If my love were a song, I'd play for you.

SSABSA 1996 Section B

Saturday, March 22, 2008 at 6:59 AM

Choose one question and write a response of approximately 250 words. Your response must be one of the following: a description, a letter, a narrative or a personal reflective piece.

"The suitcase is old. I can't tell what colour it was originally because the pattern on the side had faded so much. As a child, I often sneaked out to the shed and touched the suitcase, ran my fingers along its bumpy skin, feeling for its secrets."

"Daddy"

Turbulent. Perhaps that's a word that best describes what you feel when your seemingly buried past resurfaces and throws itself into your face. You feel like something's rushing, spinning, bursting inside you but you have to keep it all in and gulp it down with your coffee.

Sitting here in this smoky café downing my third espresso, a pang of something - is it guilt? - hits me. Somehow, I never quite escaped, or forgot the silent agony of separation.

My thoughts revert to the time I abandoned the one I loved. My Mandy.

~~~

"Daddy! Daddy! What have you brought me?"

"Shh..." I mutter, trying to keep my temper from showing. "Jamie, how many times have I told you not to let her call me that?"

"She just doesn't understand, Rick." Twenty-nine-year-old Jamie lets me in to her apartment and closes the door, latching it delicately. She looks fragile and tired.

"Why can't I call you Daddy?" The eyes of the little girl are hazel and sad. I pick her up and place her gently on the sofa bed.

"Because you'll get me into trouble, alright?"

"Daddy, what's in the bag?"

"Mandy, don't call me... ah, never mind." I place the suitcase on the floor. "Just work in here."

"No teddy bear for me? Or chocolate?" Mandy reaches for the suitcase, her soft fingers brushing against my coarse knuckles.

"No. Jamie, take this money. I have to leave."

Jamie takes the wad of notes without a word, the same cold expression painted upon her face with a sliver of a smile.

As I walk down the corridor, suitcase in hand, my heart cringes at the cries of a little girl, coming from behind the apartment door.

~~~

"Yeah, bye Keith... See you later." A young couple kiss outside the window, then the female makes her way into the café. Her dark locks bounce as she takes graceful dance-steps around the tables. I can't help but notice the familiarity of that smile, and my heart skips a beat or two.

"Mr Kellis?"

She's found me.

"You..." I stutter, "...you must be... Mandy."

"I see you remember."

She sits down opposite me, a smile still on her face. God, she's beautiful. All grown up now, but not one bit like her mother...

"I'm glad you could make it, Mr Kellis. Where do you stay?"

"Uh... me? I stay along Days Road, a house."

"Oh, those gorgeous town houses? I simply adore the design! Keith was planning on buying one of those when... hm, is anything the matter?"

"No, nothing." I say, failing to hide the awkwardness. "No. How's your mother?"

"Passed away, lung cancer. Always told her that smoking habit would send her to her deathbed. Ah, no matter - why are we talking about depressing things? How are you?"

"Well, as you can see, I am fine. Have a good job, car - enough to satifsy." Yet, I wonder why I feel so empty.

"Speaking of cars, your old suitcase's in the back seat of my Honda outside."

My eyes widen with surprise.

"It's still... intact?"

"I kept it that way. Mom and I moved to a house in the country, and I hid it in the shed. T'was the only thing I had in rememberence of you. You can have it back now. Hm, waiter - give me a café latté, thanks."

"Have it back? Whatever for?"

"Because I have the real you now, so it doesn't mean a thing anymore."

"Mandy..."

"No, I'm serious. Please, Mr Kellis. Please let me fulfil this longing inside my heart."

As it has been mine. To know the daughter I was forced to hide. And finally, I can embrace it yet fear encompasses me, and I'm not sure why.

The café latté arrives and she sips it. So childlike, she is, yet so elegant as well.

"Mr Kellis, I'm twenty two now. I probably haven't seen you for seventeen years. I know I caught glimpses of you, running in and out of our flat but it's all a blur. I just want to know."

"Want to know...?"

"Why I couldn't call you Daddy. Mom never told me, never talked about it I was legitimate, wasn't I?"

"I..." A moment of truth. I put down my empty cup. "Oh, Mandy. You were legitimate. Your mother and I married and it was just such a big mistake, I mean... Mandy, her parents hated me and mine were just unable to let go of me. Never wanted me to marry - I never told them. And then there was you and things just got complicated."

"The situation doesn't sound that complicated." Her gentle lips frown. "You were afraid."

"I was."

"I can't believe you. There was no other woman, no secret half brother, no mystery of the suitcase? Nothing?"

"I'm sorry, Mandy."

"You know what, it's alright. That's fine." She places the half-empty cup on the table and stands up. "I'm glad I came, and I'm glad I know. So perhaps, if you would excuse me..."

"Please don't go, Mandy."

"I told you the same thing year in year out, but you never listened. Why should I?" There is more to her than just hostility - there is hurt.

"Because I was a fool. And you're not."

She looks back at me almost lamely, then strides confidently away.

That's it, then. The end. My heart is crushed like the Arabica coffee beans. But I see that brown-haired figure of a girl come back through the door, carrying a suitcase.

"No more reason to remember me?" I ask her as she arrives at the table.

"Au contraire." She places the suitcase on the right of my chair and smiles ever so sweet a smile. "Inside it. Letters, photos, everything that I've ever done for you. I'm going to give it to you now and let you dwell upon it in your old age."

"Mandy... Please don't do this."

"Give me one good reason why I shouldn't."

"I love you, Mandy. Let me make it up to you."

"All that lost time, broken promises..."

But her words are muffled by my old, greying embrace. I hug her and hold her the way I should have, when she gazed up at me with those hazel eyes and said "Daddy! Daddy!". Finally, this dream is somewhere close to being realized. My very ghost seems to soar free, like a genie released from its lamp.

And I realize, she isn't fighting. Her wet tears, right now, are my only source of hope.

End.