Daddy's Girl

Her father went to jail when she was very young. All of the stories ever told to her all say she was about three years old when he left, her sister one, and her brother still in their mother’s, if that’s what you call such a person, womb. She had always been a daddy’s girl, even with him being so far away. She had always loved him and thought he could do no wrong and that him being in jail was just the fault of the world and not his own. He always called and wrote letters and made sure he was still present in their lives, unlike their so called mother.

Her father got out of jail a few months back, and because she had been away at school, she hadn’t been able to see him until she got out of school for winter break. He hated writing her while she was at school because he felt it was embarrassing for her so she wasn’t aware he was getting out until her brother informed her. But now that he was out he called and texted often. He was staying with family down in Augusta Georgia trying to get his life back together. Being a convicted felon she knew he would have a hard time settling back into the real world, and she tried to take that into consideration when she made her way to Georgia to visit her father.

That was all she thought about on the plane. It made her nervous. She hated meeting new people, and that was what she considered her father. New. A stranger. A man she hadn’t met before and was seeing for the first time. When she got off the plane, her father was in the baggage claim area ready to greet her. She hadn’t seen her father in what felt like over 10 years and her heart began to race as she approached him. He was still as tall as she remembered, a six foot three skinny black man who she recognized instantly. Being that she hadn’t seen him in years, he also wasn’t that hard to find because he was the tallest man there wearing a grey sweater, cargo shorts, what looked like black and silver gym shoes, and to to top it all off he wore an obnoxiously bright orange skull cap on the top of his head.

As she stepped to him he looked up and hugged her and began to smother her with hugs and kisses. So much so, that she was no longer his twenty-two year old daughter, but the three year old he left so many years back, and never realized grew up. After five minutes of the affection that she hated but tolerated because of her father’s situation, he went to grab her luggage and called her great uncle Marc to meet them outside. Her great uncle, a man whose complexion was about ten shades lighter than her own milk chocolate skin, a military veteran, and a man she has no recollection of but has apparently been around, got out of his car, cane in hand, and gave his oldest great grand-niece a hug.

After all of her bags were in the car, her father took over the driving her great uncle was doing and they left the Atlanta airport to pick up her sister Lu. Lu was attending an all woman’s college in Decatur, and was finishing up basketball practice when their father pulled onto her campus. Once Lu was in the car, her racing heart calmed down and the four of them went to grab something to eat at the nearest Waffle House. They all talked about school and the last time they had all seen each other and what there would be for them to do when they reached their final destination in Augusta, Georgia.

She was very nervous. She hadn’t seen her father in years, and although her great uncle says they’ve met many times when she was younger she has no memory of it. And now, for about two weeks of her winter break she will be staying with complete strangers. They finished their meals and headed to the car, all while laughing and talking about things the elders remembered and she and her sister did not. She was excited to be spending time with her father and his aunts and uncles and grandmother and she planned to make the best of her trip and ignore the nervousness that crept up on her every now and then from the Atlanta airport to her great grandmother’s house in Augusta.

Her great grandmother lived in a big bright yellow house. She could feel her heart racing again as her father drove down the hill of driveway and into the garage. The four of them got out of the car and her father grabbed all of their bags and put them in his room, the room she and her sister will be staying in for the next two weeks. Once the bags were in the room, her father gave her the grand tour of the house. Her sister, who attends school only a few hours away, already knows everyone and everything there is to know about the house, so the tour was just her and her father.

Great. Now we’ll be by ourselves. I can do this. I mean, he is your father. You just haven’t seen him in over ten years and it’s been almost twenty since you’ve seen him without an orange jumpsuit, and those years you don’t even remember. You just have the stories everyone else has told you. The stories he’s told you. Wow my chest hurts. Where the hell did that come from?

Her father’s room was on the second floor of the house with all of the other bedrooms. 4 bedrooms, including the master bedroom that belonged to her great grandmother. If you were to come up the stairs, her father’s room was the one on the right, in front of you was her Great Aunt Nona’s room and to the left of that was her Great Uncle Marc’s. Facing left, you get the bathroom and another left her great grandmother’s room. All of the rooms had white walls and were these small rooms that could barely fit the queen sized beds in them and a dresser or two. But her great grandmother’s room was this beautiful mahogany all over. Her bedroom was about twice the size of the other rooms, not including her closet and bathroom, and was decorated with various African art and articles from when she was younger. She had two pink couches on either side of the television that sat on top of table in front of her bed. Her bathroom, which is where they found her, was painted a bright yellow with a marbled double sink which, apparently was the place she kept all of “her things.” Her father introduced them and she gave her great grandmother a hug and kiss on the right cheek.

Daddy warned me about Grandma Allie. He said she takes things from other people’s rooms and claims them as hers. And then runs around yelling, talkin’ bout how “everyone likes to just like to take, take, take” from her. I missed it. What did Grandma Allie say? Why is he getting so upset? Is he really talking about all she’s taken from him right now? In front of her? The woman is 93 years old. So what she stole your tablet? And your socks? And your stress balls? She can’t help herself. Who are you?

She had always imagined her father being this caring and understanding person. But they way he was acting and talking about his grandmother’s situation hit a nerve. She knew her great grandmother had dementia and knew that it took patience to handle someone suffering from it. Her grandfather had dementia. Almost always forgot her name but she always gave him a smile and reminded him not only her name but who she was to him. Her father was not like that with great grandma Allie. He got annoyed easily with her which in turn made her easily irritated with her father. He began to show who he really was since he’s been out. Or maybe he’s always been like this, and she simply ignored it because she had her own idea of who her father was, who she wanted him to be.

She ignored her father the rest of the tour. She only paid attention when being introduced to her Aunt Nona, her diabetic Uncle Joe, who lived in a room in the basement, and to the two dogs and one cat in the house, which to her surprise, the dogs and cat got along but the two dogs hated each other. She went back upstairs to the room and her sister who had set up her Xbox was playing a round of Call of Duty already.

One week. Just one week by yourself with him. Auntie and everyone else will be here in one week. One. Week.

The week was going by a lot slower than she expected and more and more her father began to get on her nerves. Although she is the oldest of the family, she is also the shortest. And her father gave her so much shit for it. She was used to shorts jokes. They were fine with her because she knew she was short and loved it. But, everything, EVERY FUCKING THING, her father sad to her had a short joke in it. He was borderline bullying and she did not like it and when she told him about it he laughed it off and said she was sensitive about her height. She wanted so badly to curse him out and give him a piece of her mind but she knew she would get in trouble for it when her aunt came. Cursing her father out would have been seen as disrespect regardless of how absent he’d been in her life.

But that was just one issue. And it wasn’t even the first. The first issue was the fact that he thought she didn’t like him or hated him. Which, at the time, wasn’t true. But as the week progressed he gave her more and more of a reason not to. The major problem she had with this wasn’t that he thought she didn’t like him, but that he never told her this himself. They spent the week together running errands and catching up and he seemed fine and understanding. He had even asked her is she hated him or didn’t like him and when she said no he simply told her that she should. She disregarded the comment and figured he was just feeling some way because he had been in jail so long. It wasn’t until, not only her sister, but her aunt and brother, once they made it, told her that her father felt this way and continuously asked her what’s wrong. It was as if she wanted her to hate him. At this point she figured, like her father said, she should hate him.

She was happy when the rest of her family made it down to Georgia. She hadn’t seen them in months and missed them greatly. It had also been a minute since they went on a family vacation and she was excited for the week ahead of them and meeting all of the family she had out in Georgia. It was the first day everyone was together as a family and after the bullshit with her aunt, brother, and father, they all decided to go to Denny’s for lunch. All 8 of them. Her aunt and her three boys, Sam, Zeke, and Karl, her brother James, her sister Lu, her father, and herself.

The Denny’s they went to was this small thing connected to a hotel and only had booths available. Instead of waiting on an available table to fit the eight of them, they decided to take up two booths. She sat at a booth with Karl, Lu, and Sam while the others took up the booth on the other side. At her booth, they all looked at the menus and began to catch up. The conversations they had ranged from school to drinking to church and many other things all while trying to keep quiet and make sure the adults didn’t hear anything that could get them in trouble.

“So what’s up with ya’ll? How’s school?” Karl asked.

“Eh. If I’m being honest, I failed this semester,” Lu said and looked over Karl’s head to see if their aunt heard.

“Failed how?” Sam asked.

“She got straight Fs,” she whispered.

“Aye, there’s one D.” Lu said, not so much as in a whisper but low enough so that the other table wasn’t aware of the conversation. “And they’re not even supposed to be Fs. Bruh. My professors didn’t put anything in like they should have.”

“Did you talk to them?” Karl asked.

“I emailed them a few days ago. I’m just waiting to hear back.”

“Does Auntie know?” Sam asked.

“Nah,” her and Lu said together.

“You know she’ll kill you if she ever finds out right,” Karl said.

At that moment, their food came and they ate and laughed about the way Sam tried to drink his orange juice without holding the glass and keeping it far away enough so that his lips barely reached the straw. The rest of the week was similar to this. They would go out as a family and see different parts of Augusta and where everyone once lived before they moved into the big houses they were in now. They took as many photos one can take on an iPhone and posted them Facebook. As the vacation came to a close they decided that her father would come back with them to Chicago. An idea she hated more than anything.

It was a 13 hour drive from Augusta to Chicago and she had to endure it by herself. Before leaving, they dropped her sister off at school in Decatur and said their goodbyes and it was at that point she felt by herself. Everyone saw no wrong in her father but her sister understood what made her upset. So when they officially made their way to Chicago, she put her headphones in and went to sleep. When she woke up her father was doing the driving and they were all laughing about something she had missed.

“Come on. Give me something else. What do ya’ll wanna know about me?” Her father asked.

“Alright well, who was your first love?” Her brother had asked him.

“I don’t think I had one. I wasn’t that kind of guy back in the day,” her father said.

“Well what about that girl you were with back in Cali? You didn’t love her? You didn’t love anybody?” Her aunt asked him.

“Nah. But if I really had to say someone, I guess it would be the girl I was with when I got their mother pregnant.”

He said it as if it were nothing. As if he hadn’t just told his kids and nephews and sister that he cheated on his girlfriend with his children’s mother and had gotten her pregnant. As if all the stories he had ever told her as a child about her parents’ relationship weren’t true. That they were together but hadn’t planned her and that she was the best mistake he had ever made. That her parents got married afterward and that it wasn’t until they got married that they began to hate each other. She knew she was a bastard child and she didn’t care much for that fact. But the moment she became a bastard child of an unfaithful scumbag and his side bitch, she grew furious. The rest of the way home and her father’s entire visit in Chicago, she found every reason to grant her father’s wish. She hated him. Hated him more than she had ever hated her mother, and he was the one who told her too. Hated him more than she thought possible for her to hate anything, and that was rare in itself.

You wanted me to hate you. Congratulations. You got what you wanted.