Black Ribbons
by Gary Moshimer

Our father had cancer, which was bad enough, but then his cancer got cancer, another different kind of tumor growing on his first one. It stumped his doctors. I said, “What kind of ribbon for that?”

“Black,” they said, “although we’re just making that up.”

First they thought it was really a bad thing, then admitted that maybe the two cancers would duke it out and kill one another. “That could happen,” they said, nodding thoughtfully.

On the first scan they were the size of a two-headed pumpkin. On the follow-up they were smaller—a two-headed tomato.

My sister and I made our black ribbons from construction paper, and the black turned out to be fitting after all, because then our father disappeared. “The tumors,” the doctors said, “while shrinking, have become super-dense. A black hole, if you will.” They seemed pleased with this answer.

And like a black hole our father exerted a pull on us. When he was nearby it was like taking the vacuum cleaner to our skin, surprising and scary and a little ticklish. We knew he was still trying to tuck us in at night, because the blankets suddenly sucked away, leaving us shivering.

In his studio—which was where I believe he got his cancer, from paint-thinner—he left us paintings of what he must look like now, oil on canvas: thick blobs of flesh surrounding swirling deep-set eyes, black and feathered with flame; and wedges of teeth crooked in the whirlpool, trying to smile for us.

But after a while there were no more paintings or vacuum feelings or disappearing blankets. Only the dogs seemed to see him then, pausing occasionally mid-spin, sitting obediently, waiting for cookies.

When the dogs stopped we didn’t know what to do. We didn’t know if we should have a funeral. We just waited.

In the fall our pumpkin patch grew one with a cleft, a double-header shaped like a heart. We thought we should carve the pumpkin into some kind of memorial, and were shocked to discover the baby inside, its tiny hands and feet squirming in the goo. It looked healthy and content, but we rushed it to the hospital, my mother stopping just long enough to dig one of my father’s baby pictures from a box. “See.” She held it up in the car. “It’s him.”

The doctors checked him out and said, “Fuck!”

He was tiny but healthy, our father. They gave us a car seat and we took him home, stopping once at K-Mart for diapers and formula, and once at the liquor store for my mother.

 

GARY MOSHIMER lives in Pennsylvania with his wife, two sons, three cats, two cocker spaniels, and two turtles. His work appears online or is forthcoming in Word Riot, Eclectica, Verbsap, Wigleaf, Emprise Review, Monkeybicycle, PANK, The Northville Review, and others. He works in a hospital, saving lives or not, depending on if he likes you.

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