Before we moved into this newly-developed neighborhood, we lived by the railroad tracks. Right beside those tracks was a park, where daisies bloom all year, and the brown-spotted bunny would roam. I was only four or five when I first saw it hopping around, dusted gold from pollen from the daisies.

– Pa, can we go to the park?

– Why? Pa had only just stepped in the door from another long day.

– The bunny, pa.

– The bunny? Oh yes, of course, the bunny. Well, you see, you know the train that passes through here?

I nodded.

– Well, he boarded the train, son.

I was confused.

– Well, son, it’s like this, see? The bunny needed to go up north.

– Where?

– To a kingdom in the north.

– There’s a kingdom in the north?

– Why yes! It’s a magical kingdom.

– Magical kingdom?

By then, pa had already left the room.

*

– And you believed him? My daughter, the precocious child, blurted.

I didn’t quite know how to respond, so I refrained. It was a complicated thing for me, why I believed pa.

I don’t particularly talk to my daughter about her grandpa mostly because I believe she’s safe around him. And she’s safe only because she’s a girl. Pa has never hurt a girl. He’s also become a shadow of his former self. Still, I wouldn’t leave her alone with him.

– Did you know grandpa told me this was an orchard before they built this neighborhood, but they left this fig tree here?

– Well, that’s true, love.

Actually, I only talk to Kayla about her grandpa when she brings him up. And I would always seize up for that initial moment, ears pricked, especially when we visit ma and pa back in the hometown like at present. But Kayla, perhaps due to her precociousness, would always carry a reassuring tone that would unclench me. Precociousness or an utter lack of faith in her grandpa. That comforts me, despite reminding myself from time to time to give my daughter a fair chance to get to know her grandparents.

I can’t remember when the touching began. The groping. Pinching. I only remember it went on for years. Years. Right through teenage, most days of the week. I learned to stay clear of pa, to lock my bedroom door when I was in there. The bathroom door. When he would suddenly be beside me, and I couldn’t get away, I would squeeze my legs together.

Thing is I would also let my guard down most days of week through the years. Pa was awfully sweet, full of life, full of laughs, patient. He was the kind of man you’d want to be when you grow up when you were a kid. He’d buy me a soda pop whenever he took me out with him. He’d have his coffee. The man loved his coffee. Always a double shot. He’d take me to the park to teach me how to dribble the football. He’d let me have a sip of his beer. He’d make me a rum and coke – a thimble of rum, a whole lot of coke. Until he quit, he was a heavy smoker, but he warned me against smoking. When I was older at fourteen, he taught me how to lift in the gym. The man had guns on him. He was so much fun. In fact, I do remember once, earlier on, when I was full-on groped, immediately afterwards, he said with a laugh, Oops! He was always playing. It was always in jest. This much I remember well.

Pa was a patient man. He took a lot of pride in that. I tested his pride in his patience a few times. Ended up on the wrong end of it though, that once, I went to school the next day with his handprint on my cheek. My teacher asked me, What happened to your face? To which I replied, Oh! I was looking out the window, and pressed my face onto the window grill for too long. She kept quiet. That was on me. I had told him to fuck-off. I was ten, and when you’re ten, you have no business telling your old man to fuck-off despite how angry he had made you. I had it coming.

*

– Why does sir grab you in the nuts like that?

– Dude, he tried with me today, and I gave him the slip, turned back to face him and fist-pumped, then ran off. Victory…

– You know he’Il get you next time.

– Fuck, it’s all a game, ain’t it?

They didn’t see me. They were a couple of seventh-graders in pa’s class. That was a weird day for me at school. Something oddly familiar to me, oddly, also seemed familiar to these two boys. I thought I was pa’s only one. I started paying attention. I started hearing more and more. They were always the same few boys. The teacher’s pets. His pets. Pa’s pets. And they were never girls.

*

Although I don’t remember when this all started happening to me, I know it ended when I shipped off to college. It stayed ended too because I never went home again for the next thirty years except on five occasions. And on those five occasions, pa was no longer at home. The family had completely fractured from the deepening cracks of years past.

I didn’t not go home because of this thing between pa and I, even though it had taken me quite that long to feel safe again. Now at Christmas, I take my wife and child there, mostly for Kayla to have some semblance of something with her grandparents. I’ve never told my wife about pa. She assumes that I’m from a troubled and broken family is all. And she’s not wrong.

I don’t know. What really did happen? Was it all a game between boys for him? Because he didn’t touch any girls. And if it were a game, then my little cousin must have over-reacted when he ran into my room crying his eyes out. Pa, who was right behind him, was going to smack the shit out of him. I had to step between them, pa yelling, You could’ve stabbed me in the eye! Billy was still white-knuckling his pencil, ready to plunge it. I was sixteen then, Billy eleven. And that was the last time he came up to the house.

When Kayla was five, she demanded a bedtime story from me. On the fly, I embellished, “The Bunny And The Magical Kingdom.” She scoffed at it, Who would believe that?

Well, I did. For me, it was always complicated.