As my mom headed off to work each night, she reluctantly left my brother and me in the care of our dad. We thought we had scored big time, because he never enforced a bedtime and we were free to roam about doing pretty much whatever our hearts desired. It was easier for him to parent this way—and be the cool parent—than it was for him to set any standards for us or enforce any rules. He was the guy who would randomly pull us out of school for a “family emergency” and then head to the lake. While the other kids were stuck behind a desk, we were headed toward the water. It was easier for my dad to let us skip school than it was for him to get up and take us and then make sure he was there to pick us up. At least once a month he wouldn’t be able to get his head off of his pillow in the morning, so he would declare it a “Snell Holiday.” Having our last name attached to the word holiday instantly meant that we were free to stay home with no consequences.
He was either extremely active and bouncing off the walls or could barely get off of the couch. He had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and was a diagnosed sociopath. I don’t remember him ever taking medication for either. On the days he didn’t move, he handed us twenty dollars and a note for the cashier and sent us on our way to buy him cigarettes. We were allowed to keep the change, which took the embarrassment out of buying smokes for our dad.
Most nights, while my mom was at work and other kids were being tucked into bed, my dad let us stay up late watching scary movies. Or he sat with us in the kitchen talking about life. This is how I found out what being gay meant and what drugs were. I was in second grade, and back then those weren’t things parents openly talked about with their kids. They were taboo subjects, and I knew that the other kids in my class weren’t getting these kinds of lessons at home.
On one of those nights when my mom was burning the midnight oil at the hospital, my dad was wide awake and had no bedtime in sight. My dad, my brother, and I sat around the kitchen table talking about anything and everything we wanted. In the middle of the conversation my dad got up and went to the tall wooden cabinet that stood next to our oversized console TV. He reached inside the highest cabinet, the one that would require me to pull a chair up next to it to reach it. After moving a few things around he pulled out a brown lunch sack and set it on our dining room table. The table was long, almost reaching from wall to wall, and was surrounded by eight chairs. We only ate at it on holidays or when we had company; it was reserved for special occasions. With bright eyes, my brother and I sat down and waited for him to pull out whatever treasure the sack held. We watched as he laid out bags of pills, powders, and what I thought was dried grass. Item by item he explained to us what each drug was. He detailed each illegal drug to his second and fourth grader, and then he told us that if we ever wanted to try drugs we needed to come to him first and not take drugs from anyone else.
That was our first “Say No to Drugs” lesson. In second grade, I could identify cocaine, marijuana, and a variety of pills. I don’t think either my brother or I thought anything of it. My dad said a friend left the drugs at our house and that he had insisted his friend come and get them, but he had not shown up. We had no reason to believe otherwise and, to us, our dad was honest and safe. His favorite phrase was, “Don’t tell your mother,” and because we both respected and feared him, we never said a word, not to her or anyone else. Before we even reached middle school he had groomed us to be master secret keepers.
Most of my elementary years were spent with wool pulled over my eyes. I knew we weren’t exactly a normal family, but it was normal to us. My mom explained to me that my dad was not a bookie but that he did financial work for people. My dad explained that he was a bankruptcy consultant, and when his clients couldn’t pay him they would give him things like cars and lake houses. I didn’t know what bankruptcy was or how my dad had acquired the knowledge to help people through it. He had barely made it out of high school and never spent a day in college. Yet he managed to help people through sticky legal situations and convince them to pay him with things. My mom continued to work as many hours as she could to make sure our family had a steady, legal income. She did the job of both parents, working full-time and making sure homework was done and projects completed. Her smiling face cheered us on at every event, and she scrambled daily to make sure all the bills were paid. Somehow, my dad continued to get all the glory.
My brother and I were both far too wise beyond our years. I attribute it to the nights we spent navigating our dad’s insane parenting lessons. Long before we became teenagers, we knew the ins and outs of the world in ways children shouldn’t. Because of our dad, we had seen more than most adults before we were even enrolled in high school. There was an angel and a devil perched on either of my shoulders, and far too many times the screech of the devil pounded in my ears, making it impossible to hear the sweet whispers of my angel.
I don’t remember ever attending church; it simply wasn’t a part of our childhood. I know at some point we joined the church in our neighborhood but not because I remember going. I have the picture our family took the day we became members. Four well-dressed and smiling people look back at me in that picture, and I can only imagine what it took for my mom to force us into taking it. I’m wearing a dress, which literally took an act of God. The picture has several tack holes in it from being moved around on the church bulletin board, but I can’t recall taking the picture or ever being in the church. I wasn’t taught Bible verses or made to sit through a service. We didn’t meet up with other church families for potluck Sunday or have Bible studies in our home.
My mom believed in God—I know that for a fact—but church and religion just weren’t part of our daily lives. She didn’t display crosses in our home, and we rarely if ever prayed before we ate or went to sleep. The extent of our dinner prayer was my dad loudly stating, “Over the teeth, past the gums, watch out tummy, here it comes!” Maybe I believed in God, but I didn’t believe he knew me. Or maybe I just thought he was a God for everyone else, the good people, the people with lives wrapped up in a pretty bow. I don’t know how I sorted it all out when I was a little girl, but as I got older I just figured if there was a God, he hated me.
Eventually, I grew out of that blue and white Daddy’s Little Girl T-shirt and had the wool removed from my eyes.
three
Turkey Pop-Tart Sandwiches
Our tight family of four began to fall apart piece by piece, and my dad’s actions grew even wilder and more out of control. After the night he had driven me to the lake in a drug-fueled adventure, he never again treated me like a child and I never again saw myself as one. The relationship of father and daughter had rusted and couldn’t go back to what it was before the weather took its toll. As much as my mom tried to keep everything together, it all began to crumble.
My brother and I stared at our dad across the booth at Arby’s. Just the thought of dipping a curly fry in a pile of Arby’s sauce made my mouth water, and I glanced again at the counter to see if our order was ready. As I tapped my feet I could hear my flip-flops stick to the floor, and I slowed my feet down so that I could make the sound stretch a little longer. The air was filled with a scent that combined old grease and cheap bathroom cleaner, and I found it oddly comforting. The five-minute fast-food wait was killing me, and I wasn’t sure if it was my hunger or my brother’s weird demeanor, but I knew something was slightly off. A feeling came over me that this wasn’t just an outing with our dad and that a bomb was about to be dropped in our laps.
Dad finally launched the grenade while I had a mouth full of food, which I know was strategically timed. The less I could talk the better for him. In his smoothest voice, he let us know that he would be moving out and getting a home of his own. The smile never left his face as he detailed the dismantling of our little family, and the news didn’t have a devastating effect on me or my brother. My brother didn’t even flinch. He didn’t care about the news; I could read him like a book. Honestly, by this point I didn’t care either. When our parents were a
part there was less fighting and mom was less stressed. This was actually a good thing for us.
A few years before, they had actually gone through with a divorce, only to remarry shortly afterward. They had set us down on our powder-pink couch to break the news. A tear immediately fell to my cheek, and I glanced over to my brother, who sat stone-cold. His eyes were completely dry. It was on that day that I started channeling his emotions and not letting anyone see my hurt. I wanted to sit stone-faced the way he was. I wanted to pretend like it didn’t affect me. He pulled it off so well, and I craved to be a fraction of what he was. I remembered how just days before he had whispered to me, “Why do you cry when dad yells at us? Just laugh. He’s a joke.” I wanted to truly embrace not being cut to the core when my dad yelled at us because letting it eat me up inside was getting me nowhere. It would ultimately take many years for me to perfect not letting his words soak into my soul, but before that would happen, it would nearly eat me alive.
As we digested our roast beef sandwiches covered in Arby’s sauce, we also digested Dad’s news. Somehow he was moving into an affluent neighborhood not far from our current home. He began to verbally paint a picture for us of his new house. It boasted six bedrooms and four bathrooms. In the backyard, just before the grass turned into woods, a black-bottom pool sparkled like a fresh-cut gem. It had all the promise of a sun-filled, water-wrinkled summer with our friends, and that’s exactly how it was presented to us. Just as we had the picture of this perfect home in our heads, Dad let us know that our mom would be moving into a one-bedroom, one-bath apartment behind our neighborhood fast-food BBQ joint. For a fifteen-year-old boy and a thirteen-year-old girl, the choice seemed pretty clear. By the time we stepped foot into the parking lot, we had decided to move in with our dad. Something deep in my gut started to turn, and the thought of facing my mom was almost too much for me to think about. I knew how hard she worked for us. I knew that apartment was all she could afford. I knew she would sacrifice everything she had to attempt to give us everything we wanted. I knew we were about to shatter her heart.
Within days we were unpacking our suitcases in our new bedrooms. The suitcases full of clothes were all we had, and we soon realized it was about all the entire house had. My room had a twin bed and a record player and my brother’s room had nothing. Absolutely nothing. As I climbed the spiral staircase up to his room, I couldn’t decide if I was jealous or sad. He had two rooms up there and one was like a secret cave. I immediately wanted my friends to come over and have a slumber party in that room. It was a room that begged to have secrets whispered in the dark. But the bareness of it broke my heart. We had both made a poorly thought-out choice in coming to live with our dad. I wondered if my mom was wiping away tears in her little apartment. I felt selfish.
Summer kicked in days after moving in, and all of a sudden our house was filled with our friends. As the light hit my eyes one morning through the tiny rectangle window in my room, my thoughts went to the pool. I could smell bacon and eggs cooking, and that was a sure sign that dad had been up all night doing whatever it was he did on his binges. Since he was still up on his high, he was cooking breakfast tacos for me, my brother, and anyone else who had crashed at our house that night. It was the only time that he ever felt like a real dad. He was actually preparing a meal for us and, as silly as it seems, it meant that he was parenting us. The small glimpses we got of him being a parent were few and far between. Making tacos on a Saturday morning made him seem genuine and made us feel like we had a dad just like the ones we saw at our friends’ houses. We shoveled the tacos in and were submerged in the pool before we had time to digest a single bite.
After one particular weekend, our house finally sat empty of company. My brother and I went to bed in his room and we assumed our dad had passed out in his. Early the next morning, I shuffled down the carpeted spiral staircase and felt the coolness of the tile as I left the bottom stair. It shocked the bottom of my feet, making me wake up a little more than I was. The kitchen was eerily quiet and oddly bare for how large it was. It was the biggest kitchen we had ever had in any of our homes, and it begged to host huge dinner parties. The cabinets seemed to reach far beyond the ceiling and could easily hold enough dinner plates and glassware for the entire neighborhood. However, behind most of them was a blank space void of anything to put food on. The refrigerator reminded me of something you would find in the kitchen of a restaurant. It was a huge stainless steel monster that was working overtime to keep only a handful of items cold.
I made my way across the living room and headed to my dad’s bathroom, since it was the only one in the house that was stocked with shampoo and towels. In the living room, the sparkle of the pool outside caught my eye, and I couldn’t wait for my brother and dad to wake up so we could jump in. The huge room that was designed to surround a large family with lots of seating and tables held only a single couch and nothing more. When I was a little girl the couch was covered in a soft pink material, and I thought it was made for a queen. It was the same couch that I had sat on a few years earlier and listened to my parents tell us about their divorce. At some point my mom had it recovered in a soft powder-blue fabric, and it lost its allure to me. But it was still my favorite piece of furniture. It always made it through our moves and was a comfort piece in all of our homes.
By the time I reached my dad’s room I was fully awake and ready for the day. With as much grace as I could muster, I slowly turned his bedroom door handle so as to not wake him. As I tiptoed to his bathroom I glanced over at his bed and, to my shock, it was empty. A pile of wadded up blankets was carelessly thrown in the middle of the bed, and no effort had been made to clean up the room. My dad never just woke up and left without telling us, and since he never had a job to go to he was usually home when we were. But there was his bed, completely empty.
Skipping the shower altogether I ran back to my brother’s room to let him know that Dad wasn’t there. I was panicked. Something deep inside of me was alarming the rest of my body that everything was terribly off. We had been left alone countless times while he was out for the evening, but I knew this was different. My brother slowly emerged from under the covers, hair standing straight up, eyes slit open just enough to navigate his way around. Together we made our way back to Dad’s room, since it was the only room with a phone, and tried to page him on his pager. We had been given an emergency code to use when there was trouble. My brother punched in his code, 15 911, and then hung up. Just to drive the point home, I picked up the phone and entered my code, 13 911.
And then we waited.
The phone never rang, and we spent most of the day in our dad’s bed watching TV, waiting. Every few minutes throughout the day we would page him. Every page ended with 911, a signal to let him know it was an emergency.
By the time the sun tucked itself away that evening, we both knew we would be spending the night alone, without our dad. I could feel terror in my entire body. I wanted to snuggle up close to my brother, but he was a fifteen-year-old boy and they don’t tend to want to cuddle with their little sisters. Our house was big with lots of windows and the thought of leaving my dad’s room, for any reason, made my bones shiver. The only thing that gave us a sense of security was our one-hundred-fifty-pound Great Dane curled up at the foot of the bed. He was sweet and goofy, but the mere size of him offered us some peace of mind. My brother always played it cool, and he seemed unfazed by the fact that the day had ended and we hadn’t heard a word from our dad. I tried to act like it was okay. I didn’t ask him if he was scared because I didn’t want him to worry about me being scared. We both stayed in the king-size bed until the scheduled TV programming ended, and we finally fell asleep.
When we woke up the next morning, the day didn’t look any different from the previous one. It was quiet. There still wasn’t a parent in our home, and we both knew in our guts that there might not be one for a while. My brother got up like nothing was wrong. The sun was shining and it made the house less scary. We
were able to move around and not confine ourselves to our dad’s room.
There had never been a day in my life that my brother showed weakness or fear in front of me. He’s always been my rock. I have always known if I was with him, then I was safe. I seriously thought he was eight feet tall and the strongest person I knew. In my eyes, he was invincible.
Months before we moved into the big, empty house, my dad showed up to our old home in the middle of the night belligerent, on alcohol and drugs. He was dropped off on our doorstep by two police officers, and he wasn’t very happy with my mom’s cold reception. A one-sided fight ensued, and he lost his cool in a way I had never seen before. I put my ear to my door to listen to what was happening on the other side. I was too nervous to open the door; I didn’t want to accidentally make eye contact with him. He was screaming and cussing at my mom, while she never even raised her voice. I don’t know if she was playing it cool to push his buttons or if she was trying to lessen the chaos for me and my brother’s sake.
Once he made his way into my mom’s room, I cracked my door just wide enough to fit my body through and dashed down the hall to my brother’s room. He opened his door just enough to let me in and then made me hide behind him. It was the first time in my life that I honestly thought my dad was going to become violent with us. We had seen him drunk on many occasions but nothing like this night. He was flinging himself wildly around my mom’s room, yelling as loudly as he could. I had never feared him before, but there was something terribly wrong and frightening in him that night. My brother sensed the same and pulled a handgun out of his closet. I didn’t know where the gun had come from. We had several guns in our home, but I never knew where they were or why they were there. I calmly sat behind the safety of my brother, who had barely just become a teenager, and watched as he cracked his door open and aimed his gun at our dad, who was in clear sight in our mom’s room. His hand didn’t shake and I found that calming. He didn’t seem scared at all, which helped ease my fears. Without turning to me or taking his eyes off our dad, he whispered, “If he hits Mom I’m going to shoot him, okay?”
The Con Man's Daughter Page 3