Knuckle
In front of the hyena enclosure I want to hold your hand. I don’t care about your other family watching. I stand alongside, stoop slightly to your eight year old height so the back of my hand contacts yours. I can’t do the rest though. I can’t reach my fingers to curl around yours. It’s no more than a brush of our knuckles.
A battered looking creature lazes at the back of the cage, one eye on us.
“Will you call me Dad?” I say instead, and then regret it, immediately. Too much too soon. I nearly call you princess. I’m relieved I don’t.
You move away without returning my look, enough so our hands aren’t touching.
“It’s just – ” I say.
Your face is reflected in the glass. You aren’t looking at the animals. I don’t know what you’re looking at, but I can tell it isn’t them, the way your eyes are focused. Is that a good thing? Does it mean you’re thinking about what I said?
“Last time I saw you, you were this big. Couldn’t walk, talk, nothing.”
I can feel your parents looking at us. Your do-the-right-thing adopted parents who decide when you’re ready to write to me, who decide when you’re ready to hear from me, who decide when you’re ready to call me whatever, who decide how much it matters that you meet me but on their terms, always on their terms.
“It’s weird I know,” I say, “this.”
I crouch so you’re taller than me, then force a short laugh so they’ll think we’re getting along just fine, but feel an idiot afterwards because you don’t react. But it’s what they want to see. Completeness. Your story coming full circle. You coming to an understanding with big bad birth dad, the big bad wolf they told you could never look out for you. For you to look at my face and see something of yourself, to acknowledge that, then move on, say you’ve done that. Done me. I know how that works I think. I know they think this is a one off. But.
I try to see what you’re looking at, your eyes angled away and down. Undergrowth in the enclosure, from what I can tell. Tangle. You haven’t looked at my face at all. You only looked at my right hand when we first met, the one I brushed against yours just now. Knuckles tattooed. K. A. T. E.
I want to say I’ve changed, but I doubt that would mean anything to you. Would they ever tell you what happened back then? Would you be standing so close if they did?
“I used to hold hands with your Mum all the time,” I say. “Before, I mean.”
You half turn to look at your parents behind us and I wonder if you’re confused for a moment, thinking I mean that Mum.
“You look just like her.”
I say that, but really I want you to turn to me, see my face and think to yourself you look just like me.
The inked skin of my knuckle still tingles from our touch. As far as it goes. No further. They’ll be over in a minute, your other parents, calling time.
The hyena at the back, its one eye never leaving us, bares its teeth to grin.
Martin Reed is a London based writer and editor. By day, he pays the bills writing about homelessness. By night he makes things up. His short fiction has appeared in more than 20 publications, including Critical Quarterly, Litro and Ink Sweat and Tears.