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stop the words from escaping my lips.  
    They’re cruel words, because I know he doesn’t have the answers. I’ve always known the reality: his God is a charade.
    He’s on his knees beside her bed. The nurses quietly and respectfully watch. This is the oncology ward; they’ve watched this scene play out time and again.
    “God…my God, why have you forsaken me? Eli eli lama sabachthani? ” He pulls away from me, covers his face with his hands.  
    Really? He’s spouting Aramaic now? Is he putting on this pious show for the nurses? He’s really grieving, I realize that. But why does he have to act so damned holy all the time? I turn away from him. I lean over Mama and kiss her cooling cheek.
    “Goodbye, Mama. I love you.” I whisper the words low enough so no one can hear.
    I leave the room. It’s number 1176. The route to the elevators is one I could walk in my sleep now: turn right from room 1176, down the long hallway to the dead end. Turn left. Another long hallway. Right at the nurse’s station, through the doors that open in opposite directions, one away from you and the other toward you. The elevators are at the end of that short hallway, a double bank of silver doors. The button lights up pale yellow, the up and down arrows blurred from a thousand thumbs pressing against them. I have no visual memory of the elevator ride down or leaving the hospital, only stumbling out into the sunlight. It’s a beautiful, gorgeous fall day. No clouds, just far, endless blue sky and a bright yellow sun and cool October air.  
    How can it be a beautiful day when my mother just died? It should be a black, awful day. Instead, it’s the kind of day I should be cruising around downtown in Devin’s convertible Sebring, listening to Guster.  
    I find myself on my hands and knees in the grass, surrounded by parked cars. I’m sobbing. I thought I’d cried all my tears, but I haven’t. Not by a long shot.
    I feel Daddy’s presence in the grass beside me. For the first time in my entire life, he’s something like real. He sits down in the grass next to me, heedless of the moisture from the sprinklers from an hour ago. It’s early morning, just past dawn. I’d been beside her bed for forty-eight hours, waiting. I hadn’t moved, not once. Not to eat, not to drink, not to pee.
    Mama…Mama is dead. I ignore my father and weep. Eventually, he picks me up off the grass, walks me to the car, and settles me in the back seat of his BMW where I lie down. The smell of leather fills my nose, tangy and damp from my clothes. He drives slowly, and I hear him sniffle and snort. I hear the soft skritch of his hand passing over his week’s worth of stubble as he wipes his face, clearing away the tears, making room for the next wave of hot salt grief.  
    I can’t breathe for the sobs, for the raw weight of grief. Mama is dead. She was the only one who understood me. She was my intercessor between me and Daddy. When he wouldn’t listen, she would talk to him for me. Sometimes I wonder if Daddy even likes me. I mean, he’s my father, so I know he feels the patriarchal emotion of protective love, but does he like me? For who I am? Does he understand me? Has he ever tried?  
    And now the only person who’s ever understood me is gone. Gone.  
    “Pull over, please.” I’m scrambling to a sitting position, scrabbling at the window button, at the locked door. “I’m gonna puke—”
    He’s over the rumble strip and on the gravel shoulder and slowing enough for me to lunge out of the still-moving car and into the tall, scratchy grass at the roadside. Vomit pours from me like a hot flood, burning my throat, convulsing my stomach. My eyes water as wave after wave gushes through me, and my nose drips. Daddy doesn’t help me, doesn’t hold my hair back. He just watches me from the driver’s seat, the engine idling. A Michael W. Smith song plays softly from the speakers, floating to me from the open door. “The Giving.” I hate that