Page 1 of Spade

1

Spade

The room was windowless, with no escape. The air had a sourceless chill, just like my childhood. The overhead lights were set a notch too high, which meant every surface—walls, table, my boots—threw hard-edged shadows. There was no clock on the wall, just the soft tick of the notepad whenever the therapist flipped a page. On the low table between us, a ceramic dish in the shape of a lotus released a whisper of lavender that never reached the corners.

I sat with my spine straight and my boots flat on the floor. My jacket was draped over one arm of the chair, and the sleeve hung down like an empty limb. I pressed my hands onto my thighs, fingers splayed, the way they told you in interviews to look “grounded.” The chair wasn’t uncomfortable, but it was too soft, which made sitting at attention into a test of muscle endurance. I passed the test.

The therapist asked about my father. She asked like it was an innocuous box to check—History of Substance Abuse, Y/N?—but she already knew. They always did. I gave her the same answer I gave the first three: “He drank. He yelled. Sometimes he missed.”

She blinked once, quick, then looked at her notes, not at me. “What do you remember most about him?”

I picked a detail. “The sound his boots made in the hallway. He walked heavily on the heel and dragged the toe. If he was drinking, the sound got slower.”

She waited, pen hovering over the page like she was drawing blood with it. When I didn’t say more, she filled the silence with, “How did that make you feel?”

I let the quiet sit. She thought I was refusing, but really I was calibrating. “It made me plan,” I said. “I knew how much time I had before he got to the door.”

She nodded again, and I realized she did this every time she wanted to prompt a follow-up but didn’t want to ask outright. I counted her nods. She was at five.

She tried to redirect. “What about your mother?”

I smiled with my lips only. “She was there. She wasn’t.”

“Can you elaborate on that?”

“Some nights she locked herself in the bathroom. Other nights she went out and didn’t come back until morning.” I didn’t tell her about the time Mom had come home missing a shoe and with the back of her shirt torn. I didn’t tell her what she smelled like. I didn’t tell her how, once, she sat at the edge of my bed and stroked my hair, then fell asleep mid-sentence, her hand tangled and deadweight. I didn’t tell her because she didn’t ask the right question.

The therapist let the silence work. I respected that. She wore flats and tailored slacks, always with a soft sweater, always in muted colors. Today’s was gray, with a pill at the elbow from being laundered too many times. She kept her hair short and neat, a no-nonsense cut, and wore a ring on her left hand even though she never mentioned a partner. Everything about her was designed to be unthreatening, and I found that more suspicious than the alternative.

“Did you have any siblings?” she asked.

My body went still in a way that wasn’t composure. It was the kind of pause you did when you walked into a room and saw something wrong, but hadn’t figured out what yet. “Yes.”

“How old were they?”

“She was ten. I was thirteen.”

She wrote that down, the numbers hanging in the air like ages on a tombstone.

“Tell me about her.”

“She was small. She slept curled up, always. When she was little, I used to make a circle with my arms, and she would fit inside it.” My voice cracked once, so I put it back into place. “She had a gap in her teeth and chewed her hair. She was scared of the dark, even when we were older.”

“Did you feel responsible for her?”

I stopped looking at her and stared at the dish of lavender. “She was my sister. That’s not a feeling, that’s a fact.”

“Did you ever try to protect her from your father?”

The air changed. The question was routine, the kind you’d hear on a daytime talk show, but it dropped the temperature in the room by a full degree. “Yes.” The word came out flat.

She waited.

“I kept her in my room some nights. I’d block the door with a chair.” I looked down at my hands, remembering the imprint of the chair back against my palms. “It didn’t always work.”

“Did something happen to her?”

I closed my fists on my thighs and felt my knuckles press through the denim. “Not the way you’re asking.”