Rotting Lettuce -- Portfolio Piece (Personal Favorite)

He reeked of a repulsively distinct mixture of alcohol, dirt, almond hair oil, sweat and rotting lettuce—a stench not easily mistaken or forgotten. It was so nauseatingly unavoidable that his arrival could never be ignored. As soon as he reached the picket-fence gate at the head of the garden path, I would know he was back. Each day, I dreaded that moment when this odor would announce his return. Sometimes I wondered if it was natural—appropriate—to think these thoughts about your own father.

Each element of that smell carried with it some aspect of his character. If you could clearly identify each element, you could actually learn a great deal about the man who had been my father. You could notice that the smell of the almond hair oil was not the kind that had not been washed out but the freshly applied smell that is always more pungent. You could also notice that the smell of sweat came not from the man himself but from his clothes. Upon closer inspection, you might even have discovered the secret of the rotting lettuces. Yet, you probably would never discover the reality of the man who had been my father.

Don’t be mistaken though. My father is not dead. He is alive and continuing his life, reasonably healthy and in a set routine like most of us. Like most of us, he gets up in the morning and gets dressed. Like most of us he has breakfast and departs. Similarly, he returns in the evening to a nice and relaxing home where he can be himself.

Why then do I refer to him as the man who had been my father? There are many reasons but the most pertinent of these is the fact that he no longer holds any meaningful conversation with me beyond letting me know with grunts and groans that I have burnt his toast again. Often, he doesn’t even acknowledge my existence. He is no longer the man I once loved, cared for and even worshipped as the epitome of Mankind.

He had taken to the alcohol after my mother passed away. She had always held our lives together and her death sent him into a downward spiral that he never truly recovered from. The alcohol was just an easy escape for him. He always had his hip-flask handy and took regular swigs to ‘refresh’ himself as he had said in the days immediately after the funeral. Eventually, he was too drunk most of the time to care about the drink spilling on his clothes. He was also too drunk to care about the clothes he wore.

The dirt, grime and stains from food and drink soon became a permanent part of his person. People even started calling him Grimy Sam or Dirty Sammy. He never really cared about people to begin with so this really didn’t affect him. Even when they started pointing and shaking their heads or turning their faces in disgust, he never really noticed. He would just carry on with his life the way he saw fit.

Most times, I wondered if he ever saw anything fit anymore. I wondered if he saw anything at all. He had no concerns with his appearance, other people’s opinions or even how the house was being run. It never mattered to him where the money came from which fed him and paid the bills.

As he had walked in that evening, nothing felt very different. It was still the same feeling of disgust that arose inside me. To this day, I cannot distinguish whether this feeling was disgust with his physical condition or disgust with myself for the way I felt for him. Either way, it did not really matter.

He had walked in the screen door; his head bent low on his shoulders. I don’t think he had noticed the netting on the door begin to tear away gradually. It was now a mere memory of the clean, newly-painted door with the silvery-blue netting and the shiny brass door-knob, that my father had proudly installed with his own hands after the old one had been knocked down by the burglars. I had tried to fix the netting the best I could, but there’s only so much one can do with a hammer, nails and discarded, old wire netting.

I watched him trudge across the floor. He had developed a slouch since my Mama’s death. He seemed to blend so comfortably with the surroundings. It was as if without him, the house, the furniture, the cupboards and the carpets, felt a sense of loneliness. He was their companion—their savior in some ways. I’m certain that in some convoluted manner, he thought the same about each and every piece of furnishing in the house.

He had built this house himself. Mama told me he worked day and night with the construction crew to put together the house of his dreams. Tirelessly he had gone about earning the money for his home. Along with my very pregnant mother, he had run around hunting down the perfect furniture and decoration. He had even painted my room himself a month before I was born. According to him, if he was going to spend the rest of his life in this home, he must make it worth spending a lifetime in. That was the man my father had been.

I’m convinced he had managed much more then just building a house—he had built his sanctuary, his castle, his fortress. Even in his current state, I knew he found solace in the thought of being in his fortress where no one could harm him any more—his greatest weakness, after all, was already gone.

The look of the house noticeably changed after Mama died. Once all the relatives had departed and I was left to take care of things on my own, with my father’s rapidly deteriorating condition, I had enough work just earning money to pay for our lives. Taking care of the house, thus, became a secondary objective—probably less important. Eventually, over the two years that have passed since, the couches have broken springs, the carpets have been rubbed through in many places, stains from spilled food are all over and every wooden item needs repair or polishing.

I try to avoid walking into the lounge. It’s become my father’s abode in the last few months. One day he just decided it was more convenient for him to sleep on the big couch in the lounge in front of the TV. Two days later, he spilled a bottle of brandy right in front of his new bed. I did not discover the stain till atleast six hours later. By then, there was little left to do. My father spends more time with that stain than he does with me. Over time, that stain has become more a part of the family than I am.

Today, I’m going to leave home. I don’t want to live with him any more. I don’t want to live with her memories any more. I miss her as much as he does—she was my mother—but I don’t want those memories haunting my life. This is the only way I can prevent myself from turning into Dirty Sammy’s son. I don’t want to turn into the man living in my house right now. I want to be the man who had been my father.