Baghdaddy by Riley Bill;

Author:Riley, Bill; [Lt. Col. Bill Riley (Ret.)]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 6038081
Publisher: Brown Books Publishing Group
Published: 2019-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Father taught me how to tell time. It’s the last memory I have of him helping me with homework. I was six and had just started the first grade.

“Get up, and try again,” boomed the giant.

I climbed back to the table and sat upright in my chair. I was sweating in the cool room. I focused as hard as I could on the words my father was saying. We sat knee to knee at the kitchen table, papers with drawings of blurry clocks stacked between us. After-school cookie crumbs and shards of broken plate littered the otherwise pristine yellow-and-white linoleum kitchen floor. My cheeks were hot, and tears ran down my face.

I swore I would try harder and get the next answer right.

Father pointed to another drawing with a blank line next to it. “What time is this?”

“Eight fifteen?”

“Are you asking me or telling me?”

“Telling. It’s eight fifteen.”

“Good,” he said in a growl. “What’s another way to say that?”

My heart sank. “I don’t know.”

His hand moved fast. He was tapping the pencil on the table, and there was a pause after he carefully set it down. Then his arm moved, and my right cheek hurt, and my shoulder and head bounced off the wall.

I sat upright again in my chair and looked him in the eye, because that was important. I looked him in the eye and focused on what he was saying. I would get the next answer right. My jaw was tight from my swollen face, and my throat was dry, but it didn’t matter. It wouldn’t stop until I got everything correct.

I was ready. He looked back at me and drummed his pencil. Then he stopped and asked, “What’s another way to say eight fifteen?”

My heart stopped.

I sniffled, then shouted, “I STILL DON’T KNOW!”

He again set the pencil down. When his arm moved, my left cheek hurt, and I tumbled from the chair. The linoleum over concrete was still cold and unforgiving.

“It’s a quarter past eight. Don’t you know anything? Get it now?”

But I didn’t get it. I tried to scream, “But a quarter is twenty-five cents, and there are only fifteen minutes.” My indignation came out as a whine.

Snot ran out my nose as I climbed back from the floor and sat upright in my chair. I was sweating and focusing as hard as I could. Tears made it hard to see. Looking him straight in his blurry eyes, I swore I would answer the next question right.

“That’s just the way it is,” he said. “Again. What is another way to say eight fifteen?”

I swallowed hard and said as clearly as I could, “A quarter past eight.”

My father nodded and pointed to the next drawing with a blank line next to it. “What time is this?”

I squinted until it was in focus, then I answered.

It took three hours, but I learned to tell time.

It was the very first lesson my father ever taught me: time would never be my friend.

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