I Fell in Love with Hope: A Novel

Dad,

My first memory is of you.

You kiss my face, laughing when it contorts, gentle hands on my back. Mom is beside you, her hands tickling my belly. Your eyes are warm. Your words are tender. My world is a crib, and your love is the weather.

I’m not certain how much reality that memory holds, but I don’t waste time questioning it.

Funny how memory works, isn’t it? You remember what is strange more than what is normal. The normal days blend together, but the in between moments stand out.

I wonder what it says about my life–that I remember more vividly the moments of your kindness than I do your hatred.

I wasn’t aware of it when I was younger. The hatred, I mean. I didn’t know that it was abnormal for your dad to scream and slam the table because you accidentally broke a plate. I didn’t know that it was odd to be stripped naked and thrown into an ice-cold bath because you asked why boys couldn’t kiss other boys.

Mom was the one who cleaned up the shattered ceramic and dried me off as I shivered. It made me sad when she turned the other cheek, but unlike you, her kindness was constant. She never once hurt me.

One night, when you were away on business, she slept in my bed. She cried when she thought I was asleep. The next morning I saw the bruise on her cheek. Streams of wine color caught in a patch of putrid greens and yellows.

That was when I decided I wouldn’t hate her.

Of course, I couldn’t hate you either. You were all I knew.

You taught me right from wrong. You guided me through the beginnings of life. And every time I went the wrong way, acting a little too weak or a little too curious, you said:

God will forgive you.

I was stupid back then. I was a little boy who thought kindness lied in a clenched fist and that my existence was something to apologize for.

But you forgot, dad, that the more a child grows, the bigger the world gets. My crib became a house and our house became a town and little by little, I came to know what kindness really looks like.

There was a day you took me to the park to play catch. I had just gotten my first-ever report card. I had good grades, so customarily, you smiled, but you were bothered beneath it. Kids are intuitive. They pick up on those things.

I knew, even then, when I was barely at your knee, that it bothered you when my teachers called me reserved rather than outgoing. It bothered you that I should’ve been at your hip by that age, that I never spoke, and that I couldn’t catch.

So, when the baseball hit me in the head as a symptom of your frustration, I let it happen. I let the blood seep over my eye, and I let you carry me back to the car, kissing apologies on my forehead.

That was the first time other people had witnessed you hurt me. I remember mothers with their toddlers by the slide and swing set putting a hand to their mouths in shock.

I wanted to tell them that it was okay. That it was an accident. That you cared about me and you only hurt mommy and me some of the time.

That night you washed my hair and bandaged up my head. You kissed me goodnight and said you would teach me and that it would all be okay.

Though I didn’t cry when you turned off the light, I felt this intense emptiness. Mom and I were a quiet pair. The house itself had more to say to us than we did to each other. I had no friends or siblings to talk to either.

I was lonely.

I wanted your kindness, and for that, I was willing to learn how to catch. I was willing to pretend to be someone I am not to please you.

It worked for a while.

Your anger became scarce. There was the occasional frustrated bout where you screamed at me or called me names or pushed me, but you always caught yourself and apologized.

There was this one habit you had that exists in the cluster of bumps.

You’d grab me. Nothing else. You’d just grab my arm. You’d watch your hand practically swallow it. Then, after a moment, you’d laugh, let it go, ruffle my hair, and tell me I should eat more.

You liked seeing the fear in my eyes. You liked the momentary high it gave you–knowing that you could break the bone in two and there wouldn’t be a thing I could do about it. You liked that no matter what I did, it was all in your hands. You were the one who decided what was right and wrong and you had the power to shape me into whatever you wanted me to be…

Or maybe that was in my head.

Maybe you were just being playful, so I kept on trying to please you. I kept on closing my eyes at night and asking God to forgive me.

But there were things I couldn’t change for you, parts of me you could not alter to your liking.

You’d say things…

Neo, eat some more. I can see your bones through your shirt.

You should build some muscle, you’ve got sticks for arms.

Neo, don’t make that face, you look like a girl.

Looks like you won’t be riding any roller coasters anytime soon.

Don’t be pouty, I’m just teasing you.

You have hips like a woman, you know that?

I became keenly in tune with the pitch of my voice and the size of my body. I felt guilty for being too short, too skinny, too feminine.

I hated myself.

My loneliness festered. It ate me. I was a patch of soil, a feeding ground for weeds of shame to grow and flourish till I turned to nothing.

I wanted to kill myself before that happened.

At nine years old, I dreamt of falling asleep in mom’s arms when you were away on a trip and never waking up. Maybe, I would meet God, I thought. Then, he would tell me I was forgiven. That I didn’t need to be hit or frightened anymore. I dreamt of taking mom with me too.

The next morning, I planned to walk into the road and let the bus run me over. I kept imagining myself flattened on the road, my skull cracked open, blood and brain oozing from my head.

But when I sat down, I found something. A book that’d been left at the bus stop. It had Great Expectations written on the front. I stole it without thought. The words were too difficult for me to make out, but I tried anyway. The road could wait.

My teacher saw these struggling attempts and gave me other books to start with that would be easier. I was determined to read the book, so I took her advice and read all the easier ones first.

That’s when I fell in love with stories.

Stories gave me an out, a loophole in life’s weaving.

It turns out I didn’t have to be me. I could be anyone. I learned to live through pages, ink, and writing. I guess I have you to thank for that. Without the shame and the loneliness, I would’ve never found my raison d’être.

Mom encouraged me while you were away on your business trips. She read to me before bed and gave me a pencil and a notebook whenever I asked.

The shame and loneliness slowly began to wilt. I shed them like skin on paper, and I wrote till I became good at it.

I think this bothered you too. Because I became less reliant on you. I became consumed, intensely avoidant of reality through literature. I began to learn and formulate opinions that weren’t yours.

I started becoming someone.

Neo, come spend some time outside with me.

Don’t you have any friends you want to play with?

Put the pen down, c’mon.

Don’t buy that book, it’ll put poison in your head.

Neo! Put that stuff away. Let’s go.

Don’t read that gay shit. Fucking hell.

Give that to me! Where did you get this!? What kind of faggot gave you this!? Tell me!

One night, I came home from school with a smile on my face. A boy sat next to me on the bus and called me pretty. He kissed my cheek and told me to keep it a secret and I felt something so new: Butterflies in my stomach, jitters, the good kind, an excitement that could not be stolen.

Or so I thought.

I wrote a story about the boy and me and you ripped it out of my hands and read it in full.

Then you took off your belt and whipped me with it. You locked me in the closet for over a day and a half. Mom cried, screaming at you to let me out. Finally, when you left, she ran upstairs. You’d hit her too. Her lip was split and she couldn’t open one of her eyes. She let me out and collected me in her arms. I’d pissed myself and I was shaking, but mom didn’t care. She hugged me and apologized.

She bathed me, washed my clothes, and in an oddly intimate way, we patched each other up. I dabbed her lip with a cotton ball and she put ointment on the lashes.

I’m glad you weren’t there to apologize. It’s your apologies that were the cruelest. Because you meant them. You knew you were hurting us every time, and you continued to do it anyway.

I know you remember these moments, dad.

But I want you to relive them.

I want you to know that your wife and your son found each other in the wake of your violence. I want you to know that even after that night, I still didn’t hate you.

I chose to pretend that the bruises, the hitting, the yelling, those were all just fever dreams. What was real was the kindness.

I held onto the memory I have as a baby, to the smiles, you shared with me, to the jokes we made together, to the times you’d pick me up and make airplane noises, to the goodnight kisses, to the movies we watched together, and every bump in a road.

The night I decided to hate you, you didn’t even hurt me.

You came home from a business trip.

I was reading in my room. I’d taken to hiding my books and writing in boxes in the attic since you never went up there. That night, I heard your voice gradually get louder and louder through the walls. I peeked out of my door and I heard the sound of a lamp breaking against the wall, a dish against the tiles.

I didn’t want mom to get hurt, so I walked down the stairs thinking you’d stop if you knew I was there.

But you didn’t.

You took what was left of her sanity and you raped her right in front of me.

I didn’t care what the reason was. I didn’t even care if there was a reason. I wanted to kill you. I fantasized about getting a knife from the kitchen drawer and driving it into your back.

Mom didn’t even realize I saw it happen. She’d bitten through her arm to keep from making noise and tried to clean up before she caught sight of me.

Mom.

Oh, Neo, she said, smiling, pretending there weren’t tears streaming down her face.

It’s okay, honey, just go back to bed.

Your face is bleeding, I said.

Is it? She touched her cheek and hissed. I’m so clumsy these days, aren’t I?

Mom?

Yes?

Can you sleep in my room tonight?

She sniffled and nodded.

Yes, she said. Yes, of course, I can.

—

C couldn’t live without his heart.

I think I always knew that. Sorrow isn’t the first thing that hits when the surgeons emerge into the waiting room. It’s the realization that what I’ve been waiting for is here, like I’ve reached the end of a path I knew was a dead end.

You really are a strange, beautiful creature, he said.

That is the last thing he ever gave me.

Hikari and Neo hold hands, leaning on each other. I sit on Hikari’s side, my eyes closed, my consciousness traveling through the walls so that I can watch the surgery.

When C rejected the new heart, dread leaked into the room, submerging his doctors in difficult decisions.

They did everything they could. They always do.

C’s mother is the first to burst into tears when the surgeons give her the news. His father cries too, hugging his wife, C’s brothers, each falling into their own version of misery and frustration. Two of them stand, storming off. Another presses his hands to his face, shaking. The last surround their parents as if holding each other up will lessen the blow.

Hikari sits there in disbelief. She is crying, but it is noiseless. In her hand, the tangled earbuds C gave her for safekeeping sit. She looks down at them, not sure what to do. I gather her in my arms, kissing the side of her face laden with salt. She hides in the crook of my neck.

Neo is tearless.

He does not cry or fall to the floor. His hands are neatly folded in his lap, C’s phone loose in one, the promise he made crumpled in the other. Calmly, he stands up after the surgeons and their condolences have gone. He walks to C’s family, stopping at his mother.

“Madam,” he says.

C’s mother lifts her face from her hands, sobbing breaths stalled into quieter cries. Neo kneels in front of her.

“C’était là où il gardait toutes ses chansons préférées,” he says, handing her the phone. Then, in the softest voice he knows, “Je suis désolé pour votre perte.”

Neo leaves after a few minutes. He asks Hikari and me if he could be alone for a little while. He walks back to his room the way he would on any other day, greeted by a shut door.

He opens it to his father sitting at his desk with a letter folded over his lap.

Neo meets his gaze, apathetic, no change in his body. He regards his father like you regard a new, uninteresting piece of wall art and proceeds inside without much more care than that.

“You’ve been gone a while,” Neo says, shutting the door behind him. His father folds the letter neatly and clears his throat.

“Your mother convinced me to give you space,” he says.

Neo doesn’t fail to notice the state of his knuckles. He imagines what he must’ve done to his mother for them to retain such bloody coloring. He wonders if he is capable of killing her, if he already has. He laughs a little then, thinking of the odds that his mother and his heart died on the same day.

“Are we going to talk about this?” his father asks, holding up the pieces of paper.

“There’s nothing to talk about,” Neo says.

He traces his stacks of books, reaching under his bed to take out a single cardboard box and, one by one, putting them in it.

“You went and got some bravery after running off?” Neo’s father asks, although it isn’t aggressive or scornful. Pride flows through his tone, hooked on the corner of his mouth. He’s happy, Neo realizes. His son, rather than stay pitiful, weak, and afraid in the hospital, actually took his shot at escaping.

“I’m not brave,” Neo says, spines running down the cardboard and thumping to the bottom. “I never have been. I know you’re disappointed by that.” He stares his father in the face. “But at least I can acknowledge that I’m weak.”

Neo’s father sighs. It’s a sigh that preludes the violence Neo knows all too well. On instinct, Neo stands up, his breathing racking an unsteady rhythm. He backs away as his dad makes his way to him.

“That doesn’t matter because–” Neo is interrupted by a rough grab of his forearm, but he doesn’t fall into his resentful quiet. He speaks louder. “Because I’m a good writer!” he yells. “I’m smart, and I learned infinitely more from books you deem immoral and the people within these walls than I ever have from you.”

Neo makes fists with his hands, tensing. He focuses on the smell of crisp pages and the pinching vice grip around his flesh. He waits, breathing with his mouth open, for his father to hit him. He waits for the stinging sensation, a nail to nick his lip, or the numbing heat.

When Neo looks into his father’s eyes, he finds the frustration, the restraint, the desire to hurt him that is as old as the day he threw a baseball straight at Neo’s skull.

Neo laughs. He laughs so hard tears run down his face and drip onto the papers on the floor.

“There was a part of me that always believed you could change,” he says. His limp wrist rises to his eyes, blanketing them. “When I got sick, when I got beaten up, when I was in a fucking wheelchair–all those times I thought, maybe he’ll change.”

Neo’s father doesn’t relinquish his hold. He doesn’t move to strike or shove or startle him. He knows that is futile. Neo is not hurt by those things anymore. In fact, it hurts more when his father tries to show concern for him. It hurts that after all this time, he can still show him affection.

Neo laughs again, practically wailing. Pain in its purest form rips him apart from core to skin. It infects all echoes of C. It claims him as a casualty of the past and reminds Neo with every fleeting memory they share that from here on, there will be no more.

Neo throws his head back against the wall, his crazed laughter becoming a long sigh. “I wonder, dad, would you change now?” he asks. “If you knew that the boy I love just died? Would you hug me and tell me it’ll all be okay?”

Frozen still, Neo’s father cannot so much as open his mouth, let alone answer.

“No, you don’t care enough for that,” Neo says. “You care enough to feel sorry for me, I think, but your values are stronger. I mean, you knew all along, right?” He smiles with a whisper. “Your hatred always had a name. We just never spoke it.”

“I’m sorry about the boy,” his father says, quickly, sitting down on the bed. He doesn’t let him go. “I can’t blame you for being confused. When we go home–”

“I’m not going home with you.” Neo stares at his stories, the ink dissolving in his tears like paint.

His father pulls him by the arm in the slightest, a warning.

“Neo–”

“You may want to be careful when you touch me now,” Neo says. “You’re not the only person I wrote a letter to.”

The door opens with wind. Eric stands at the threshold. He practically crushes the doorknob, hair frazzled, scrubs, and dark under eyes at the ready.

“Neo, is everything okay?” he asks.

“It’s alright, I’m his father–”

Eric’s eyes flick from the irritated red and creasing skin on Neo’s forearm to the wet trails down his face.

“Get your hand off him.”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re hurting him, sir,” he says, urgency in the tone. “I’m telling you to get your hand off him.”

Neo’s father tries to reason with Eric, calm and collected like a true businessman. Neo rolls his eyes at the age-old tactic that always seemed to work when he slipped up and raised his voice or grabbed Neo too roughly in public.

“Oh, for God’s sake, do you ever shut up?”

His father’s head snaps in Neo’s direction.

“What’d you say?” His hand goes from vice to branding iron, squeezing so hard that Neo cringes.

Eric snaps. “Security!”

Neo watches as panic stirs in his father’s eyes, a satisfaction dulled by guilt settling in his stomach.

“Neo.” He takes Neo by the shoulders as gently as he can, the way he did when he kissed tenderly worded apologies. “Tell him you lied, that you’re confused.”

Neo does nothing of the sort. Instead, he smiles again.

“I’ll always love you for the in between moments, Dad,” he says. “But I don’t forgive you for the rest of them.”

The head security guard rushes into the room and escorts Neo’s father out. The commotion catches attention from the whole floor, but Neo retains his calmness.

Eric lets Hikari and me into the room, telling Neo he’ll be right back, that he’s okay now.

“Neo,” Hikari calls, Hee cuddled in her sweater. The cat hops onto Neo’s bed, nuzzling onto his lap.

“I’m fine,” Neo says. She stares at his arm with crescent-shaped cuts dripping onto the sheets. Neo runs his touch around Hikari’s neck and pulls her into an embrace. “Don’t cry, stupid. I’m fine.”

Neo decides to stop packing his things then. Instead, he leaves the room as it is, our headquarters. He imagines Sony laying supine on the window sill, playing with Hee, while Coeur sits tapping his thighs with the rhythm of his earbuds.

His and Coeur’s manuscript sits in the corner.

He tells himself he will finish it another day.

“I want to lie down in the sun for a while, don’t you?” he whispers. Hikari agrees and we make our way to the gardens together, sure not to sit too close to the hedge. Neo lays flat in the grass, wearing C’s varsity jacket, inhaling his scent and his warmth, pretending that it is C’s arms holding him rather than empty fabric. I lay beside him, Hikari and Hee too. Lonely, sunkissed survivors.

I wonder if Neo’s father will ever read the rest of his son’s letter. Although as Neo stares upward to heaven with peace, I know that it doesn’t matter.

—

Dad,

Two weeks after you raped my mother, I came down with an infection. You said it was nothing, remember? A symptom of my tantrum and my refusal to eat. Then, a week after that, I was hospitalized. My disease is so rare for boys my age that it took them a year to get the diagnosis right.

I didn’t think that was funny, but it made me laugh when the doctors asked if I played sports. With the bruises I had, I must’ve. I knew CPS would take me if I said anything so I just told them I roughhoused with my friends and I was clumsy and they believed it.

Either way, I was overjoyed.

A lifelong illness, they said.

I was so happy, dad. I don’t think I’d ever been happier.

For the last three years, I’ve been gifted an escape. A place you can’t hurt me past a little bruise here and there. A place I am free of your control.

I read and write so much here, it’s euphoric. I made friends. Strange, beautiful, funny, kind friends that you have no claim to. Friends who taught me what it feels like to belong. To be happy and to be appreciated.

I realize now, you were as happy to have a son as I was to be sick.

I just wasn’t the son you wanted.

You molded me into an image of someone I am not and if I diverted by an inch, you felt threatened. It was never me you were attached to, nor your authority. It was that image. That idea. That person that doesn’t actually exist.

That’s why I don’t blame you, dad.

But my last memories will not be yours.

They will be of my mom and the nights we healed each other. The nights she read to me and encouraged me to be who I want to be.

They will be of a beautiful, loud girl I stole clothes and a cat from–Of a witty girl with optimism to reach the stars and jokes that made my belly shake–Of a strange friend who coaxed my nightmares away and never once left my side–Of a boy with more heart than most. My last memory will be of his lips, his joy, his beauty, his optimism, and his everlasting kindness.

This letter is not for you dad, it is for me.

Because I have nothing to be sorry for. I do not need to be forgiven for who I choose to be and even less for who I choose to love.

So, thank you, Sony, Hikari, Sam…

Thank you, Coeur…

For teaching me to love myself.