Burning Tulips

Chapter Twenty-Three: Awaken

69 Chapter Twenty-three Awaken Dad is virtually impossible to wake. Except for the vacuum, he can sleep through most anything. But when Dad wakes, the first thing he does is yell things that don’t make sense. Both Sue and I have walked upstairs three times trying to get Dad out of bed and off to work. Each time he heard us and moaned some ugly words, but never got up. “Whose turn is it to wake your dad up?” Mom yells from the kitchen. “Sue’s,” I yell back. “She’s fibbing, Mom. I went up last time.” “Get him out of bed! If he’s late for work, he’ll lose his job. Make him get up this time!” my mother screams from the kitchen. I think of Mrs. Huizenga, the next door neighbor. She throws a pan of water on her husband when he doesn’t get out of bed. If I threw a pan of water on my father, he’d break my arm. I fill a squirt gun and stand next to Dad’s bed, staring at him while he snores and farts beneath the sweaty sheets. I give him one more chance. “Dad, get up. You’re late for work!” Then I shake his arm. He opens his eyes and says, “I’ve been awake all along. I’m getting up. Quit nagging!” I run down the stairs before he sees the squirt gun and tell my mother he’s up. She sees the squirt gun and asks, “Did you spray him?” “No, I chickened out. He woke up on his own.” “If you sprayed him, he’d be mean.” “Yeah, I know. But it’d get him up.” Dad is working swing-shift, sometimes going in at six, other times two, and tonight’s the late shift, eleven. We can’t go to bed until he gets up because he wants us to see him leave for work. He won’t be home in the morning since he goes to the bar after work. Sometimes Dad comes home before he starts the next shift but more often he doesn’t bother coming home. When Dad still doesn’t get up, Mom tells me to go get him. “Why don’t you make Joe wake him? Why is it always us girls?” 70 Burning Tulips “You know why,” she says. Dad’s always in a bad mood when he wakes up. Mom thinks Joe puts Dad in a worse mood so she makes us girls wake him. “Well, it’s Sue’s turn.” “You almost got him up. One more time and you’ll be able to do it. Tell him you love him. He likes that.” He smells like old whiskey and stale cigarettes. “Dad,” I say, leaning over his face. “I love you. Will you please get up?” He looks at me again. This time he reaches his large arm around my skinny leg and pulls me into bed. “Just lie here with me a minute. Then I’ll get up. I promise.” I lie stiffly, staring at the ceiling, balancing my body on the edge of the mattress. Dad doesn’t move over. He throws his arms around my body and whispers in my ear, “I’ve missed you.” I say nothing. He’s the one that has decided to not come home after work. He starts rubbing his fingers inside my vagina while he presses his hard penis against my rump. He doesn’t try to put his penis inside me, just his fingers. “I do this for you. You know that, don’t you?” I say nothing. “One day you’ll thank me. I’m getting you ready for something else.” Dad sends me out of the room first so no one will be suspicious. “You better get up now,” I say. Downstairs no one asks me where Dad is or what I was doing up there so long. No one says anything about how quiet it was upstairs. No one says they heard the bed squeak. Nothing is said. I sit on the couch next to Sue and stare at the TV. Then I pinch her and she screams. “It was your turn to go up!” I whisper loudly. She says nothing but knows what happened up there. Sue doesn’t let Dad touch her. She doesn’t even talk to him. But she knows I let him touch me. I try not to look at the...