The Mask of the Father
My mask of the father is yellow and bright. The eyes are open wide and a little black bat sticks out from the forehead. A baby squeezes out of its mouth. His face is lifted up to the light-bulb, squirming and crying.
*
I enter the circle and ask for advice. Every character tells me a story of fatherhood and childhood. I must remember them for they are all my truth.
*
The year my father died, I wrote something for him. It didn’t feel right. For years I lived with it, unsatisfied, occasionally tinkering with it, fiddling here and there with a word or phrase. Ten years later, someone in one of my writing groups puts her finger on it - you want to write a ritual in which your father can take part. That’s it, and I write new sections then, which are simpler, less in the head, dedications to his work. And cut into lots of “dead wood”.
*
Now I am a father, changing a nappy at midnight, Daniel two days home, in a cube of yellow light, in the middle of the countryside, deep summer. A bat has come in through the skylight and hangs like a rag on the bedhead next to my hair, then strafes the room. A tiny squawling baby and this circling slice of absolute black in the thickness and heat of the night.
*
Now I step into the circle, wearing the face of the father. I recognise you Dad, off to the side, and one or two other men, your mates from the Swan. I enter the circle and ask for help. They smile, cracking jokes in Black Country accents.
Dad, you won’t speak now, but maybe later, when we’re on our own, in a casual moment, fishing the canal at Wombourne, or driving home with fish and chips.
*
Page(s) 179
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