I have an early memory of falling off my father’s shoulders in the front yard while he was running. I remember the absence of all sound as I fell to the ground, landing on my back. I was lying in the grass, the dark green blades were long and cool, probably damp but the moisture hadn’t seeped into my clothing yet. I was looking up at the sky, the only way you should ever look at the sky, by marrying your back to the earth. We had been chasing my sister and I could hear my dad’s voice quiet, far off, asking if I was ok. My sister doubled back, I could feel her in my peripheral, although I didn’t turn to look.

I knew she was high on her own exhilaration being from chased, being the focus of attention. It was all she ever wanted, good or bad. She stood paralyzed equally by her dislike of attention being averted and her joy of harm coming to me. I was always mesmerized by those moments that followed an accident, when things slowed down and you swell with some internal awe at having not injured yourself.

…

I had been waiting for my father to come home to tell him about a problem I was having at school. I was having trouble with a teacher and it was the most important issue in my life at that moment. I sat down in the blue armchair next to the fireplace as he lowered himself to the slate hearth.

The shoelaces of his construction boots were untied and loosened, his white tube socks peeking out from behind the tongues. The sleeves of his white thermal shirt were pushed up revealing his large forearms. He never wore a jacket, just a thick plaid flannel shirt when he worked outside. His faded blue Levis were sometimes cuffed, he was only 5’8”. Already bald by twenty, he always wore a navy blue or black bandana on his head. The fine black hair he had left, he grew long, sometimes twisting it into a single long braid. His eyebrows formed pointed peaks, like the roofs of houses. I have the same eyebrows.  He had a perfectly straight nose that my aunt envied. I only ever saw pictures of him without facial hair. He always had a mustache, a goatee or a Fu Manchu.

Most people were immediately afraid of him. He was stocky and intimidating looking. Once when my father entered a craft store, an older woman working behind the counter became afraid and started retreating backwards. He called out, “I’m looking for some acrylic paint for my daughter. Do you have any yellow ochre?” The woman was relieved and inched forward from her hiding place to help him. My dad told me later, “I think she thought I was going to rob the place.”

In front of the fireplace, he sat still and listened patiently as I unfolded my story. I experienced every emotion fully as I retold it. Afterwards, he paused. I hoped that he would impart some adult wisdom on my childhood dilemma. He said, “If I wasn’t so busy feeling sorry for myself, I’d take time out and feel sorry for you too.”

…

Sue was roller-skating backwards with the instructor at the center of the rink. They were skate dancing really, one of the queer hybrids still breathing life well into the late eighties. It was the middle of the day and we were at the Skate Station, where everyone in middle school went for birthday parties or just to eat pizza, play video games and wear glow necklaces while skating under the black light. The walls were painted with a rainbow that wrapped around the entire perimeter. Watching Sue move around the rink, I could see the sexuality she exuded, it was what the instructor and probably my father saw in her.

Sue was what we like to call white trash. She wasn’t what I considered attractive; she had that tired I’m-still-hot-for-a-mom look. She didn’t wear make-up or style her hair or have great taste in clothes. She wore cut-off jean shorts with the pockets hanging out and no underwear. Her brown hair was cut short and she wore men’s prescription aviator glasses, the kind a cop would wear. She had a 2-year-old son named Michael, a sweet cherub-faced boy with blond curls who was always smiling. He resembled a baby Phillip Seymour Hoffman. She was a good roller-skater. Her ability to flirt, dance and not wear underpants would be skills I would never possess.

Sue was my father’s girlfriend when I was in the seventh grade. Despite her apparent leanings towards slutty, she had a nurturing, domestic streak that was sincere. Unlike any of the women my father had dated before, she actually tried to be a substitute mom to me. Even if it was a thinly veiled attempt to win my affection, I enjoyed the attention. She moved in with my father who lived in the basement. She cooked all the time, even making noodles from scratch for chicken noodle soup. I didn’t even realize that you could make noodles; I had little experience with food that didn’t come out of a box.

It was one of the first times I remember getting Christmas presents from my dad, well, Sue. They gave me a reversible imperial blue and ivory fleece Unicorn blanket. She even took me shopping; I enjoyed being spoiled for the first time in my life. Once she took me to play B.I.N.G.O. It was a depressing scene, the bingo hall was like a cafeteria serving greasy pizza and elderly obese people smoking. I would inhale the artificial green apple of the bingo daubers to try to mask the thick odor of the cigarette smoke while attending to my cards. I won $50 on my first visit, beginner’s luck.

On one occasion, Sue did my laundry. She turned a favorite red Esprit shirt of mine coral, and for that, I will never forgive her.

My father and Sue had a volatile relationship. The same things he liked about her, would also throw him into a jealous rage. She seemed to know how to push his buttons; he had a tendency towards violence. They dated during the height of my father’s alcoholism, an addiction that fueled his rage. They would argue; he would punch holes in the walls. Screaming matches ended in 911 calls for domestic violence.

…

Secrets

I’m telling secrets, but they are mine to tell.
We’ll start with one I know so well.

The sound of too many footsteps in the house,
the cops pacing and shifting their weight, causing the wood floor to creak.
I’m in my bedroom with the lights off, pretending to be asleep.
I’m in the seventh grade.
I’m crying and the cops are asking you “How do you think this makes your daughter feel?”
I’m worried for a moment they’ll come down the hall and ask.
[Silence]
No answer.

Instead I hear the sound of you being thrown or throwing somebody against the front door,
being pushed onto the concrete steps and into the yard.
The grass is slippery and wet with dew, the night is dark, and in the backyard the river waits.

Then the brutal sound of your body hitting metal,
pinned against the hood of a police car.
In our front yard, on a school night.
You yelling, “You’re going to have to shoot me.
You’re going to have to kill me.”

You are unable to put your arms behind your back, they have to link handcuffs together to accommodate you, there is something written about it in your record. Along with your DUI, DWI, assault, domestic violence, jaywalking and indecent exposure. Some of these came later; for me it all happened at once.

The next morning I had to go to school.
I pretend everything is normal; I want desperately to be normal.
I get called out of French class into the guidance counselor’s office.

Walking towards Ms. Lyon’s office, I was terrified that she knew, that the police had called the school.
I sat down in a chair, facing her at her desk, “So Chandalin, how is everything at home?”

“Fine. Why?”

“Oh we are just checking in with the girls, making sure everyone is okay.”

Turned out it was just routine inquiry. Girls had been wearing black, depressed and mentioning suicide. Frances was rumored to have sliced her wrist with a piece of loose-leaf paper, while another girl carried around a plastic knife from the cafeteria. While other people fought for attention, I mastered invisibility. I managed not to exist at all at home.

Sitting there in her office, I considered confiding in her.

I wondered if they sent a social worker to my house if they would award custody to my grandfather and my aunt or if they would put me in foster care. My grandfather traveled all the time and my aunt was a single mom, raising two younger children on her own. The thought of foster care made me keep my mouth shut. I knew enough to know that things could get worse.

…

My dad had come home drunk when and him and my aunt got into an argument. He set down a Pepsi can on the countertop, accidentally placing it on a walnut, spilling the soda all over the mail. My aunt started yelling at him, he picked up the walnut in question and asked, “This? This is what you’re upset about?” and chucked it as hard as he could, splitting it in two. The next day I found one half of the walnut resting in the oven’s cooking rack. My aunt walked into the kitchen, looked over my shoulder and noticing that the inside of the nut was in the shape of a heart said, “Ironic.”

…

We lived in the country where we never locked our doors, except when my sister and I were kids. She was two years older and in charge of the key, which on more than one occasion she forgot. We were locked out one time and she threatened to spray me with the garden hose. I dared her. The heavy weight of the water soaked into my brown plaid school uniform. I grew cold as we waited outside. A slight breeze blew and the fall sunlight faded until the familiar crunching sound of tires over gravel could be heard creeping up the driveway.

I don’t know why, but I was prone to daring people to do things that ended badly for me. Once I dared a boy on the bus to give back a playing card he had stolen from my friend’s deck. He was dangling it out the bus window and I stood up on the seat and said, “Give it back, if you have the guts to.” Apparently, he didn’t. The card disappeared somewhere along Route 5. I later remember asking my dad, “What does guts mean?”

This was later; this was different. I arrived home from school to find the police waiting there: someone had broken into our house.

The police were interviewing my dad and my aunt. They asked us to take an inventory of the house and let them know if anything was missing.

I walked into my room to investigate. I was a good detective. I had a small salt and flour mold I made of my handprint as a child. The hook had long since rusted, so I used it as a paperweight for my lunch money. I was missing $1.

I had just done laundry the day before and remember placing my favorite lavender bra in the empty laundry basket. It was gone. I walked down the hall and asked my aunt, “Are you missing any bras?” She went back to her room to check. She was missing two.

My dad was missing his baseball hat and an XL jean jacket.

This was curious.

A transvestite broke into our house and stole my bra. Silence of the Lambs had just come out and I couldn’t help conjuring the image of a man trying to squeeze into one of my tiny bras.  As a teenager, my breasts were shallow little parentheses, still struggling to fill out a training bra. The thought a man trying to stretch my bra over his enormous torso, especially the lavender one with a little bow, both haunts and humors me.

Two weeks later, I was home alone after school when I heard someone come into the house. I yelled, “Hello” as I peered down the hallway, just in time to see a shadow disappear out the front door.

We had to start locking our doors.

…

He was unemployed and unemployable. He lost his license for drunk driving and now he had to walk or hitchhike to the bar five miles from our house. He wrote angry letters to the Department of Motor Vehicles.  Pages scrawled out in his cryptic handwriting, enclosed in envelopes address to the Moron Vehicle Association. He would ride along whenever someone was going to the DMV and hand out complaint forms to people standing in line.

My cousin saw me in school and told me that her mother had given my dad a ride home last night. She said that he was going on and on about how proud he was of me. I was embarrassed. I knew he had been hitchhiking home from the bar and was most certainly drunk. I suppose I didn’t feel sorry for him, he was too busy feeling sorry for himself.

…

I started to feel unsafe at home; a place where I thought my father could protect me. Curious the things that once made you feel safe later become the things you need protecting from. Just before I started high school, Sue moved to Florida and my father followed her, without me. He said that he was going to get set up, get a job, an apartment and send for me later. I remember being so afraid that everything was going to change, that everything was going to be different after he was gone. He was, after all, my only parent, my guardian. The one who would never leave me, left. Nothing changed. I went to school, came home, ate dinner, did my homework and watched television. Nothing changed. There was no difference. No ripple, no murmur, no twinge. How could that be, that my life wasn’t affected at all by his absence? No loss, just wonder and awe at having survived without injury, to exist in his absence.

We lived near Point Lookout, the most haunted lighthouse in America. It was a peninsula with large boulder like rocks scattered along the shore and the site of a prisoner camp during the Civil War where soldiers froze to death in the winter.

Nearby, on our Uncle’s sun-bleached pier, wood planks bowed collecting puddles of rainwater. The hard edges curled up like a spoon, pressing into the soft skin of barefoot arches. Saltwater softening scabs, turning them mucus green.

By mid-June the water temperature would warm and there would be jellyfish. The tides would wash batches of jellyfish onto the sand, stranding them to dry out in the sun. My sister and I would pierce a stick through the center of their bodies. The feeling of thick flesh resisting traveled up the spine of the stick, its tough muscle pushing you into regret. We would toss the twig aside, rescue the rest of the jellyfish, scooping them up in our hands, sand and all, and returning them to the sea. Slowly they would resurrect, pumping their hearts, reunited with the sea.

We were borrowing our Uncle’s green canoe, pushing out into the river behind our house to Tippity Witch Island. Our Dad wouldn’t let my sister or I help, he rowed the entire way with the blood orange oar. It was always like that with us: him on one side, us on the other. Sharing a seat on one side of a canoe or paired together under the seatbelt of the passenger seat of his blue Chevy van.

…

My sister and I filed into the room and pressed our backs to the wall. We stood that way, like two wet paper towels thrown against and now plastered to the wall. Our Dad maneuvered around the maze of the convertible sofa until he found an opening. Kristine and I watched as he kissed Ann as her two daughters climbed up the couch cushions to greet him. He picked them up and tossed them around playfully and they laughed and giggled in pure joy from his attention. He was our Dad but we could barely recall a time when he was so warm and affectionate with us. We had surrendered to our fate, being the well-behaved, fearful children of a man with a quick temper whom mostly barked orders at us.

Seeing him shower those girls with attention, our attention, it became clear. He was capable of showing love and being affectionate, he just chose not to, with us. That is when the cruelty set in. The realization in that moment, having to internalize that at ten years old, lining our insides with the unlovable upholstery that would insulate us always and forever.

He gave them presents. He forgot to fill our Christmas stockings. Once my for my birthday, he gave me a card designed to hold money. Tucked inside was an I.O.U. note. I kept a locked cash box in my nightstand drawer. As my father’s drinking progressed, money began to disappear. Three hundred dollars of birthday money from relatives and the allowance I earned from my grandfather had been replaced by I.O.U. notes scrawled in my Dad’s handwriting.

…

My father drank at a bar called the Green Door, about five miles north of our house. His best friend Brian Tarelton owned it. As kids we used to hang out there when my father was hired to do some work on the place. In the dark bar on a sunny Sunday afternoon, the old drunks gave us quarters to play video games. While he worked, we’d try to play pool and climb up on the barstools and drink cokes through red cocktail straws. There’s a distinct smell that a bar has: wood encrusted with cigarette ash and saturated with spilled beer. When I walk by a bar with an open door and the smell drifts out, I recall the feeling of being inside that dark room with the small rectangle of blinding daylight framed by the open door.

I still remember the phone number to the Green Door. Whenever I came home from school and needed to reach him, to sign a field trip permission slip or report card, I would have to call him there. When I left for school he was sleeping, when I came home he was at the bar. He would usually come home after I went to bed. I would leave paperwork for him to sign on the kitchen counter by the telephone.

Sometimes I’d hear him come in, he had a loud smoker’s cough. I would listen to him in the kitchen, clanging pots and pans as he heated up leftovers on the stove. Sometimes he’d leave something on the stove that would burn and smoke up the house. I’d listen, as he’d walk down the stairs, often slipping and missing a few steps on the way down to the basement.

…

My father had been rowing for hours. The sun was beating down on him, he had taken off his shirt and was beginning to turn lobster red. The oars spun little whirlpools on the surface of the water and the small current continually rocked the canoe. It seemed that we were going nowhere, we were in the middle of the river, our house shrinking in the distance but still some distance from the island.

…

The canary yellow phone in the kitchen had a matching coiled cord that I wrapped around my index finger as I stretched it into the dining room where I could sit and talk in one of the chairs. My father smoked Newport cigarettes and put them out in plants in the room divider when he was on the phone. My aunt would rest the phone in the crook of her shoulder while she prepared dinner, or did the dishes. I would sometimes call my mom on that phone.

When I was climbing up the shelves in the linen closet stacked with folded terrycloth towels, I discovered a wicker basket full of photographs and postcards from my mom. They were sent from Rhode Island, where she had moved after leaving my Dad around the time I was a year old. They were glossy photos of fall trees pressed onto cardstock, her cursive handwriting on the back but I don’t remember the words. Just a mother writing to children that couldn’t yet read and would never understand.

She said that if we wanted to keep in touch that we could call her collect and she would call us back. She also said that if we wrote to her, she would write us back. Looking back it seems strange that it was our responsibility as children to initiate and maintain contact while she would only reciprocate.

On our first visit to see our mom, I was six, my sister 8. We couldn’t remember what she looked like and we were afraid that we would hurt her feelings if we didn’t recognize her. In the few photographs we had seen, she reminded me of Samantha from Bewitched or Lindsay Wagner, The Bionic Woman. We waited in the mirrored lobby with my Dad standing several paces behind us. I heard her high heels on the floor and saw her legs, her skirt and her blond hair, arms outstretched, ready embrace us as she walked towards us. She recognized us.

…

The year I thought my father was going to marry Ann things began to change. I was in the fifth grade when my sister moved away. She didn’t really belong to us anyway, my half-sister, my mother’s daughter from a previous marriage. Her father remarried a woman named Darlene who had two children of her own and didn’t like Kristine. She had moved away to live with her grandmother in Ohio.

We usually went to visit our mom together but on this trip I went alone. My mother lived in a high-rise apartment building in a two-bedroom apartment she shared with her boyfriend Lou who worked for the building doing maintenance.  Her living room had white carpeting and silver furniture from the lobby.

I was worried that my Dad was going to marry Ann. I was afraid of what that change meant. I didn’t have any memory of my parents ever being together and I didn’t have any reason to believe they would ever reconcile. Still I didn’t want my parents to get divorced and I didn’t want things to change. My father was all that I had left and I didn’t want to share him.

In my mother’s living room, I looked up at her and I began to reveal my fear, “I don’t want my Dad to marry Ann. Can I come live with you?”

She said, “No.”

My mother has always been a mystery to me, a woman with a black velvet heart. I remember her becoming uncomfortable and fidgety when I began to cry, that she couldn’t tolerate it. Wounded by her rejection and her inability to console me, I crawled underneath the bench in the living room, pressed my cheek against the carpet and continued to cry. She became so annoyed with my behavior that she left the room. I watched as her legs walked away from me, the carpet itchy against my cheek. She couldn’t even be my mother for five minutes.

…

My father did not marry Ann. My fears about him getting remarried never resurfaced although he continued to date.

…

When I was in the middle school my sister stopped talking to our mother. I would go and visit her alone. She was still together with Lou; they were both alcoholics, her vodka, him Jack Daniels. They both smoked pot and he also did coke.

Lou was a piece of shit. He was tall and wiry, with thick black hair like John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever. He has a tattoo of his name on his arm, it is only 3 letters long, but the tattoo is crooked. It looks like a prison tattoo, each letter lower than the one before it, slanting downwards, as if the person writing it was falling asleep. He drove a Pinto. The gas tank was located the rear and when they were hit from behind, they had a tendency to catch fire.

My mother was preparing to host a dinner party at the apartment. We were peering into the refrigerator to check on the cucumber rosettes that we had left soaking in a bowl of ice water. Lou was dressed up and already drunk by the afternoon. He came into the kitchen and tried to stop the blade of a small black fan by sticking his finger in it. His finger was cut badly and blood went everywhere. He just stood there laughing while my mother rushed to clean up the blood before the guests arrived.

Lou often went out drinking, he was a social drinker, like my father. He came back to the apartment one night drunk, I was woken up to the sound of him and my mother arguing in their bedroom. He wanted to have sex with her and she wasn’t in the mood. I could hear him say through the wall “What if I go and wake up your daughter and show her what a fat, pathetic cunt her mother is?” My mother was crying, begging him not to. I heard the door slam and him come down the hallway for me. I pretended I was sleeping, my back facing him as he opened my bedroom door and cast an arc of light over the darkened room. He hovered at the doorway, my eyes staring into the darkness, my body curled in into a motionless ball. He closed the door and walked back out again.

…

We had packed bologna sandwiches in paper bags and passed two to my father while my sister and I both ate a half. The Wonder Bread stuck to the roof of our mouths in little crescent shaped bites. My father was tired from rowing but he never spoke of it. We were close enough now to make out the individual trees and the tall reeds at the shoreline. It was bigger than I had imagined.

We would never arrive at the island. After hours of rowing we would simply turn around and go home.

Today is my aunt’s wedding anniversary.

Can you imagine two people trusting each other enough to get married on April Fools’ Day?