His voice shook.
“She told me about you. That you were funny. That you became a hairdresser.”
He looked at his hands.
“That you had my hands.”
My heart started pounding.
“She gave me this envelope and told me I could find you only if I stayed clean.”
He swallowed.
“I’ve been clean nine years.”
Then he looked directly at me.
“I think you deserve to know who I am.”
At that moment, Brenda came out of her office.
She saw Ray crying.
“Is he bothering you?”
“No.”
“What’s happening?”
I looked at Ray.
At the bluebird tattoo.
At my mother’s envelope.
Then I said something I never imagined I would say.
“I think he might be my father.”
Brenda went silent.
Then, unexpectedly, she flipped the salon sign to CLOSED.
“Take all the time you need.”
I sat down.
“Tell me everything.”
So Ray did.
He met my mother, June, when they were nineteen.
She worked at a snow-cone stand in Galveston.
He worked on a fishing boat.
For three weeks, he bought a cherry snow cone every day because he was too shy to ask her out.
Finally, she said,
“Are you going to keep buying snow cones, or are you going to ask my name?”
They were together for four years.
On her twentieth birthday, they got matching bluebird tattoos.
“Why bluebirds?” I asked.
Ray smiled faintly.
“Because of the song.”
He looked at the tattoo.
“Your mother said bluebirds were for people who would make it over the rainbow someday.”
His smile disappeared.
“I was the one who didn’t make it.”
When Ray was twenty-two, he injured his back at work.
He was prescribed pain medication.
Then the prescription ended.
His dependence didn’t.
He started making worse choices.
My mother became pregnant.
She told him to get clean or leave.
He tried.
Again and again.
But he kept relapsing.
I was born in April.
Ray was there.
He held me.
Promised he would change.
Four months later, he robbed a convenience store.
