Girly Boy

three

The weekend arrived faster than I expected. I woke up on Saturday morning and reveled in the fact that the sun came up before I had to. My peace was short-lived; however, when I remembered that these 48 hours of freedom granted my father more time to use me as his personal errand runner.

"Carmichael can't do any of this?" I whined to my father who sat beside me at the breakfast table. He sipped on his coffee, looking over his cheer notes, one ankle resting on his knee.

I was exhausted reading over the lengthy list of tasks my father had given to me. I didn't even have time to finish my burrito before the man strolled into the kitchen to disrupt my tranquility.

Robert lowered his mug as if I'd offended him. How dare I ask that his baby boy get off his ass? If there ever was a babied son, Carmichael was it.

"Your mother and I won't be here forever, Imani."

Oh here we go.

"I need to know you will know how to take care of yourself when we are gone. You have to learn responsibility and independence. This is your training."

My dad swore that he was training me to be a warrior with his antics. Truthfully, it was probably just a phony excuse to justify him using me as his taskrabbit.

"Every day my own father used to give me a list of chores to do. You know what I did? I did them without a single complaint, think about that."

"You make it sound like you were a karate kid," I grumbled and took the last bite of my breakfast.

I was the only one in the family without a car so I had to take my father's Audi to the supermarket where our hard day of work began. I got lost several times on my way to the store despite following the instructions given to me by the GPS. Following directions never came easy to me, but I always blamed it on the fact that no one was ever specific with their instructions. Carmichael came up with a less ideal theory for this phenomenon when he was twelve. He claimed it was just because I was stupid.

It was customary for Robert to grant me his vehicle for my errands, but that never shook the anxiety of driving it. My grandfather had gifted this car to my dad on his eighteenth birthday. At the time it was a lemon with four busted wheels, scarred leather seats, and a faulty gear shift, but over the course of a year, Robert and his father worked day after day to create the beauty I was driving today. It wouldn't surprise me if my dad offered to sell me if it meant that he could afford parts to fix his beloved car if needed, he valued it more than life.

I inhaled the scent of 'Black Ice,' the only scent Robert allowed to aromatize his Jada (this was the name he chose for this wretched machine) and parked at the first convenient space permitted to me.

Grocery shopping was never my thing. I preferred the online cart to a banged-up buggy alerting employees of my whereabouts so when I found out I could order my things online and pick them up later, I was overjoyed. The car hummed as I scrolled on my phone, sifting through my friends' lives as they continued on without me.

Mariah from 10th grade art class posted pictures of her trip to Honduras on her story. Posed next to the boyfriend she'd told me she was going to break up with over the summer, she smiled wide with the stunning view of tree decorated mountains behind her.

Good for her. She deserves a break.

I'd considered the idea of traveling in the past. When I was younger, my mother and I would watch Rick Steves guide us through Europe when she wasn't working on cases. It was our time to bond the way my dad got to while he made me practice his cheer routine. When things were good, we giggled as we planned our luxurious girl's escape to Switzerland. When things were tense, we sat together in thick silence and planned to run away from each other.