My original dad died in a church. He went in with my mom exactly 236 Sundays ago and never came back out.
My dad was the coolest, even though every other day he found a way to hurt my feelings. In kindergarten he took the morning off work and came to my class to talk about shapes using a cartoon he drew to teach us the shapes. Everyone crumpled up and threw the fliers away but I kept mine nice and flat inside a folder. I collected them all off the floor, flattened them out, and handed them back to the man I wanted to understand me. He brought me rainbow sprinkles in third grade even though I cried onstage because my teacher thought a good time to teach me a lesson in patience was to tease me by making it seem like I’d never share the story I wrote at parents night.
I used to think that my mom lied to my dad when I was smaller. She told him bad things about me, I was so convinced, because one day he started hating me and I wasn’t even that big yet to be so hate-able. My dad was very tall and he liked to make his body form a curve at the top when he yelled. He scared me very much. After he lectured and screamed I liked to hide in my room and whisper to myself instructions on what to do next time it happened. I learned to push my shoulders back and puff out my chest so I seemed a little bigger even though I was too small to take on a man’s anger.
My dad moved to Florida when I was sixteen and I had the best birthday of my life. My mom was happier when he was away. Whenever he came back home he would find something wrong and scream at me for it. The last time I saw him before he was gone for a while, we stood at the top of the stairs and I puffed my chest like I taught myself to do and I screamed back with rage that had been laminated onto my exterior right into the face of the man who spit on my cheek purposefully.
My dad had some sort of memory loss that nobody wants to tell me about so now he asks me weird questions about what a substitute teacher is and he forgets even more that I am a woman not a little girl who needs reprimanding. As an adult, he hit me only once. My mother refused to believe me, at least when he was in the same room while I accused him of what he very clearly did when he kicked his disobedient, psychotic, whore of a daughter out of the house for the night. He seems nicer when you look at him from really far away but today at the same church he walked into years ago, he snapped at my mom in front of me and I was afraid for her even though most of the time I don’t like her all that much. She told him no to something and he scrunched his face into a knot so he could let out a nasal laugh at her indifference to his stupid want. My chest hurt the entire way to my parents’ house.
I’ve got an issue with men; I dislike them very much. They are mean and harsh and they scream at little things like paperclips that get stuck at the bottom of the jar or legos they step on in the middle of the night. They call me pretty and notice my outfits (which I love to wear as armor) when they want to pander and think it’ll make me ignore their words next time they yell. They are forgetful and lie often. I have not met one that does not possess either of those qualities to some degree.
In my favorite picture, which I have no memory of, my father and I are wearing matching outfits, staring at a tree, looking at a squirrel. I am much smaller than he is and filled with the same kind of curiosity. My hair looks like his and our chins are chubby in the same way.
My father loved me correctly, just for a little while, when he had the time to learn what is needed to love a daughter.
