I said okay.
I didn’t stop to think about what would happen if he pulled the trigger. I just trusted him and said okay. I didn’t think about what would happen if he shot and missed or shot and hit our mom. I didn’t think about what our lives would look like afterward. Would we be fatherless or motherless? Would he go to jail for murder or be set free after we explained? I didn’t think about any of it. I was scared and wanted it to stop, so I just said okay. I have no idea how much time passed or how long my brother sat as still as a statue with the gun pointed at our dad, but by the grace of God my brother didn’t pull the trigger. The night ended with our dad passing out and sleeping off his drunken rage. When we determined it was safe, I slipped back into my room, unnoticed by both of our parents, and went to bed. That was the night I knew that my brother would lay his life down for me at all costs.
Several days followed the day we woke up without our dad at home, and each looked the same as the one before. We woke up each morning to a child-run home. We didn’t dare tell our mom. We have known all our lives that she carried more pressure on her shoulders than most moms and wives. We omitted the truth to her on several occasions simply to spare her any more pain. The thought of calling her and letting her know that we had been abandoned in that home was pushed back deep in both of our minds. I assumed our dad was contacting her as if he were home so that she wouldn’t just randomly stop by the house and find us there alone.
We made an unspoken pact to soldier through.
I wanted my mom.
I wanted my dad to come home.
It wasn’t really that I missed him or wanted what he brought to our family. I just wanted a parent, an adult, someone who could drive, and I wanted my brother to be just my brother and not worry about being my guardian. I wanted God to swoop down and scoop me up. I wanted to cry out to him and beg him to come get me, but I only heard the whisper of the devil reminding me that God didn’t know my name.
Aside from fear of the dark when the sun disappeared each day, we also faced the fact that food wasn’t being restocked. A day or so before our dad walked out, he had cooked a huge turkey—a turkey big enough to feed an army on Thanksgiving Day. We also had a pantry stocked with Pop-Tarts, because my dad usually went the easiest route possible and Pop-Tarts were easy. They were always a staple in our home. Each morning our dad was gone, we would have a package of Pop-Tarts for breakfast. When the sun reached high noon, we would pull that turkey out of the refrigerator and set it by the pool. Every day, for two weeks, we ate a Pop-Tart for breakfast, picked at the turkey by the pool for lunch, and swam until it was too dark to be outside. We were clueless about food safety, and it never occurred to us that eating a two-week-old turkey that had sat in the sun for a few hours each day might not be good for us. We didn’t turn the turkey into sandwiches or use it to top a salad. That would take too much effort on our part, and we probably didn’t have the ingredients anyway. It wasn’t neatly wrapped in foil or tightly sealed in Tupperware. It was on a big silver sheet pan and shoved in the refrigerator. It wasn’t deboned and sorted; it was randomly picked from and eaten straight off the bone. We ate just enough to fill our bellies and to give us the energy needed to keep on swimming.
The Pop-Tarts seemed endless, like manna straight from heaven except wrapped in silver packaging and void of any real nourishment.
When we were in elementary school, my mom would call up to us from downstairs when it was time to wake up, and we would call down to her, “Cooked, buttered, cut.” She would put some Pop-Tarts in the toaster, and when they were done she would butter them and cut them into bite-sized squares. The middle piece was always my favorite. It was the piece that didn’t have any crust and was totally soaked in butter. It was the perfect piece, and I always saved it for the very last bite. It literally melted in my mouth and gave me a sense of complete satisfaction.
My brother and I didn’t have the want or the patience to cook, butter, and cut our Pop-Tarts while our dad was away. We just grabbed a package, ripped it open, and ate as quickly as we could. My brother ate the crust first, then dove into the middle. Our favorite was the brown sugar and cinnamon variety, and they tasted just like their name. They were basically just a ball of sugar surrounded by cheap pastry, and we couldn’t get enough of them.
Every night after a long day of swimming we crawled into our dad’s bed, pretending not to be terrified, and watched TV until our eyelids felt heavy and we could no longer keep them open. I had close friends but no one knew me like my brother. No one could make me laugh and feel safe the way he could. I don’t know what shows were on TV each night, but I know that my brother made me belly laugh until my stomach hurt so that when I went to sleep it was with laughter instead of fear. He knew what he was doing. He knew that he had to keep me smiling so that neither of us crumbled in sadness.
One hot afternoon while we were having a breath-holding contest, a police officer walked into our backyard. This wasn’t a strange occurrence. Our house was in a private subdivision that sat in the middle of a big city. The subdivision had its own fire and police departments. It wasn’t unusual for police officers to stop by for no reason and check on things. Normally they would just wave and say hi.
They hadn’t made their backyard rounds since our dad went missing, and a voice inside my head was begging me to tell the officer. It screamed in my ear to let him know that we were hungry for more than just Pop-Tarts and turkey and that we were tired of swimming and of being scared. I wanted him to rescue us without telling anyone. I didn’t want to get in trouble for being home alone, and I didn’t want our dad to get in trouble for leaving us. I wasn’t so worried about him getting in trouble but that he would get mad at us for getting him in trouble.
My fear of our dad being angry at me outweighed the pains in my stomach or the bags under my eyes, and I chose to keep my mouth shut. My brother wasn’t like me; he wouldn’t have the slightest need to tell the officer. He would barrel through what we were going through without help. We kept to our standard wave and polite hello, and the officer went about his way. I watched him walk off to the next yard and felt like our rescue plane had flown right over us without noticing our SOS flag.
It could have been ten days or a solid two weeks, I honestly don’t know. I had lost count after a few days and tried to stop thinking about how long we had been alone. We had become numb to our routine and surrendered to the monotony of it. We almost stopped caring if he ever came home. We didn’t miss him like normal kids miss their dads when they go on vacations or business trips. We simply missed the things he could provide for us as an adult, like a ride to our friend’s house. It’s strange that not once the entire time he was gone did we think something bad had happened to him. There was no real concern that he was in a hospital or a morgue. We knew he hadn’t been abducted from his bed the morning that I noticed he was gone. He had people after him all the time, people who wanted him to pay up on his dues, but not once did we think someone had come to collect. We knew he had left us and didn’t care enough to check in.
Two weeks after giving in to the fact that we had no idea when our dad would be home, the door handle twisted. Fear and relief filled me as I watched our well-dressed and well-rested dad walk through the door. His hair was combed into a perfect mullet, feathered up front and a mess of loose curls at the base of his neck. I gave him a once-over as quickly as I could, hoping he wouldn’t notice. He was in his usual outfit: Levi jeans, white tennis shoes, and a polo-style shirt. I could feel the hurt brewing deep inside of me. I would have been less shocked if he was in a full-body cast or at the very least had a broken limb or stitches across his head. Knowing he was healthy and alive was both a blessing and a pain I can’t describe. He was showered and shaved, and that angered me. Why, if he was healthy and able, did he leave us all alone without a single phone call to check on us or let us know where he was? Why would he not only leave us but leave us uncared for by a responsible and capable adult? Even though we were bot
h street smart and scrappy, we were just kids. Neither one of us was brave enough to question him, or maybe we just didn’t care at this point. We had become tiny adults over the past two weeks, and we almost didn’t want to let him in on our adventure together. A sacred bond had formed between my brother and me, and our dad was now on the outside looking in. We pulled down the shades. He hadn’t earned the right to know the details or how strong we had grown through the process. If he was concerned about how we had fared while he was gone, he didn’t bother asking.
It took me a minute to notice the orange-and-white-striped bags in his hand and as soon as I did, the smell hit me. My stomach jumped for joy. His peace offering was a bag full of hamburgers and fries from our favorite fast-food burger joint. The orange-and-white-striped Styrofoam cups held ice-cold soda, and my mouth began to water before I could get the straw to my lips. I forced myself to stop before the cup was empty, so I would have something left to complement my cheeseburger. By the time we had the burgers unwrapped we had almost forgotten that we had just spent two weeks eating only Pop-Tarts and a weeks-old turkey. The comfort of our favorite burgers and fries almost immediately erased the anger from his abandonment. It’s pretty sad that fast food made up for what we had lost. As my brother held his fully loaded cheeseburger up, about to take a bite, our Great Dane walked by, snatched it out of his hand, and had it completely swallowed before we could even react. I froze, not knowing if I should laugh or scream at the dog.
It was then that my fifteen-year-old brother began to cry. My brother, who didn’t shed a tear at the news of our parents’ divorce, began to cry over the stolen hamburger. My brother, who hid me behind his back while he aimed a pistol at our dad, shed tears over a fast-food meal. That’s the exact moment I got him, I understood his feelings. I wanted to reach over and save his tears. I wanted to catch them in my hands, bottle them up, and preserve them so I could look at them each time I needed reassurance that we were normal kids. I wanted the courage to get up from my chair and wrap my puny arms around his strong shoulders, the shoulders that had held the burden of protecting me. But I just sat there in silence and continued to eat my food, unsure of what else I could do to make the entire scene less painful.
His tears weren’t about the burger being gone. Yes, he was hungry, and he truly wanted to sink his teeth into something new and tasty after two weeks of the same nonnutritious, possibly tainted food. Those tears signified something more. They were a combination of hurt for being left, anger for being handed the responsibility of a thirteen-year-old little girl, fear for what was to come, and sadness for what we had been through. The tears were for himself and for me; not a single tear that rolled off his face and slammed onto the tile floor was for our father. With a completely broken heart I watched my brother shed angry tears that day, and I will never forget each and every one that wet his cheeks.
We’ve whispered to each other about those days many times over the years. We call them the Turkey-Pop-Tart-Sandwich days. Sometimes we can joke about them with our families, but there are other times we talk in private. I’ve called him many times to ask if the story is true. Did it really happen or did I make it up in my head? Sometimes it doesn’t feel real, and I need verification from the only other person that gets my confusion. It wasn’t a true physical suffering on our part; we didn’t starve and we certainly weren’t malnourished. I’ve seen what neglect and child endangerment look like, and I have a hard time believing that’s what happened to us. We were in a six-bedroom home that was spotless and, for the most part, extremely safe. We had food, showers, and each other. I don’t think I can call it abuse. We weren’t physically hurt or verbally chopped down. The suffering we felt was silent, it was an emptying of our souls. It was abandonment that didn’t look like what you expect abandonment to look like. We giggled and played while we were left alone. Can that really be abuse? We didn’t discuss it with each other as we went through it. For each other’s sake, we pretended it was normal and okay, like any other summer day we’d had before. My brother put on a brave face because that’s what you do for your little sister. I pretended not to be scared because that’s what you do for your big brother.
We never asked where he had been, we knew better. We knew we wouldn’t get the truth, and a lie wouldn’t have satisfied us. We hadn’t believed a word that came out of his mouth for years before this.
I actually wanted to thank him for leaving us all alone, so desperate that for the first time in my life I had no other choice but to turn my face to my other Father. Every night, after the TV turned to a scrambled mess of black and white, I would pray. For the first time, I wholeheartedly prayed to the Father I didn’t know and who I wasn’t sure knew me. Desperation brought me to his feet. I didn’t know if he was real or if he cared that I was begging for him to notice me. While I can’t say for sure that my prayers were answered the way I had hoped, I can say for sure that God formed a bond between me and my brother those two weeks that would save my heart on many levels for years to come. And for that I will forever be grateful for the Turkey-Pop-Tart-Sandwich days.
four
What Can Wash Away My Sins
After the Turkey-Pop-Tart summer, my parents moved back in together and had an off-and-on relationship. Sometimes my dad was home, and other times he lived somewhere else. I don’t think there was ever a solid relationship between him and my mom after that summer, but my mom tried over and over for the sake of her family. He was still present, for the most part, when I started high school and for a year or two into it. As I grew into my teen years, his lies and manipulation became a bigger game for us to play. Even though time after time he let me down and hurt me, I still hoped that he was going to miraculously change into this amazing father. I knew better than to trust his lies—I knew deep inside that every word was false—but I pretended to believe them.
One Friday afternoon, the promise of a fun-filled weekend with my cousins was all I could think about. I watched the clock slowly tick, second by second, as I sat in my last class waiting for the bell to release us from school for a couple of days. I turned my body to face the door, making sure I would have a clean break at the sound of the bell. I had ants in my pants and could hardly contain myself in the chair.
Set me free! Let me go!
I couldn’t stand school. I no longer fit in despite my circle of friends and cheerleader status. In my head, I was different. They thought they knew me, but they were so far off it almost made me sad that I had them fooled with my lies. If they knew what secrets hid behind my smile, they wouldn’t really be my friends. I just wanted out of there. I wanted to be with my cousins, the ones who got the real me.
At the sound of the bell I bolted from my seat and headed straight for the door, not even stopping at my locker to get what I needed or put away what I didn’t. My dad was waiting for me outside, and we were headed straight to the lake. Even though our relationship had taken many twists and turns, I still trusted him enough to be his accomplice. He had blurred the line between friend and father, and I no longer cared enough to sort it out. I used him and he used me. The only time I communicated with him was when I wanted something he could get, and he would come around acting like a dad when he wanted to make an impression on people. We had settled on that kind of relationship without speaking about it.
I still craved a real father. I craved a dad that made me feel special and valued, but I settled for what I had. He wasn’t ever going to be my knight in shining armor. He wasn’t even part of the backup plan anymore. But he came around every so often and when he did, I grasped at the chance to feel like he loved me.
As I burst out the front doors of school, I could see my car waiting for me at the curb. My dad had given me a 1990 jet-black Eagle Talon, and I truly thought it was mine. My mom told me over and over not to get attached to it and that it wouldn’t be mine for long, but in my heart I wanted to believe that this time it was for real, that my dad had legally purchased it for me. He had a habit of giving us s
tolen cars and had been stealing them long before I had a license. Even though I knew he didn’t get the cars the way other people did, I didn’t realize they were stolen until I was well into adulthood. Sometimes he drove them straight off the lot for a test drive or “borrowed” cars from his friends and handed us the keys like the car was a gift. By this time we had been given more stolen cars than I could count, but each time we chose to believe it was real.
I almost ran to the car, knowing my dad was in the driver seat waiting for our weekend trip. I yanked the door open as fast as I could and flew into the passenger seat, only to see my dad’s best friend with his hands on the steering wheel.
“Where’s my dad?”
“I don’t know. He told me to come get you and take you to the lake.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know, but he said for you to stay with me.”
A normal, smart teenage girl would have gotten out of the car, but I stayed. This wasn’t the first time this man had picked me up from school. It had actually become normal. My dad would send him to pull me out of school, and he would take me to lunch for no reason. He had built some sort of trust with me, and I went along with his and my dad’s game.
The Con Man's Daughter Page 4