When my daddy dies I’m gonna be a broken girl.
When I was little I was scared he’d notice when I stopped calling him that. I switched to dad because I felt like a baby, and my best friend didn’t call her dad daddy anymore.
How am I supposed to forgive him? My daddy is a grownup but he’s lost. He’s so confused sometimes I think, like he’s got this forking of the path in front of him and he can’t pick which way to go. And I don’t feel bad for making him choose, even though I probably should. I mean they always said you can’t have your cake and eat it too. Your best friend and your baby girl.
This Thursday is thanksgiving and I’m thinking about living on my own. I joke about running away. I’d go out in the rain, just leave. I would. I’ve tried. I feel bad joking about it, because I know my face is way too serious.
Sometimes we talk about politics. Vietnam. He dodged the draft, faked diabetes and all they cared about was the psych he saw.
His daddy died in the war. His mama, a beautiful war widow just twenty years old and already two babies and not even old enough to drink. His new daddy beat on him. His sisters and his brothers, they grew up so poor. At Christmas, they got turtlenecks. Black ones, that’s all, and they were happy.
I guess that’s how my mama and him got close. Two grownup kids with no daddies, crying about submarines and heart attacks on the front lawn and the way their hearts were broken before they were old enough to drive. When I have no daddy, I’ll be able to cry on cue. That will be a useful skill, I think. I’ll put it on my resume: can cry on cue, no daddy to hold those tears in.
My daddy is too silly, sometimes. He jokes and jokes, when all I want is him to look me in these big brown eyes and tell me it’s okay. My daddy has never been good at that.
Sometimes, late nights, we’ll go driving through the rain in his station wagon with the blankets in the back and the radio on, just him driving and me in the passenger seat, talking. We don’t do that too much. When we do, he puts on his favorite station, because it’s a Friday night and Shake the Shack is on. They play rockabilly which has nothing to do with rock, actually, is just country songs with some dirty jokes in between.
My daddy doesn’t believe in God, just Bob Dylan. And Johnny Cash. We watched Walk the Line together, one late night, probably raining.
Oh god, it is always raining with me and my daddy. On sunny days I run, run away to my friends or my baby sister. But when it rains my daddy and I sit inside and he reads the newspaper and I talk about The World We Live In. We agree about Lyndon Johnson, for instance.
Sometimes we talk about photography. He loaned me his favorite photography book, this subversive book from 1948 that was published in France first because no American would publish something so unpatriotic. My daddy used to be a photographer you know. He wasn’t creative enough to be an artist, but he did ad campaigns. For beer.
My daddy likes to feel rebellious. He educated himself because knowledge is power and you can’t trust The Man. I think my daddy is scared to be middle class, old, and white. He always surrounded himself with black panthers and radicals and people who acted instead of thinking, these dangerous, glamorous people he wanted to be but couldn’t quite imitate. Even when he was a photographer he was still working for corporations, just a white guy from a poor background at a steady job with average income.
When my daddy was this young guy he had a brain tumor in his head, but he was in China with his beautiful young mama, where she taught English. So he gets his head all fixed in China in the jungle with the only machine they have and he cuts the line in front of all these Chinese people because he is American and his mama knows the right people. Because even though they are dirt poor, tired, working Americans, they are still Americans. And my daddy feels bad, but what can he do?
I think my daddy feels this way a lot. Helpless. Like The Man is beating up on him like his new daddy used to do, like his new daddy who is dead now, the only daddy my daddy ever knew, was really just another lost guy who fell down and made mistakes.
My daddy didn’t talk to his new daddy for ten years. Wouldn’t say a word, hated him. It’s a sad story, I guess. But that’s who my daddy is, stubborn, confused, lost, and he tells me to try and be understanding. To see things as a cultural difference between families. Mistakes, and not to hate.
And I want to tell him hey it’s thanksgiving and it’s supposed to be a day for our family to be thankful and eat turkey and cranberry sauce and that stuffing you make that tastes delicious. But here I am, sitting on the couch with a lump in my throat punching at the tears on my face with my fingers like I’m some boxer, wondering why I can’t talk to him, why he doesn’t understand.
Last month I left the restaurant we were eating at because my daddy didn’t understand me and started walking home. It was only twenty blocks away, but he came after me. It was after dark, and even though I was crying, he made me come back inside. I think parents are like that. They don’t understand enough to care when you need them to care, and then when you hate them for that they don’t understand enough to back off when you need to be alone.
When my daddy is just a ghost, I’m going to feel bad about all these things. Like there was something I could have done to fix them, like I should have done that. Like maybe it wasn’t too late. And hey, we’re not as broken as those families with the daddies who beat on their babies. Like how my daddy’s family was.
I think my daddy is proud, proud that he is not that way with me and my baby sister. I think he feels so scared though, that maybe that beast was nurtured in him by his new daddy, and that my mama might become his beautiful mama any moment, and we be his little sisters, his real sister, his half sister, or his little baby adopted sister.
My baby sister has a temper like nothing I’ve ever known, and she gets it from my daddy. When she was just a little girl, my baby sister spit in my daddy’s face. And my daddy exploded, he hits her and yells because he is so mad and when he was just a baby and his new daddy came to his little house, he was never allowed to be disrespectful. My daddy is always saying things like kids these days, because when he was little he still had to be a grownup. Five little siblings, three sisters and two brothers and he had to take care of them with his beautiful mama and all her mistakes.
When we go to Canada and we’re on our way home, my daddy always gets us into trouble at the border. His documents are never current and he gives the border police lip. He likes to joke, and he doesn’t know when to turn it off. We have to remind him, say Daddy, don’t get mad and don’t feel scared when we get to the border. You’re our daddy and we love you and please shut up for long enough to drive us home.
My daddy doesn’t come up from downstairs very often. He works on computers all day all over town, and then he drives home in that station wagon and works on computers downstairs. Sometimes he comes up for dinner, and sometimes not. He works late, a lot of the time.
He is always gone at funerals. His daddies, his friends, friend after friend after friend and they all fall away into the ground, deep into the ground until all that is left is his brand new best friend by default and his best family, also by default. Only because we were the last ones left standing. And I do feel bad, wishing that all my daddy has left will die before he does, so I won’t have to see him at my daddy’s funeral.
It’s a lot like this at my house. My big house that is so empty so much of the time, with my mama in cold Alaska and my daddy out working or with his machines in the basement, and my baby sister gone or holed up in her room. And me, wandering the kitchen barefoot, fingers to the fridge and the wooden tables, and the way the floors are old and cold and the carpets are worn out because they are fifty years old now and have never been replaced. The air, so heavy all the time with the clink of cold, cold forks and spoons and the things we leave unsaid. My sister and I, fighting, fighting because we’re mad at our family, at our mama and our daddy but we yell at each other instead. The rooms, so cluttered because my mama and daddy never made us clean them. The smell, so dusty and so cold, and the sound of the rain, coming down in sheets and buckets and farm animals across the skylight. That rain, that to me is more constant than any daddy.
I’ve got this ache in me like my daddy and I will never know each other, like this old cold house full of secrets and empty of everything else is somewhere where my mama will live alone someday, somewhere I’ll never come back. Like someday, my mama and daddy will be people I don’t talk about anymore, and like someday I really will be all alone.
I talked to my daddy for real today. About ourselves, not about Vietnamese civilians or the people he used to know. I walk downstairs and tell him I have a place to go if I need to leave. I don’t think about what I’m going to say because then I will be too scared to say it. He says no, no he is not kicking me out because I am a part of this family. And that if he had been a better daddy or faster on his feet we wouldn’t even have to worry about it in the first place. He gives me a hug and I start to cry, cry like the rain on our roof and the puddles on the sidewalk. My daddy loves me.
When I was little I was scared he’d notice when I stopped calling him that. I switched to dad because I felt like a baby, and my best friend didn’t call her dad daddy anymore.
How am I supposed to forgive him? My daddy is a grownup but he’s lost. He’s so confused sometimes I think, like he’s got this forking of the path in front of him and he can’t pick which way to go. And I don’t feel bad for making him choose, even though I probably should. I mean they always said you can’t have your cake and eat it too. Your best friend and your baby girl.
This Thursday is thanksgiving and I’m thinking about living on my own. I joke about running away. I’d go out in the rain, just leave. I would. I’ve tried. I feel bad joking about it, because I know my face is way too serious.
Sometimes we talk about politics. Vietnam. He dodged the draft, faked diabetes and all they cared about was the psych he saw.
His daddy died in the war. His mama, a beautiful war widow just twenty years old and already two babies and not even old enough to drink. His new daddy beat on him. His sisters and his brothers, they grew up so poor. At Christmas, they got turtlenecks. Black ones, that’s all, and they were happy.
I guess that’s how my mama and him got close. Two grownup kids with no daddies, crying about submarines and heart attacks on the front lawn and the way their hearts were broken before they were old enough to drive. When I have no daddy, I’ll be able to cry on cue. That will be a useful skill, I think. I’ll put it on my resume: can cry on cue, no daddy to hold those tears in.
My daddy is too silly, sometimes. He jokes and jokes, when all I want is him to look me in these big brown eyes and tell me it’s okay. My daddy has never been good at that.
Sometimes, late nights, we’ll go driving through the rain in his station wagon with the blankets in the back and the radio on, just him driving and me in the passenger seat, talking. We don’t do that too much. When we do, he puts on his favorite station, because it’s a Friday night and Shake the Shack is on. They play rockabilly which has nothing to do with rock, actually, is just country songs with some dirty jokes in between.
My daddy doesn’t believe in God, just Bob Dylan. And Johnny Cash. We watched Walk the Line together, one late night, probably raining.
Oh god, it is always raining with me and my daddy. On sunny days I run, run away to my friends or my baby sister. But when it rains my daddy and I sit inside and he reads the newspaper and I talk about The World We Live In. We agree about Lyndon Johnson, for instance.
Sometimes we talk about photography. He loaned me his favorite photography book, this subversive book from 1948 that was published in France first because no American would publish something so unpatriotic. My daddy used to be a photographer you know. He wasn’t creative enough to be an artist, but he did ad campaigns. For beer.
My daddy likes to feel rebellious. He educated himself because knowledge is power and you can’t trust The Man. I think my daddy is scared to be middle class, old, and white. He always surrounded himself with black panthers and radicals and people who acted instead of thinking, these dangerous, glamorous people he wanted to be but couldn’t quite imitate. Even when he was a photographer he was still working for corporations, just a white guy from a poor background at a steady job with average income.
When my daddy was this young guy he had a brain tumor in his head, but he was in China with his beautiful young mama, where she taught English. So he gets his head all fixed in China in the jungle with the only machine they have and he cuts the line in front of all these Chinese people because he is American and his mama knows the right people. Because even though they are dirt poor, tired, working Americans, they are still Americans. And my daddy feels bad, but what can he do?
I think my daddy feels this way a lot. Helpless. Like The Man is beating up on him like his new daddy used to do, like his new daddy who is dead now, the only daddy my daddy ever knew, was really just another lost guy who fell down and made mistakes.
My daddy didn’t talk to his new daddy for ten years. Wouldn’t say a word, hated him. It’s a sad story, I guess. But that’s who my daddy is, stubborn, confused, lost, and he tells me to try and be understanding. To see things as a cultural difference between families. Mistakes, and not to hate.
And I want to tell him hey it’s thanksgiving and it’s supposed to be a day for our family to be thankful and eat turkey and cranberry sauce and that stuffing you make that tastes delicious. But here I am, sitting on the couch with a lump in my throat punching at the tears on my face with my fingers like I’m some boxer, wondering why I can’t talk to him, why he doesn’t understand.
Last month I left the restaurant we were eating at because my daddy didn’t understand me and started walking home. It was only twenty blocks away, but he came after me. It was after dark, and even though I was crying, he made me come back inside. I think parents are like that. They don’t understand enough to care when you need them to care, and then when you hate them for that they don’t understand enough to back off when you need to be alone.
When my daddy is just a ghost, I’m going to feel bad about all these things. Like there was something I could have done to fix them, like I should have done that. Like maybe it wasn’t too late. And hey, we’re not as broken as those families with the daddies who beat on their babies. Like how my daddy’s family was.
I think my daddy is proud, proud that he is not that way with me and my baby sister. I think he feels so scared though, that maybe that beast was nurtured in him by his new daddy, and that my mama might become his beautiful mama any moment, and we be his little sisters, his real sister, his half sister, or his little baby adopted sister.
My baby sister has a temper like nothing I’ve ever known, and she gets it from my daddy. When she was just a little girl, my baby sister spit in my daddy’s face. And my daddy exploded, he hits her and yells because he is so mad and when he was just a baby and his new daddy came to his little house, he was never allowed to be disrespectful. My daddy is always saying things like kids these days, because when he was little he still had to be a grownup. Five little siblings, three sisters and two brothers and he had to take care of them with his beautiful mama and all her mistakes.
When we go to Canada and we’re on our way home, my daddy always gets us into trouble at the border. His documents are never current and he gives the border police lip. He likes to joke, and he doesn’t know when to turn it off. We have to remind him, say Daddy, don’t get mad and don’t feel scared when we get to the border. You’re our daddy and we love you and please shut up for long enough to drive us home.
My daddy doesn’t come up from downstairs very often. He works on computers all day all over town, and then he drives home in that station wagon and works on computers downstairs. Sometimes he comes up for dinner, and sometimes not. He works late, a lot of the time.
He is always gone at funerals. His daddies, his friends, friend after friend after friend and they all fall away into the ground, deep into the ground until all that is left is his brand new best friend by default and his best family, also by default. Only because we were the last ones left standing. And I do feel bad, wishing that all my daddy has left will die before he does, so I won’t have to see him at my daddy’s funeral.
It’s a lot like this at my house. My big house that is so empty so much of the time, with my mama in cold Alaska and my daddy out working or with his machines in the basement, and my baby sister gone or holed up in her room. And me, wandering the kitchen barefoot, fingers to the fridge and the wooden tables, and the way the floors are old and cold and the carpets are worn out because they are fifty years old now and have never been replaced. The air, so heavy all the time with the clink of cold, cold forks and spoons and the things we leave unsaid. My sister and I, fighting, fighting because we’re mad at our family, at our mama and our daddy but we yell at each other instead. The rooms, so cluttered because my mama and daddy never made us clean them. The smell, so dusty and so cold, and the sound of the rain, coming down in sheets and buckets and farm animals across the skylight. That rain, that to me is more constant than any daddy.
I’ve got this ache in me like my daddy and I will never know each other, like this old cold house full of secrets and empty of everything else is somewhere where my mama will live alone someday, somewhere I’ll never come back. Like someday, my mama and daddy will be people I don’t talk about anymore, and like someday I really will be all alone.
I talked to my daddy for real today. About ourselves, not about Vietnamese civilians or the people he used to know. I walk downstairs and tell him I have a place to go if I need to leave. I don’t think about what I’m going to say because then I will be too scared to say it. He says no, no he is not kicking me out because I am a part of this family. And that if he had been a better daddy or faster on his feet we wouldn’t even have to worry about it in the first place. He gives me a hug and I start to cry, cry like the rain on our roof and the puddles on the sidewalk. My daddy loves me.
