapped her arms around me. "I wish I had my pink blanket," I said.

"Sorry, sweetie. There wasn't time to get it." We sat in the middle of the bridge, shaking and silent.

"I'm done," she said. "I can't go back."

"Home?"

She nodded. She had her tears and I had mine and she didn't want anyone to take them.

I started crying. "Why does love have to hurt?"

She wiped the tears from my cheeks with her fingers and dried them on her skirt. Her hand felt as cold as the basement cement floor.

"Love only hurts when you don't deserve it." She stood and leaned over the railing. "I'm too ugly to deserve love."

"I love you, Mom."

"You deserve better. We've come here to hide our tears. Climb up here and I'll show you where we'll keep them."

I stood. The wind hit me hard, and I almost fell into the traffic.

She put one leg over the railing. "Come on, Mabel. The tear box is right here." She pointed past the railing, where I couldn't see.

I stood on my tiptoes and leaned over. Hovering below the railing, a swarm of her tears drifted together, their amber light glowing.

She swung her other leg over the railing. "Come on."

I grabbed her hand, but I couldn't will myself to climb. I shook my head.

"It's okay," she said.

"No, Mom. Please."

She pulled on my hand. I dug my feet in and held on. She swayed in the wind, twisting my arm until I thought it would pull off. My hands were sweating, and her grip slid.

The cloud of tears enveloped her. Poised for a heartbeat, our eyes locked. Then she and the amber lights disappeared over the side. She didn't scream on the way down. I knew she had found the bottom when I heard a faint thud on the wind.

I sat. On something. I pulled it out from under me. She had lost one of her brown shoes. The thin heel reminded me of Sean and his skinny legs. It smelled of the stockings Mom hung in the bathroom on Sunday afternoons.

For a long while I shivered and waited. For what, I didn't know. My father had stolen her from me sure as he had stolen her soul. He had taken all that we had.

Three times, I stood and leaned over the railing.

I thought about throwing her shoe over. She needed both shoes. It was too dark to see to the bottom of the ravine, but I thought I could see a dim orange patch of light below. Her wide eyes kept flashing in my mind, afraid, determined, alone. My teeth chattered in my mouth. Maybe the tears had helped her fly away? I tried to lift my leg to climb over, but I lost my balance and fell backwards. Strong hands grabbed me.

A man.

"What are you doing out here alone?"

I stared up at his broad shoulders and smooth face. "Nothing."

"Where do you live?"

I should have lied, should have run and never looked back. Instead, I recited my address as I had learned to do at school. The man walked me home. My father was there, with liquor on his breath and anger in his eyes.

"Ran away, did you?" he said. "The principal phoned."

The man said, "I'll leave you to it, then." He left us, taking hope with him.

‡

The night after the funeral, where we said goodbye to Mom, I had a terrible nightmare. I was falling and falling for what seemed like forever. When I woke, I could barely catch my breath.

My father's snores drifted into my room. Mom used to make me a snack whenever I woke from a nightmare, so I tiptoed across the cold basement floor into the kitchen. When I opened the fridge, I feared the light would wake him.

It didn't.

Inside was a cake the neighbour had baked to help us through our loss. The last time I had had cake, Mom had baked it for my birthday. She had stuck candles in the middle and told me to make a wish and then blow them out. The first wish that had popped into my head was for a puppy. But I never got a puppy.

I set the cake on the counter and took out a knife. With all of my heart, I closed my eyes and wished for tears. The knife slid easily through the rich chocolate frosting. It was brown, the color of the river and my Mom's shoe. As I glided the knife free of the cake, I stared at the goo clinging to the steel blade. Inhaling deeply, the chocolate smelled as rich as cream and as pungent as a grave.

I lifted the slice of cake onto a plate, found a fork, and approached the broom closet. I had wanted to sneak into the secret part since mom had left us, but my father had always been watching, touching, sniffing. The back wall squeaked as I shoved it inward. I stopped and listened.

My father snored on.

I crawled into the closet, sat, and tasted the heavy frosting while the cake melted on my tongue. As I raised a second forkful, amber lights began to arrive. The chocolate tasted salty; I found tears on my face.

I licked my fingertips, one at a time, tasting salt and chocolate together. As I pulled each finger free of my mouth, the lights scurried out of the way.

"No," I said to them. "Don't leave me."

They did the opposite. They doubled and doubled again, adding more light to the small space. I remembered how my mother had held me here, how her love had comforted me. I missed her so much.

"Mom?" I said to the tears.

Some hung silent in the air around me, others pooled in my lap and on the floor nearby. Though they warmed the small space, I still felt chilled.

"I miss you."

On and on the tears arrived, and with each new volley I wept. I cried as quietly as I could so my father wouldn't hear. "Please come back to me, Mom. I need you."

I could almost hear her voice, the way she would say, "I love you, my sweet Mabel," right before she tucked my sheets tightly around me for sleeping. I think the tears missed her, too.

For a long time I lingered in the tear closet, sobbing alone until I thought I would dry up like a shrunken apple. "Why does forever have to be so long?" I asked the lights.

They gathered around, hovering closer, until they seemed to fade inside of me. I lost sight of many of them. My sadness lingered, but my crying lessened, turning to whimpers and then shuddery sighs.

Exhausted, with my empty plate in hand, I crawled out of the closet. The clang of the dish in the sink seemed louder than a glass shattering. The knife, still covered with cake and frosting, lay on the counter where I had left it. The shape of it appealed to me so I picked it up.

Determined and armed with the dirty knife, I walked into my father's room. He was still asleep, sprawled half in and half out of his blankets. His head lay on an angle against the iron bars of the headboard. Without thinking, I held the blade above his nose. Would it slide as easily through him as it had through the cake?

He awoke and looked from me, to the knife, to me. His eyes opened so wide I thought they might get stuck like the glass eyes on a doll. For the first time in my life, I saw fear there, as though my father was actually afraid of me.

"What're you doing, Mabel?"

I couldn't answer, couldn't move. As the seconds ticked past, fear left his face. The contempt he had always shown for Mom took its place. With a sneer, he slapped at my hand. The knife flew across the room. It sprayed bits of icing and cake on his clothes as it tumbled into a pile of them on the floor. In that moment, I understood my mom's years of terror.

Afraid, I stood there, staring at him. He sat up and drew his hand back, readying a violent, backhanded slap.

The tears began to drift out of me, swarming and advancing towards my father. In huge clumps they landed on him, making the faintest of plunking sounds as they hit. He swatted at them, swiped them, scratched them, but they eluded his every effort. I watched his hands with fascination, stunned that such a big, strong man couldn't hurt these tiny lights.

When I looked back at his face, he was crying. Huge tears streaked his face. His nose, that horrible, awful nose, dripped snot in two matching ribbons over his lip.

He whimpered.

I knew how much he hated crying. I couldn't help but stare at him as he did.

"Get 'em off. Get 'em off me." He kept repeating it, over and over, while he cried and swatted at the tears; his eyes as wide as Mom's had been when she learned to fly.

I found my voice. "Love hurts. But not because men are stronger than women."

I took a step back and then another. When I was far enough away that he couldn't touch me, the tears around him began to fade. My father continued to scrape and swat at them, even when I couldn't see them any longer. A small army of tears stayed around me, on my arms, my legs, my hair, ready to defend me if he got too close.

I turned my back on him and started for my room, but stopped to face him once more. "Love hurts because you don’t deserve it."

‡

The next day, when he walked me to school, my father kept his distance. The few times that he ventured too near, or tried to sniff me or touch me or grab my hand, he would start to cry. Though I couldn't see any tears on him, my father continued to brush and swipe at his arms and legs and scratch his skin raw. I wore the tears like a blanket, my amber blanket, bigger and brighter than the pink one my mother had shared with me.

When Miss Howard saw us, she came over.

"I'm so sorry for your loss," she said to him.

He nodded and wiped another tear with his sleeve. Without answering, he started for home.

The bell rang, but when I tried to hurry for the line, Miss Howard said, "Wait, Mabel."

She knelt down in front of me. "If you need time alone, or to call home, just ask."

"Okay."

She nodded. "Your father is so sad. He must have really loved your mother."

"I don't think so," I said.

"Why would you say such a thing?"

I shrugged. "Because they aren't his tears."

"Whose tears are they?"

"They used to be Mom's, but now they're mine."

-- The End --