ROUKIA ALI’S “SING, SO I MAY LOVE YOU”

Your parents’ vow renewal ceremony was meant to be the end of anticipation—you’d been hurried by your crooning relatives regaling you with stories about the rarity of your father’s singing. You’d been teased before—the same empty treasure chest memory of his minute humming driving you to school, jaunting and rippling like stones skipping across a lake, drowning unexpectedly in radio static.

You know he’s not shy, so you figure that maybe you need to abandon the caricature of your father you drew up in your mind that proved that—the belligerent, headstrong bull who picked fights with you for being his curt and sarcastic lookalike. A man with a razor-bladed tongue of biting remarks befitting the harsh lines of his serious features. But you can’t imagine anything different with every time he chooses to hide from you: any musical notes he conjures must be razed to their brittlest bits, devoured in growls.

You’re sixteen, reading a book at the kitchen table while he washes the rice for dinner. The trickling water shivers through the room, the rice rasping at the bottom of the cooking pot—then, a confession, a baritone buzz. Surprise seizes you at the clear and quiet singing of a song that you know, whispered to you as a toddler. His voice trickles sweet like wine, ageing backwards like a record replayed for the best part—the “have a good day” chimes as you sling open the car door. His arms jokingly jerking you through a dance after the ceremony, staving off your disappointment and giggling, half-hearted resistance by continually insisting that he only dances, never sings.

He glances over, catching you cataloguing him through a thin film of tears. Before he peters into silence, before you lose him, you hum back. There will be no hiding anymore.

by Roukia Ali