Unfather's

This isn't pleasant to read, and may create unease or cause you to dislike me even further than before.  Let it, for discomfort causes reflection, and perhaps invokes greater compassion, or kindness, or if you need to protect yourself, greater indifference.  That dirty little neighbor's kid who's always hanging around your own family may need a sense of normalcy, even if it's just for an hour.  It's okay to send her home, too.  She's still learning.

I don't even think of the day anymore until reading statements that others have scripted in praise of their fathers, then, the memory clenches as if I swallowed a peach pit.  Tell me I'm ungrateful, that after all, he is my faaaather, that I didn't appreciate what I had, that the knot will go away once I forgive him; let me tell you, this is not a story of forgiveness but of survival.  Realize the number of me that there are. Please understand that I am so amazed, almost confused, by those of you who miss your dads.

He killed our pets, threatened to kill us, smashed my mother into floors, walls; broke our dishes, scared neighbors, beat up my grandfather for giving me and my brother quarters, said it was his right to use me don't tell your mother, was mean whether drunk or sober, took his diabetic brother who was in the hospital a two pound box of chocolates resulting in my uncle's death, and when he tried to kill himself and was revived in the ambulance, I asked the invisible air why, why did you bring him back.

I was six and it was Christmas, the kind with lead tinsel and sumptuous lightbulbs on the tree that made it smell like it would burst into a fireball within ten minutes.  My brother and I had to kneel in front of the manger and pray to baby Jesus, a poorly painted plaster bit that spent the rest of the year rolled up in newspaper in the hot, dusty attic.  My mother had wrapped up a toiletry set for me, consisting of four rectangular glass bottles.  Pink body lotion, rosy bubble bath, green shampoo, and a clear cologne that smelled like pale flowers.  I was enchanted, left it under the tree to make Christmas last a bit longer, before the explosion.  Didn't take long.

Mom and Dad in the kitchen, Dad yelling.  YOU'RE MAKING HER A WHORE, SHE'LL BE ON FRANKLIN STREET WITH THE PROSTITUTES.  What the heck is a whore?  My mother tried; she won't be a prostitute, she's a little girl, little girls use bubble bath.  More yelling, I could see my Mom's face crumple, she was collapsing like a dying star.

His sisters never used any of that, she doesn't need it, men will be chasing her just like the red-headed women on the street you don't know nothing, no daughter of mine.  Looking back and considering circumstances, I believe he was more concerned with his own reaction to any prettifying of a vulnerable little girl.  As a result of the bubble bath debacle, the set remained unused under my bed, and I was relegated to using Spic and Span or Oxydol in my once a week bath.  My father would expect us to greet him at the door when he got home from work, happy to see the breadwinner, the king of the house; I was told to wait until he smelled me, to see if I had any forbidden fragrances.

Do you know what it's like to have your neck smelled by your angry father every night when he arrived home?  And still he would come to me at night, to help me say my prayers.  I was allowed boy's things, cap guns, tool sets, a Zorro outfit, catcher's mitts, a chemistry set, no lace, no frills, those things were far away from me, and I regarded the ribboned girls at school as sissies who would squeak if a frog jumped at them.  But deep inside I longed to be washed in bubbles, given embroidered handkerchiefs, allowed lotions and bows.  Best that I wasn't.

Yet I now read the "best dad ever", "I miss you every day", and the "wonderful man who brought me up, stood by me" and wonder what that is like.  The day mine died, I felt a wash of relief, the abuse had become verbal as I grew, married, and I would plot escape routes when visiting.  Don't let him get between you and the door.  He still yelled, hateful, don't bring us no food, shove your pans up your ass.  After my Mom died, I eventually stopped going over altogether, it was better for me even though the guilt wagged it's finger.      

I don't miss standing in front of the card display, searching for one that would satisfy him without sentiment to mock, or encourage the slurping noises when he kissed my neck or cheek.  Something that wouldn't be an out and out lie.  I don't miss worrying about bringing him the right thing, to be told take it back, or have it thrown against the wall.  Come here and give me a kiss instead.

We all have our demons, and I try not to visit mine on anyone; but it happens and I apologize.  It causes me to step back and evaluate how clingy I can be when something seems right, balanced, or well, normal.  Dinner at a table--I wasn't allowed to eat with the family, had to take my plate to the living room on newspapers on the floor.  People having people over without the main course being launched or furniture broken.  I will always be on guard, but that's no one's problem but mine.  

With my class of first graders, I made sure to pull together a Father's Day gift, except I got the date wrong, it's this week, not last week.  We made plaster casts of seashells and half the students opted to wrap theirs in Christmas paper because they love Santa.  There are more fathers in this group, and the cards we made assured me that these children are loved properly, and that they are safe with their dads.  I like to think that there is more good than bad, there has to be.

Night comes, shading the micro scrutiny of day; sleep restores and creates growth.  Growth means hope.  Thundering clouds have washed the men who are building a garden down along the apartment sidewalks.  They are planting impatiens of a delicate lavender, making it look like home, like hanging stars in a night sky.   Paint your stars, illuminate space with nebulae or the flowing curtains of the borealis, planets with swirling rings, moons somber and silver.  You can.  I did.  You are loved.