by Nafisa Haji
I don’t know when the Christmas cards started coming. From my father. But it was years after he left us. No return address. Same message every year. Dear Ron and Angie, thinking of you and hoping you have a wonderful Christmas. Love, Dad.
“Christmas is easy,” Grandma Pelton said one year to Grandpa Pelton when they didn’t know I was in the room. “Everyone remembers Christmas. Notice how there’s never a card for the kids’ birthdays? That would be something. To actually remember when they were born.”
By the time I was in high school, when Mom started going off on her missions, and my brother, Ron, was away at college, I was too old to be cheered up with ice cream and stories. I was restless, angry at my mother for leaving me behind, acting out. Grandma Pelton didn’t know what to do with me. I’d get in trouble at school. She’d keep it from Grandpa and never told Mom when she came back. I’d be good for a while. Then, when Mom would take off again, so did I.
I fell into what Grandma Pelton called a “wayward crowd.” It began with the boy I started seeing—an older boy who lived up the street. Denny. He wasn’t the first boyfriend I’d had, but he was the worst: a high school dropout who rode around town on a motorcycle. Grandma couldn’t stand him. She tried to stop me from seeing Denny. But I didn’t care. I used to sneak out at night to be with him—one of those secrets that Grandma kept from Grandpa, when she found out. I started to cut school. And smoke with my friends in the bathroom. I was suspended for that. Twice.
But I settled down whenever Mom came home.
It might have gone on like that and eventually been all right. Except that Grandma Pelton died at the beginning of my senior year in high school. I took it harder than anyone realized. Whatever shaky kind of faith I claimed to have at the time became even shakier. Growing up the way I did, in the heart of a good, Christian family, rooted in the kind of faith that should have been a guiding light from early on, I have no excuses.
I remember how horrible that Christmas was, without Grandma Pelton. Leading up to it, Mom and I fought all the time, about everything. She was leaving on another mission—to India—in a few weeks, and I was terribly unhappy about it. Christmas morning, I remember, I threw a tantrum over a pair of jeans I’d been expecting and didn’t get. Jordache, as I recall, the must-haves of the time.
“I’m sorry you’re so disappointed, Angie. I just couldn’t afford them. Fifty-dollar jeans!”
“That’s all I wanted for Christmas! The only thing I asked for.”
Mom was shaking her head. “Do you know, Angie, how disappointed I am that you would even want them? Do you know what fifty dollars can buy? In terms of food and medication for the kids I work with? I’m talking about saving lives. Even if I had the money, I wouldn’t spend it on a pair of fancy jeans for your behind. I know better than that, even if you don’t.”
Looking back, I can’t say I disagree with her. But I hated the way I felt. Dismissed. Thrown over. I begged Mom not to go away on her next trip, not to leave me with Grandpa Pelton.
“I have to go, Angie. You know I do. I’ve made a commitment. And I’m needed.”
“Then let me come with you.”
“You have school. You can come with me in the summer. After you graduate.”
That was no consolation. Mom hadn’t seen my report card. She didn’t know that there was no way I was going to graduate in June.
The Christmas card from Dad came a few days late that year. For the first time ever, there was a return address, in Los Angeles, on the envelope—something Mom pointed out to Grandpa Pelton before handing the card over to show him.
“Looks like he didn’t go far,” Grandpa said, handing the card back. He shook open the paper to read with his coffee, putting the matter away from him.
Mom fingered the writing in the card and gave a sigh before handing the card back to Ron, who, without a word, gave it to me to read.
I dug the envelope out of the trash later, wiped the wilted lettuce off it, and put it away. Before going to bed that night, I wandered into Mom’s room and asked, “Why did Daddy leave?”
She sighed and put down the book she was reading. “I told you before, Angie. I don’t know why he left. I wish I did. I wish I had an answer for you. But I don’t.”
What she said made me furious. I didn’t believe that she didn’t know. Only that she wouldn’t tell me. When Mom left me in Garden Hill that time, I got into more trouble than ever before, trying to shake the dull off me. Only this time, Grandpa was in charge. No ice cream from him. Just lectures, at first. He’d pace, hands behind his back, throwing words in my direction, words that washed over my head without cleansing any of the anger and confusion in my heart. One night, I took Mom’s car for a ride with Denny and some of his friends. Somebody had some liquor. We got pulled over. Denny was driving—he was drunk and they threw him in jail for the night. But I didn’t stop seeing him. Not until he dumped me for another girl in the neighborhood.
When I got suspended from school a third time, it wasn’t tobacco I was caught smoking. Mom was still away. Grandpa Pelton had no idea how to handle me. I see that now and I don’t blame him. He said some nasty things. And I said even nastier ones back.
One of which was: “You’re not my father! You have no right to tell me what to do!”
He lifted his hand at that one, but managed to stop it before it got anywhere near my face. Teeth clenched, he yelled, “I thank God for that! You have the morals of an alley cat and if I hadn’t promised your mother to take care of you, I’d say that’s where you belong!”
I took that as an invitation to run away. I wanted to start fresh, to get away from all the trouble I was in at school, to be somewhere I could belong without having anything from the past hanging over me. I knew where I was going without having ever really planned it.
I took Greyhound to L.A. It was scary being out on my own, and I had to work hard to resist the urge to go back home, thinking about how worried Mom would be when Grandpa told her I was gone. But Grandpa Pelton had a temper that, though slow to rise, could be fierce, and knowing that I’d tested it enough lately, I didn’t want to turn around and bear up to the hollering I’d be in for back at home.
It was easy enough to find the house on the map I bought at the bus depot, a little place, not far from the freeway in the San Fernando Valley. I stood outside of it for a long time, too scared to ring the bell. It was early evening, maybe five o’clock, and it didn’t look like anyone was home. What was I supposed to say if he answered the door? Uh—hi, I’m Angela. Your daughter. Remember me? I retreated from the porch and walked up and down the sidewalk for a while. Pretty soon, a beat-up old station wagon pulled up in the driveway. A woman was driving. She got out and hustled a couple of kids out of the car and into the house I’d been casing for almost an hour—a boy carrying a guitar and a girl, younger, in one of those ballet tutus and slippers. For a second, I wondered if I had the wrong house. It took a while before the truth even crossed my mind as a possibility. The woman was his wife and those were his kids. The moment I realized, I hated them.
Eventually, I worked up the nerve to ring that bell. A tall man with fading, sandy-blond hair answered. It took me a moment to recognize him from the photographs in the old family album at home. It was my father. Apparently, he was a schoolteacher and had been home since four o’clock, inside all the time that I’d paced the sidewalk. It was even more awkward than I’d been afraid of. After a few minutes of me stammering and him stuttering back, he let me in the door, still dazed. I met his wife. Connie. Their son, Cory. He was thirteen years old. And their daughter, too—Michelle, who was seven. They didn’t know about me—Cory and Michelle, I mean. Connie did. She pretended to welcome me, smiling and saying how glad she was to finally meet me. As if there had ever been any wish or plan to ever meet me before.
We all stood awkwardly in the living room for a while. Then Connie asked my father to go with her into the kitchen to help get dinner on the table. I would have offered to help, exce
pt I thought what she really wanted to do was get him alone for a second. To talk about me.
Cory turned the TV on so loud it hurt. And Michelle stood and stared. After a few seconds, I asked to use the bathroom, mainly to get the crazy beat of my heart under control, to splash my face with water, and try to get some air into my lungs. Michelle led the way without a word. When I came out, I traced my way back down the hallway and stopped outside what I thought was the kitchen to hear Connie’s louder side of a whispered conversation—my father was better at whispering, so I couldn’t hear anything from him.
“Well— I mean, I just think a phone call ahead would have been— I mean, it’s such a shock. How long do you think she wants to stay here?”
Dad’s answer sounded like air.
“Well, don’t you think you should ask her what her plans are?”
More blanks from Dad, short enough to indicate that he used fewer words than Connie.
“Of course, I know that, but I just need to know how long.”
“—————”
“What about her mother? Does she know she’s here? Or did she just run away?”
“——”
“Well, maybe you should ask. How old is she, Todd?”
“—————————————————————”
“You don’t know? You don’t know how old she is?” Connie’s whisper had some voice in it now. I decided that what I’d heard, and hadn’t, was enough.
Cory was still on the couch. Michelle left the Barbie dolls she was playing with to stare at me some more. Pretty soon, Connie called us into the kitchen for dinner, as bright and cheerful as she’d been before. She didn’t ask me any of the questions I knew she wanted to. Instead, she kept up a flow of bright-eyed conversation that was saccharine-sweet enough to give lab rats cancer—asking me about “my trip,” about how long the bus ride had been and all. Michelle was still staring, making it even harder to swallow the bites that would have stuck in my throat anyway. Cory shoveled food into his mouth without looking at anyone. My father did pretty much the same.
When dinner was over, I offered to do the dishes.
Connie said, “Oh, no. You go and rest. You must be tired. Thank you.” She smiled so wide I could see the pink of her gums. I wondered what she looked like when the smile actually reached her eyes. I hadn’t seen that happen yet.
Cory was back in front of the TV. But he got up when Connie came in and said, “Go get your homework done, Cory. Michelle, put those Barbies away and finish your spelling sentences. I’m going for my walk with Deena.”
Michelle skipped out of the room backward, still staring. I sat down on the couch and waited for my dad. I wondered if Connie’s walk was a way to give me some private time with him. It wasn’t, I found out later. She went for a walk every day with the lady who lived across the street.
Dad came in, wiping his hands with a dish towel. I stood up to switch off the television. The sudden quiet was a relief. I wondered whether Cory had hearing problems. And then the doorbell rang. Dad opened his mouth and closed it a couple of times, like a fish, and then went to answer it. A few seconds later, he was back with a man wearing a tool belt and carrying a toolbox.
“I sure appreciate it, Todd. I—I haven’t worked for a while.”
My father nodded. “Don’t mention it, Jake. I know how it is. Let me show you what we want done.” They went into the kitchen. In the silence of the living room, I heard them discussing creaky doors and squeaky hinges. Then they moved on down the hallway. There was a light switch that needed to be three-way. A faucet leaking in the main bathroom. A tilting dresser in the master bedroom. My father had stuff for Jake to do in every room. Cory and Michelle were quiet. The TV was still off. I listened to every last one of Jake’s assignments. It took my father almost forty-five minutes to go through them all. When they came back to the living room, they were talking about paint colors. Navajo White. No—maybe something with a little yellow in it. Better to ask Connie. Jake was nodding, writing it all down in one of those little memo pads you could get for nineteen cents at Thrifty’s. At least you could back then. Back when ice cream was fifteen cents a scoop. I watched him tuck his pencil back behind his ear without really looking at him, waiting for my father to remember I was there. When he finally led Jake out, he turned and came back to the living room, catching sight of me with a startled look that was proof of what I had begun to think—that he’d forgotten all about me.
Connie came back just then. She helped me make up the couch in the den, explaining that I should feel free to sleep in—that they’d all be out of the house by seven in the morning.
“I was off from work today. I’m a nurse.”
I blinked. And stared. A nurse. Same as Mom. If I gasped, Connie didn’t seem to notice.
She was still talking. “Tomorrow, my shift starts at six o’clock in the morning and I won’t be home until six in the evening. Todd will pick Michelle up from school. Cory takes the bus. And then he’ll take ’em for their after-school stuff.” She was chattering away. I could tell she was uncomfortable. “Just make yourself at home, okay? Here’s a towel for you to use. Is there anything else I can get for you?”
I shook my head, said thanks, and wandered back into the living room where my father was. He was watching TV now, and Connie was with her kids, checking homework and running a bedtime bath for Michelle.
I stood and waited for him to notice me for a few minutes. Finally, when that didn’t work, I said, “Maybe I should call home?”
My father looked up and blinked a few times. Then he said, “Uh— of course. There’s a phone in the den. Feel free.”
He didn’t ask about Mom or Ron and hadn’t mentioned them since I’d gotten there.
That was when it hit me. The failure. I’d come looking for a way out of my troubles and confusion—a happy ending that wasn’t going to happen. I wouldn’t have come if I’d known about Connie and her kids. My father wasn’t some tragic hero, wandering and lost—the way I guess I’d pictured him from my grandmother’s description—pining away for the family he’d left behind, someone I could save who could then turn around and save me. He had picked up and moved on and there wasn’t ever going to be a happy ending that involved him coming back to a family he’d never been a part of in all the years of my life.
I woke up the next morning to the bustling sounds of that family, the one he was a part of, getting ready for its day. I may as well have not been there at all. I didn’t bother getting off the couch I’d slept on, just waited until the house was quiet before getting up to get dressed. I thought of my phone call to Grandpa as I did—he’d been relieved to hear from me. And quiet when I told him where I was.
I could hear him sigh into the phone. “Won’t you come home, Angela?”
“No.”
“I’ve spoken with your mother. She’s worried sick. Trying to get a flight back as soon as possible. If you’re not coming home, she might as well stay in India. What do you want me to tell her, Angela? Should I tell her to come home?”
Yes, yes! I wanted to shout, thinking of the man in the next room who was my father, who didn’t have anything to say to me and no interest in anything I had to say, either. Choked up, I said, “No. I’m not coming home.”
Remembering that call, I started to cry. The simple truth was that Mom was all I had. Mom and Grandpa Pelton and Ron. This home, the one I woke up in that morning, was the home of a family that I had forced myself on. I wasn’t stupid enough not to know that. But that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt.
I was still crying, half-convinced that I should leave, when the doorbell rang. I wiped my face and went to answer it.
A woman was standing there, holding a carton of eggs.
“Hello. I’m Deena. From across the street. I wanted to return some eggs I borrowed from Connie.”
“She’s not here.”
“I know. You must be Angela.”
I nodded. She spoke with an accent. I
couldn’t figure out what kind. She looked like she could be Spanish or Italian, but she sounded British. Sort of. Iranian maybe—there had been a lot of stuff about Iran on the news. About American hostages being held there and pictures of an angry-looking old man with a beard that Grandpa Pelton had said might be the Antichrist. I’d seen it on TV, big crowds of people, women with their heads covered, waving their fists angrily around, burning American flags.