Rain

• Minseo Kim, Grade 7
• Short Story
• 2016

It was pouring down in earnest before I reached the front door, searing my face like a knife: the first rainfall in a month. Yellow light flooded the damp street as my mother admitted me. The artificial light made her slim face appear even paler than usual.
“How is he?” I inquired as she took my jacket.
“He’s managing,” she replied in hushed tones, as though if she spoke any louder, the emotion would pour from her eyes.
“Is he in his room?” I asked hastily, anxious to spare her from any more necessity to open her mouth. She bit her lip as she nodded, quickly and animatedly.
My breath caught in my throat and my heart struck my ribs erratically as I glided, phantom-like, through the hall. Raising my hand to brush the dripping hair from my eyes, I realised it was shaking violently and uncontrollably. It dropped to my side and skimmed the cream-coloured walls that I had last passed in a frenzied rage, indignant shouts calling after me as I slammed the door with a deliberately resounding crash.
My heart skipped a beat when I reached his room. The door had not been closed completely and a stretch of light shone from within into the dark hall. For a brief moment I wondered if it would be more prudent to leave now and pretend I’d never come.
With great intrepidity, I entered.
The cavernous room looked gloomy; the dishevelled bed had accumulated dust from lack of tenancy, and here the lightbulb shone crisp white, unlike the warm golden glow the rest of the house possessed. Sat upon a hard-backed wooden chair that faced the garden beyond was the room’s inhabitant. He did not seem to notice as I drew closer, and hardly responded when I placed a hand upon his arm.
However, he shuddered when I whispered, “Hello, Dad,” in a husky tone that rendered me a thousand times more sympathetic for my mother.
My father had not aged a day since our argument. The lines upon his face remained identical; stern and austere. Yet I thought there was a drooping quality to his features, as though perpetual sadness had taken its toll upon them. It pained me to see it; to behold those once brilliant eyes, unseeing and blind.
My mother had described to me in an e-mail how she daily replenished a supply of increasingly wilted purple hyacinths, once his favourite flowers, in his hand, and how no recognition nor emotion ever stirred upon his countenance.
I sat on the floor beside him and laid my head against his knee. We sat in silence for a long time, father and daughter, listening the rain patter upon the roof; watching it fall upon his precious garden and nourish its dying blossoms. I do believe he watched it, intently, despite his sightless state.
“I love you, Dad.”
Looking up, I saw a tear squeeze out from beneath his sealed eyelid and trickle down his cheek.