What I Remember About My Father

It’s really hard for me to be happy on Father’s Day. It’s hard to hear people talking about going to brunch to celebrate with their dads when I don’t have one of my own. My biological father died when I was six years old, so Father’s Day always makes me sad. I usually write something uplifting about my grandfather, who stood in as my Daddy over the years, always encouraging me to be the best person I could be.  Talking about my grandfather is always easier because it brings up happier memories for me, but at 27, I finally feel free enough to talk about my real father and what I remember about him.

My mother had me when she was 15 years old and my father was a drug dealer. There’s no thug love story here, just two irresponsible teenagers making a baby that turned out to be me. They were never married and mom took on the job of raising me by herself. We lived in the projects and rode around in a tiny dilapidated mold-green car whose door literally unhinged if we drove too fast.  We were so poor when I was growing up that every year, a woman from a program called Clothes for Kids would come and take me shopping for school clothes because my mother could not afford to. We were so poor, we were eligible for every government assistance program you could think of. I grew up hating Cheerios and the powdered milk we were given to eat them with.

I remember watching the Cosby Show on Thursday nights and fervently wishing that my family were like the Huxtables.  In my fantasies, Cliff was my loving, funny father, and his wife Claire my smart, stylish mother.  Once, to culminate a lesson about occupations, my kindergarten teacher went around the class asking each student to tell what his or her parents did for a living.  To my dismay, all of the other kids revealed the occupation of his or her mother and father.  My stomach heavy as stone, I realized that if I omitted my father’s job, the teacher would prod me to continue.  That day I was the daughter of Cliff and Claire Huxtable.  “My mother is a lawyer,” I lied as proudly as I could.  “And my father delivers babies.”

The first and only time my father came to visit us, my mother made meatloaf and asparagus.  I was so happy to see him that I laughed at everything he said.  I laughed and did not tell him that my friend Jamila Jackson had a Fisher Price playhouse in her backyard that I had wanted since last Christmas, or ask him why the woman from Clothes for Kids bought my pants too small and my sweaters too big.  I laughed, and did not even tell him about Sara Remington, who brought lemons bars and barbeque potato chips to school in a Barbie lunch box while I had to stand in the free lunch line.  I could not stop laughing long enough to eat my asparagus, no matter how many times my mother threatened to make me sit there all night until I had consumed everything on my plate.  My father simply grinned at me, as if understanding that my joy superceded hunger.  At some point I turned on the radio and reggae music flooded into our small apartment.

Here’s a little song I wrote, you might want to sing it note for note – don’t worry, be happy…

I twirled about in our cramped living room, dizzy with happiness, singing along to the radio.

In every life we have some trouble, but when you worry you make it double – don’t worry, be happy…

I whirled around to see my father grab my mother’s hand.  “Why?” he asked.  My mother looked at him sadly.  “We just can’t,” she replied.  They both turned back to watching me, my young voice breathlessly engaged in a duet with Bobby McFerrin.

Cause when you worry your face will frown, and that will bring everybody down – don’t worry, be happy…

After that night I assumed that he would stay with us.  Maybe, I thought, now we will be a family.  He never did come back to smile at me.  He was gone forever, like a wisp of a half-forgotten dream or a word on the tip of the tongue.

My father died a month before my seventh birthday.

At the time, the story was that he was shot during a drug deal gone bad. Later, my mother confessed that my father had not only been selling drugs, but he’d been doing them, too. As a result, his life had taken a downward spiral that culminated in him taking his own life in his mother’s basement.

My mother took me to his funeral.  As the family of the deceased, we rode to the church in the only limousine in the procession.  While all the adults were grief-stricken and unsmiling, I sat mesmerized by the long gray car’s smooth leather interior, oblivious to the casket with my dead father inside right behind us.  Too young to totally understand the implications of death, I cried when the women cried and wailed when they wailed, not fully knowing what all the crying and wailing was about.

Sitting on my mother’s lap I felt culpable for something, like when my friend Jamila Jackson – a year older than me – taught me how to spell the word ‘bitch.’ Armed with this dirty knowledge, I willfully wrote the word over and over on the walls of our apartment, feeling guilt only after my mother whipped me for it.  My mother was sorry for something, too.  Her hot tears fell onto my coat as she clenched both of our hands into a tight brown fist.  Looking down at me, her eyes pleaded with mine for forgiveness and redemption, both of which I could not give.

We stood, joining the others at the front of the church to view the body.  My father lay in a dark mahogany coffin lined with white satin.  Gazing into his face felt like looking into a mirror, except his dark skin had become stiff and ashen. He wore a black and blue sweater that seemed too big for his thin frame.  I think I smiled at him.

Daddy, your face is the color of wood.

He did not smile back at me.  In fact, no trace of his bright grin remained.

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