Burn Down the Ground

by Kambri Crews

  Glancing around the room, I noticed that the other actors were exchanging astonished glances, covering their mouths and snickering. I wasn’t sure what was so funny. I spoke loudly and clearly, just like Mom had instructed, and the director had agreed. I had nailed it … right?

  If I had been reading for Annie, I may have booked the gig. Unfortunately, I had been auditioning for the role of Anne Frank.

  What on earth had my mother been thinking? I could have acted better than Jodie Foster, but it wouldn’t have mattered. My Aryan looks, golden hair, and Texas twang were more like the Hitler Youth instead of a Jewish girl trying to survive the Holocaust.

  My mother was undaunted by the rejection and gave me a pep talk during the ride home. “It’s just one audition, Kambri. Some actors have to go on hundreds before they ever get a part. Let this be a lesson: You can’t hit if you don’t swing!”

  Texas was a competitive place. Everything from football and basketball to shorthand and using a handheld calculator was an aggressive face-off organized by the University Interscholastic League, commonly known as UIL.

  After skipping numerous tryouts for the musicals that my friends were cast in, I confronted my fear of auditions and showed up at the casting call for Richland High’s production of Tom Jones. The play, a farce, was perfect for my over-the-top facial expressions. To my delight, I landed the supporting role of Miss Western.

  The cast and crew of Tom Jones had magical chemistry. That spring, we entered and won zone, district, area, and regional acting competitions. For the first and only time in our school’s history, our troupe qualified for the state finals, held at the University of Texas in Austin. It was such a big deal that all the actors’ parents—even Mom and Dad—made the trip south to see us compete.

  Ours was the first play to be presented that day, and we turned in a respectable performance. After we gathered onstage to take our bows, we took our places in the audience. As we awaited the judges’ decision, the university theater students presented a parody of the competing plays. An outlandish and, at times, borderline indecent lampoon had us heaving with laughter.

  Later, the judges filed into the auditorium and took their seats for the awards ceremony. I sat chatting nervously with friends when I heard the familiar guttural noises and high-pitched nonsensical sounds of my father, but they were reverberating over the theater’s sound system. To my horror, Dad had climbed up onto the stage and was now doing his best gyrating Elvis impersonation into a microphone.

  “Nyowwww wooo yooo laaahh haaaaa,” Dad sang.

  Gasps and giggles rippled through the audience.

  Seated next to me, my friend Scott asked, “Hey, Kambri, isn’t that your dad?”

  “Shhhh!” I hissed and shrank down into my seat.

  “It is!” Scott guffawed. “Oh my God! What is he doing?”

  All the attention was again on the stage, but for all the wrong reasons. I felt nauseated as I watched the spectacle unfold. The emcee rushed from the wings and tried to wrest the microphone from my father’s hands. The struggle went on for at least five excrutiatingly long seconds before Dad finally let go. But rather than make a quick exit, he continued performing.

  “Mooooooo laaa laaaa laaaa wooo yooo!” he “sang,” shaking his hips and swinging his arm in wild, giant moves to strum his imaginary guitar.

  Breathless and confounded, the emcee wheezed into the mic, “If he belongs to you, would you get this monkey off the stage?”

  Mom was standing in the back of the theater and hadn’t realized what was happening. Now she sprinted toward the front of the auditorium and scrambled up the steps as my father took his bows to stunned laughter and scattered applause. As she escorted him down the aisle, Dad waved and pumped his fists in the air like he was champion of the entire competition.

  Order restored, I was relieved to have the awards ceremony get under way and focus attention away from my father and onto the event at hand. To my disappointment, Richland High’s production did not place. My friends filed out of the auditorium to join their families in the lobby. I chose to hang back and wait until the place emptied before going out to meet my parents. I didn’t want anyone to see me talking to the dancing “monkey.”

  Happy to see me, my father clapped when I stepped into the lobby. “B-R-A-V-O,” he signed and patted my back.

  Jerking my shoulder away, I scowled and signed aggressively, “Why did you do that?”

  “What?” Dad looked affronted.

  “Why did you go up onstage? This is the State One Act Play competition!”

  “The other kids got up there and acted crazy,” he replied, animatedly reenacting some of the more bawdy spoofs of the university students.

  “They were allowed to be up there! It was part of the program.”

  “Who cares? It was funny. People were laughing and clapping for me,” Dad signed, looking flabbergasted that I wasn’t amused by his antics. He genuinely had no idea what he had done wrong. He had seen a bunch of kids being silly onstage and figured he would have a turn. I had grown up accustomed to witnessing my father’s impulsive behavior, but this was the first time it truly mortified me. Representing my school in this prestigious competition was my proudest accomplishment and Dad was treating it like we were at an open mic at a bar.

  “It wasn’t funny to me,” I said, scowling.

  Putting the event behind me turned out to be impossible. My father’s theatrical stage debut—and the story of deaf Elvis—quickly became legend.

  Dad’s impromptu performance wouldn’t be the last time he would humiliate me in front of friends. In the spring of 1988, I was embarking on my first date with Nick, a tall, deeply tanned eighteen-year-old I met at Malibu Grand Prix. My father sat on the sofa fixated on an episode of GLOW: Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling, a TV series that featured scantily clad women in choreographed matches. I waited at the dining room table for my date to arrive.

  Opening the front door, I was happy to find a grinning Nick decked out in tight acid-washed jeans and a turquoise wife beater that showcased his smooth, bronze shoulders. He had a sparsely populated mustache and carefully crafted mullet, his bangs perfectly turned under by a curling iron.

  Dad was usually not home when dates came to pick me up. But in that moment, my father tore his eyes away from the bedazzled wrestlers, took one look at my date, and sprang into action.

  “Don’t fuck,” he signed, as we stood in the foyer of our apartment.

  I jumped between my father and Nick, hoping to shield my date from witnessing this horrifying display. Dad’s warning was accompanied by an intense glare.

  “Listen to me. Don’t fuck,” he persisted. “I don’t want you pregnant. I want you to graduate and go to college.” His hands smacked loudly as he delivered his passionate fatherly advice.

  “I know, I know!” I furiously signed back.

  From the way Nick was backing himself out our front door, it was clear he sensed trouble. Although he didn’t know sign language, he didn’t need to. In ASL certain signs are easily discernible and some are blatantly explicit.

  The AIDS epidemic was spreading through the insular Deaf community. It would eventually claim the lives of Peter Sloan, Uncle Darold, and a dear friend of my mom’s parents. Some didn’t rely on mainstream media, either because they didn’t have closed captioning or because, on average, they read at the fourth-grade level. For many Deaf, ASL is their sole language, and reading English is foreign yet familiar all at once. ASL isn’t meant to be written and is based on a different syntax than English. To some, my father’s letters may make him seem barely literate. In fact, he is very well read, possessing a large vocabulary. He simply writes how he would sign in ASL, his native language. The Deaf who weren’t well versed in written English often couldn’t comprehend AIDS prevention literature with such technical medical terminology. As a result, some hadn’t changed their sexual or drug practices to protect themselves. A local AIDS task force was formed that distributed a special mailing t
o educate the local Deaf community about the dangers of the deadly disease. When I saw photos in a brochure of the ASL signs used to educate the Deaf so they could better communicate and facilitate safe sex, I blushed. Mom left the pamphlet on the dining table and I pored over the contents, reading about how HIV could and could not be contracted, dispelling some of the myths that were running rampant about how you might catch it from a toilet seat or from drinking out of someone else’s glass.

  I giggled at the graphic signs for “ejaculation,” “vagina,” and “condom,” and wondered if college frat boys had made them up. Sure, “fuck” and “pregnant” aren’t the easiest signs to figure out, but most people—especially a horny teenage boy confronted by a wild-eyed angry father—could decipher them.

  Nick seemed a bit shaken up as we walked out to his truck. “What was he saying?”

  “Ah, nothing, really. He said it was nice to meet you and don’t be late. The usual stuff.”

  Nick and I had fun on our date playing video games and miniature golf, so we agreed to go out again the next week. Waiting for Nick to pick me up for our second date, I watched television in the living room. Flipping channels, I landed on a rerun of the 1970s sitcom Sanford and Son just as my father wandered into the room.

  “No!” he shrieked, jolting me out of my television trance. “Don’t watch that!” he signed, slapping his right hand, which was in the shape of a “Y” in ASL, against his open left palm, the sign for “that.”

  The yell and loud smack startled me. “Watch what?” I was confused. Surely he didn’t mean Sanford and Son. I had watched it nearly every day for years.

  “That nigger R-E-D-D F-O-X-X. Don’t watch him. He’s a filthy nigger.”

  I bristled when I saw him sign “nigger,” a word Mom strictly forbade us from using. It bothered me to see him sign the derogatory term. Dad had black friends, too. How could he be so two-faced? So what if my father thought Redd Foxx was filthy? He was playing a character in a sitcom. My father loved telling crude jokes that were considered offensive to plenty of people. That never stopped him from sharing them, even in front of me.

  “It’s not dirty,” I scoffed, wrinkling my face.

  “I don’t care. I don’t want you watching him or C-A-G-N-E-Y and L-A-C-E-Y,” he signed.

  Now I was thunderstruck. I never watched Cagney & Lacey. In fact, I couldn’t imagine a worse fate than sitting through an hour-long drama starring two women. “Why not?” I asked, wanting to know the connection in this bizarre synapse leap.

  “Because that actress is married to a nigger.”

  I didn’t know which actress he was talking about, but his repeated use of such an offensive word angered me. Hearing a horn honk outside, I hurried from the apartment to meet Nick at the curb, and slammed the front door behind me.

  In our small apartment, Dad seemed omnipresent, crouched and waiting to pounce. The next time I saw him, he demanded, “Don’t you leave on a date without me meeting him. I want to see him first.”

  “Okay, fine.” I shrugged. He had already met Nick anyway.

  “Don’t go with a nigger, you understand?”

  My father’s sudden intense racism seemed to coincide with my beginning to date. His inappropriate behavior at the mall and his stage antics at the theater competition were one thing. These stunts had always been part of his charm, even if they were embarrassing. But his intimidation tactics and racist rants were behaviors I had never witnessed before. They were in direct contrast to the freedom and culture of tolerance I had been taught my entire life.

  Why would my father turn on me like this and in such a vile way? If I had taken stock of his life over the last two years, the answer would have been clear. The trailer had been repossessed, the IRS was after us, and we couldn’t afford to keep the Toyota. His wife and daughter were working, yet he was unable to find or hold a job, even one as menial as his stint at Bennigan’s. Mom, who had recently tried to leave him, was the breadwinner and was creating a rich personal life for herself without Dad. In sum: He didn’t feel like a man. His racism was a direct reflection of his insecurities. He needed to feel superior, exert some control, and demand respect from his splintering family.

  My father’s pattern of irrational behavior toward my male friends of any race was getting unbearable. The final straw came when I befriended our upstairs neighbors, Tony and Sammy. The two were students at the junior college across the street from our house, and often invited me over to smoke weed, drink beer, and join them for a dip in our apartment complex’s pool. Though Dad had never met them, he’d warned me to stay away. And Tony and Sammy seemed reluctant to invite me over unless they knew my father was out for the night.

  Like most rebellious teenagers, I wanted to be in charge of my own life. I went to their apartment to hang out anyway, assuring them my father would be gone for hours. But one night he came home early, broke the cheap sliding lock on my bedroom door after his knocking had gone unanswered, and found my room empty and my window open.

  Tony, Sammy, and I were smoking a joint and playing video games when we heard angry footsteps on the stairs to their apartment. “KIPREE!”

  It was my father, screeching my name and banging on their apartment door. It sounded like an axe murderer was trying to break in.

  Tony and Sammy were terrified.

  The look on Dad’s face and the sound of his piercing screams as he dragged me by my arm back downstairs were enough for them to never talk to me again. Hell, they wouldn’t even look at me. I was frightened by my father’s reaction. For the first time, I was genuinely terrified of him.

  I wasn’t used to rules restricting my comings and goings. David had never had them and I was more trustworthy and responsible than he was. Wrong or not, enough was enough. I complained to Mom about how my father was behaving. While my mother never verbalized it, I could tell she too was annoyed and frustrated by him. When they were in the same room, she was icy toward him. If he tried to get close to her, she would stiffen and rebuff his advances with a twist of her shoulders. Dad responded by rebuffing her right back. While these scenes played out in plain sight, Mom still wouldn’t discuss her feelings with me, and she was dismissive when I attempted to broach the subject.

  Maybe each of them entering midlife had been the catalyst for change, Dad for the worse and Mom for the better. She was blossoming socially in a way that she hadn’t been able to on Boars Head. In Montgomery, there were no other deaf people or clubs. Now that we were in the city, there were plenty of people that Mom could befriend at the very active Dallas Association of the Deaf. Everyone there loved her.

  Her friends were constantly calling our house, never failing to wake me up after my double shifts at Malibu Grand Prix. Whenever the phone rang, I groggily answered only to hear the caterwaul of digital transmissions of a TTY. Our TTY was in the living room, too far a walk in my tired state. Desperate to sleep, I sometimes waited for the phone to stop ringing and then took the receiver off the hook.

  Despite Mom’s heavy work schedule, she formed a song-and-dance troupe with three other deaf women. She taught them lyrics to songs they could never hear and choreographed dance steps that reminded me of the California Raisins commercial. Each member of Mom’s quartet wore a different-color shiny spandex leotard over black opaque tights. The women rehearsed for days on end before debuting their new routines at the Deaf club.

  Mom was also becoming more fiscally responsible. She had always been the main breadwinner in our family. But despite her best efforts, the trailer was still repossessed. Now she was working double overtime shifts.

  In contrast, my father hadn’t worked steadily since our time on Boars Head, and he burned through what little pocket change he might have had. He’d even bummed money and cigarettes off me.

  I knew I was the only bond left between them, and even the strength of this relationship was weakening with each new day. I was self-sufficient, I argued, and Dad’s behavior was outrageous. Mom said she was waiting until I gra
duated from high school to split up with Dad. I wanted her to act sooner. My father was a negative distraction to me. I was going to be a senior and had enough to worry about with college applications, scholarship forms, a full-time job, and acting, since I had recently been cast as the lead in a locally produced independent film. I needed to stay focused and the turmoil just made it that much harder. In my mind, my parents needed to move on with their lives.

  On July 5, 1988, my wish finally came true. After almost twenty-two years of marriage, my mother asked for a divorce.

  A PETTY OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN

  Within a week of Mom’s asking for a divorce, Dad moved to a studio apartment in a suburb about twenty minutes away, which he paid for with disability payments he received from the government. Mom was surprised at how easily he took the news. Eager to keep the friendly tone, she helped him move his half of the furniture they had divided. She even decorated for him, hanging up photos and putting his pewter car and antique knife collections on display.

  My mother was relieved, and I was liberated. The last few months had been stressful and scary for me. I was able to concentrate on more productive things now that my father was at arm’s length. I hadn’t expected him to leave so agreeably. He had always been so smitten with Mom, but since moving to the city, their marriage hadn’t been the same. He finally accepted it was time to move on.

  David still dropped by regularly, even after Dad moved. He and Derek came and went freely, raiding the fridge, bumming cigarettes, and asking for money from my mother and me. Each time I saw David, he looked skinnier than the last. His height had topped out at six feet, six inches, but he weighed about as much as I did, which was hardly more than a sack of flour. His shoulder-length hair was dirty and uncombed and his eyes looked wild. In the middle of our conversations, he would go off on tangents about imaginary people, places, and things. I thought he was on drugs, but I didn’t know for sure. Sometimes he seemed sober but out of his mind.