The Auditorium

The ball thuds on the court, the sound booming throughout the empty gym. I dribble again and again and again as I jog a lap around the perimeter, keeping the ball in front of me and coming up to the basket I stop ten feet short jump and shoot. Clank.
I brick more balls than I swish.
But the point is not to make baskets as much as it's to take my mind off the humdrum of my job.
I come to the court during my breaks. I come to the court to meditate.
For almost three weeks now the court calls me. I don't really know why. I do love basketball, but I haven't played the game...hell, I haven't picked up a ball, in years.
Yet I keep coming here, dribbling, shooting, running, and staring at the giant mural painted on the far wall: an angry hornet, feet curled into sharp stingers with a whip-like tail jutting out from below and curling in front of his body ending with a dagger for a tip. Paint peels off these walls, these white walls and the angry hornet mascot and the rim of the basket.
An easiness is about this place. Unsettling. It's not quite my memory of elementary school. It's not quite my memory of middle school. It's not quite high school. It's all of them.
Empty gyms.
I walk through the hallway back to my office. Deserted. Cockroaches splattered on the floor, moldy towels, staph infections all along the corridor. To my right is an open door. Space.
I look inside. An auditorium. Empty. Black.
I walk inside, I'm on the stage now and I barely make out the empty seats stretching away from me. Away from me.
My footsteps echo on the worn wooden stage. I see myself at the age of eight. It's the spelling bee and there are only six of us left.
I don't know what words I've already spelled. That part is gone from me. But I know what word is coming.
The lady with white puffy hair says to me, "PARKA."
Easy.
I see my father sitting toward the back of the auditorium, a block with legs.
"PARKA", I say. And I begin to spell: P-A-R-C.... I stumble over the fourth letter, accidentally begin to say C and quickly change it to a K. Too late.
The lady with white puffy hair says to me, "I'm sorry. PARKA. P-A-R-K-A." She emphasizes the K. I'm an IDIOT.
I slowly walk to my seat in the auditorium...the lady with white puffy hair has already gone to the next victim. I sit and turn around looking for my dad.
He's gone.
Where did he go? Back to work.
Why did he go?
I'll ask this question for the next 24 years.
Until now there has been no answer.
I walk to the end of the deck as a 32 year old man and I speak loudly into the darkness:
"PARKA. P-A-R-K-A." My voice squeaks on the K. But I make it through the word.
I stare defiantly into the black space. Where are you now?
I walk away, out to the hallway and back to my office.
I'll continue this ritual for the next week.
I remember the final word of the spelling bee, but not the kid who spelled the word correctly.
MEDICINE.
I spell that correctly each time I walk up to the empty podium. I could have won.
And each time I walk into this blackness I spell the word. I never falter, my voice won't squeak again. Each time I stare into the blackness.
Why did you leave?
Why, Father, why?
On the last day my answer comes: It wasn't about me. It wasn't about me. It wasn't about me.
I'll never misspell PARKA again. But I'll always search for you in the dark.
I promise my one year old daughter, I promise her...."You'll never be alone in the blackness. I'll always be your light. Always."
It's about me. And her.
Why did my father leave?
He doesn't know.
The eight year old in me cries.
The 32 year old Me comforts him.
Because my father never could.