"Frayed"
By
Danielle James
It’s
Tuesday. The Tuesday you decide to open the package your mom sent you three
weeks ago. She called you and said she found old letters from your father. It was strange to read them after all these years, she said. But she did read them. And then, she
passed them on to you.
You
sit back on the couch and tear the edge off the brown envelope. A crumpled
piece of paper falls on your lap. Happy
birthday Danielle. Big letters surround a fat number two in the middle of
the page. A smiling brown bear holds a red balloon. The colors are fading, but
you can still see how neatly it was penciled in. At the bottom of the drawing
is a signature, Love, Daddy. This
makes you laugh out loud. You can’t remember when you last called your father
Daddy, but you do remember this drawing.
You
looked at it every day for years. Until you detached it from your bedroom wall
when you realized what your father loved most were little glass tubes with
little white rocks. When you stopped calling him Daddy and only called him
Frank.
You
think back to when you were nine and the only time you saw him was when you and
your mother sat on a bus for a long time. The bus was full of women with
creases in their foreheads. You drew in a coloring book on the ride and waved
to the other children. When the bus stopped, all passengers were herded into a
building where security guards who didn’t smile and wore thick-soled shoes
decided how long you could see your father. You sat at a round table and
displayed your drawings while he and your mother held hands. There was a
vending machine that made your father happy. You put coins in it and came back
with a nutty chocolate bar, and his tired smile became wide. The three of you
posed for Polaroids in front of a big paper sheet with a picture of a sunset
and palm trees. In these photos, you and your mother are in jeans and sweaters
and he always wears the same no-color jumpsuit. His dreadlocks fell in your
face when he hugged you goodbye. He told you he loved you but never came home.
Exhausted
and broke, your mother left Brooklyn and resettled in Belgium, where you
learned to speak Flemish and ate sugary crepes for breakfast. Every summer, you
visited your family. After a while, your mother started coming less and you
often flew the eight hours to America alone. At seven years old, you loved the
Singapore Airlines stewardesses, with their glossy dresses and slick buns. They
gave you a special seat on the plane and regularly stopped to chat with you.
After the landing, they held your hand and accompanied you to the arrivals
hall, where you scanned the crowd of expectant faces until you saw the familiar
smiles of your grandparents, uncles, and aunt. It wasn’t until after the
barrage of hugs and kisses that you’d look around and ask, Where’s daddy? Your uncle sucked his teeth while your grandmother
stopped and squeezed you tight, Oh honey.
From
jail, your father sent cards with drawings of Marvin the Martian and letters,
so many letters. In the letters, he counted down the days until he came home.
He sent newspaper clippings, said how much he thought about you, and begged you
to write back more often. He compared you to a cinnamon raisin bagel, a
butterfly, and a hurricane. Just like you, it made a lot of
noise, peed on people, and got them wet, just like you did as a baby, he wrote.
His letters made you smile, but the jokes and
drawings didn’t make up for him being away. You did not tell him this. Instead,
you said Me too when he said he
missed you over collect phone calls. Until you were twelve and built up the
courage to write him a long letter. Tears slipped from your eyes as years of
loneliness and broken promises filled the pages. You made sure to wipe them
before they fell.
He
called and said he got the letter, he was writing a response.
The
letter never came.
And just like you after bugging
everyone all day, Hurricane Danielle went to sleep. The only difference is that
nobody loves Hurricanes, but your mother and I love our little Danielle.
For three years, you didn’t see
him at all. The letters stopped coming, and you stopped expecting. You decided
to never cry over him again and kept that promise. Until you flew to visit your
family in New York and spotted your father’s face in the arrivals hall. As soon
as you saw him, your eyes swelled and drizzled. He wrapped his arms around you
and you could smell his shampoo.
After a decade of being in and
out of jail and rehab, your father claimed to be a reformed man. He had his own
apartment and worked a steady job in construction. One day, the two of you
drove to Roosevelt Island. I have
something to tell you, he said. He left you behind on a bench and came back
with a curly haired toddler. You knew right away that this was your brother,
and you loved him from the moment you saw him. You spent the day together and
met his mom and half-brother, your new stepbrother. When you left, your brother
cried and stretched his little arms towards you.
In the car, your father shared
the next destination. You were headed to the hospital to meet the newest member
of the family. Born just a few days prior, your baby brother was the most
beautiful baby you’d ever seen. He was tiny with a head full of dark hair, like
you when you were born. This brother had a different mother, and she greeted
you with a slurred voice. You learned she was using during her pregnancy, and
your brother had to detox. He couldn’t have his mother’s milk, so you fed him from
a bottle. You held him tight for a long, long time.
That night, your father told
you he loved your mother. His plan was to come home and become a family, but
now he had to tell her he couldn’t. He never meant to hurt her, or get those
women pregnant, but things happen in rehab. You waved him away, for years, you
begged your mother for a brother, and now you had three! You went back to
Belgium and plastered your room with photos of your new siblings. It wasn’t
until years later that you wondered how your mother felt when she heard the
news.
The next time you visited your
father, he had a new apartment on Sterling Street in Brooklyn. Your brothers,
stepmom, and a white pit bull lived there, and you had your own bedroom. Your
father tried to act fatherly. He made you breakfast, bought you new sneakers,
and gave you a curfew. At 15 years old, you appreciated the food and footwear,
but were confused by the curfew. Did this man really think he had any authority
over you? You responded to his rules by breaking them. You stayed out until the
early morning, smoked blunts on the front steps of his building, and invited
your friends into the apartment. His voice trembled as he yelled out
punishments, all of which you ignored. One night, after coming home three hours
past curfew, you closed the door, only to find him standing in the hallway. We got a problem, he said. You laughed
and tried to walk past him but he grabbed you by the back of your neck and
slammed you into the wall. The back of your head hurt, and you knew he was the
stronger one, but you lunged at him anyway. The two of you punched and pulled
at each other, until you were able to break free, run upstairs, and jump out of
your bedroom window, into the arms of your friends from the block. They had
seen the fight through the glass door and yelled threats of breaking open the
front door to your father. Together, you and your friends ran away into the
night. The collar of your top was ripped. Your neck, arms, and legs were
tainted blue.
*
* *
You’re 23 and live in your own
apartment in Flatbush. Your father is no longer on drugs. He’s no longer
serving time for armed robbery, assault with a deadly weapon, drug use (or
abuse). He’s no longer on probation but can no longer vote. He hates all forms
of law enforcement. If someone messes with your brothers, he reaches for his
bat and finds them. He brings them to school, to their games, to the movies, and
tucks them into bed. Once in a while, he takes you out to dinner, and snakes
his arm through yours as you walk down the street, together.
The day you get into a fight
with your boyfriend who pours a bottle of bleach on you – a failed attempt to
lure you back into the house - it’s your father you call at 3AM. He picks you
up and carries your bags. You wipe off the bleach with a wet towel. Most of it
is gone, but the remains drip on the leather seat, causing his car to smell
like the neighborhood pool.
For three months, you sleep on
a mattress in your father’s home office. At night, he cooks salmon and spinach
for you. You eat it and look through the
window. Project high rises cloud the skyline. You realize that this is the
first time you’ve ever really lived in the same house together.
After work, you get drinks
together. The bartender slaps your father on the back and says all his drinks
are free. You watch him down shot after shot of Jameson. Once in a while, he
orders a beer on the side. During one of these outings, you tell him about the
time you decided to invite your whole family, except him, to your future
wedding. He swallows his beer and looks at the drink menu scribbled on the
wall. The reason I’m telling you this,
you say, is that I’ve since changed my
mind.
*
* *
Lately, he’s been talking about
his childhood, a lot. He talks of leaving the City, talks of buying an RV and
wandering. You talk about recent accomplishments. About the excitement of
getting a college degree, something neither he nor your mother were able to do.
His eyes are elsewhere and you think he doesn’t hear you until you run into his
friend, the funny one with the black wig. She congratulates you on your
upcoming graduation. That’s why your
father never has to worry about you, she says, scratching the scalp by her
hairline. You try to see yourself through your father’s habitually inebriated
eyes. You’re not sure of what you see. You wonder what your relationship would
be like if your father felt he had to worry about you.
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