The Weight of Silence

I sat across from my father on the train today. Charles.

For some reason, my eyes locked onto him, almost involuntarily. My mind wandered over him like a stranger, studying the way he carried himself among people who did not know him, and who likely would never see him again.

He was shifty, uneasy.

His fingers tapped lightly against his thigh, rhythmic and constant. He kept his eyes low, avoiding the glances of other passengers. His focus stayed on the route map, counting down the stops, though he knew exactly where we were going. There was something rehearsed in the way he moved, an unspoken awareness of how he positioned himself in this space. I had never noticed it before.

Our lives had always been intersecting highways. There was always somewhere to be: work, church, school, key jobs. And there was always something to do: calling back home, checking on the living and the recently deported; thinking about building houses in this far away place we all strived to be. Someone was always dying. Someone was always getting married. We were always in motion, always busy.  And I guess with all that pace, I had never stopped to wonder how he moved through this world.

Had he ever grown accustomed to being the big Black African man?

I remember him being much bigger when I was a child. But as I sat across from him now, I saw how time had taken from him. He had frailed. His frame was thinner, his shoulders hunched slightly forward, a quiet surrender to exhaustion. It struck me then, that he had carried so much, for so long.

For the first time, I saw it.

All the ways he kept himself small. All the ways he distracted himself from being the centre of unwanted attention in this place he had arrived at long before my sister and me. A time when being a big Black African man must have felt like a crime.

I watched the way he adjusted himself, just slightly, folding inward to make space for those who might otherwise fear him. The way he had learned to shrink himself, to soften the image he imagined others had already painted of him in their minds.

The moment we stepped onto the train, he reached up and pulled back his hoodie. I asked him why. He smiled, “I don’t want to frighten anyone.”

Something in me broke.

I thought then—I don’t have enough pictures of you, Dad. Not on a beach, drink in hand, laughing without reservation. Not in dimly lit bars, where the glow is warm and faces soften with laughter. Not smiling in that easy, carefree way I’ve seen in magazines.

I sat across from you, Father. The man who raised me, the man who held up my sister, the man who grated my mother. And suddenly, it hit me.

All of it.

Your struggle. Your hardship. Your quiet war. It was in the way your fingers drummed softly against your thigh. In the way your gaze stayed lowered. In the way you adjusted yourself, always, to make others feel at ease.

I sat across from you, Father, and all I wanted to express, was how sorry I am.