Willy
I sat on his lap with my cheek on his chest. I wanted so much to kiss his lips but he wouldn’t let me. Instead he said he would teach me to give butterfly kisses. Lean in he said, put your eyelashes close to mine and blink a few times, this sent me to giggles. He asked me then to give him the tip of my nose and run it back and forth across the tip of his nose. This was an eskimo kiss. I remember the smell of his breath, through the years it changed but not much. Behind the occasional stench of cigarettes and heineken was the smell of him, my dad.
We were taking a break from gardening on a lovely, sunny day. On a day I recognize now as a sunday. He almost always honored Sundays. It was the day reserved for his children, including the ones who didn’t live with us because they had their own mother and their own house. A shame he carried and passed on unintentionally.
That day may be my earliest memory of pink roses. It’s often hard to recognize memory over imagination but I think it was also the day he taught me to whistle. Purse your lips together and blow. I gave myself a headache, this I remember.
That was a sweet time in my life, he was my first love and I may have been his last. He broke my heart when he hit me, after that all of it changed, the way I saw him and the way he made me feel. I never trusted him again or any other man.
When I was 9 he was beaten badly, two broken arms, a cracked skull. He and my mother owned a deli, my mom made delicious hot food for lunch and he did everything else. The business stole them away from us. We were to walk to the deli after school or once we were awake and it meant the house was alone and messy. The ants filled the kitchen sink and feasted on what was left of the Tang and iced tea pitcher. If she were home she would have done it and we would have had a clean house and a hot dinner. It all ended with the deli and it never got any better. He thought of business idea after business idea. He scrambled. My mom followed. We learned to shut our mouths and wash dishes. It was a bunch of white kids by the way, the ones who beat him up. As I remember it some white kids threw his produce around from the cart he built and he shoved them and cursed them off. They returned late one night with friends and an older brother and taught him a lesson. He was in bed for weeks and we weren’t allowed to see him because as my mother called it, his head looked like a blossoming flower, face bruised, unable to use his hands and arms. As soon as he was well enough he went back to work. He sawed off his own casts because he couldn’t wait to be fully healed because his bills needed to be fully paid. Everything about childhood stung me, everyone around me pushy and mean, I preferred drifting. The only thing I still love to do that reminds me of childhood is day dream.
By the time I was 11 they divorced. What a relief it was. He terrorized us with his angry glare, his drunken rage, the desperation and chase for money that never seemed to be enough. He had hit my mother and smashed up the house so many times that we were all ready to see him go and watch him leave. He was selfish and resentful, mean and confused, judgmental and controlling and I have very little memory of not being afraid. One day mami promised a day at the pool, he insisted we wait for him. We waited. The promise was 2pm and by 2:30 my mother dragged us out with her, not to the pool. I don’t even remember where we went. I only remember defending her later that night by saying we didn’t even get to go to the pool. I sat quietly in my bed as he yelled and threw things about. He got louder and I begged my sister who I shared a room with to go out there with me. I knew she was being shaked and rattled and blamed for the way he felt inside, for the way he was taught to hate. I got up and pounded my way forward shouting at him to “leave my mother alone”. Those scary eyes did not hesitate to match his words, “you want some too”. He slapped me so hard my head hit the wall behind me and there we were mother and daughter sobbing, seated at the edge of the bed, each one holding their own cheek, waiting for the storm to pass. It did. The next day we got gifts, I got a robe that was too tight and a brown bag full of candy. My mother got roses and a beautiful nightgown, my sister got nothing. No slap, no gift.
To be continued…
