All little girls wait for Daddy to come home, even when he doesn’t. All little girls wait to tell Daddy about their day, or week, or month, depending on how long it takes him to show up. Even when he comes late, or doesn’t come at all, there is a secret place in a little girl’s heart where she waits for her daddy. No matter what is going on in a little girl’s life, she believes that Daddy can fix it, save her, and make everything all better, even when he can’t. In this respect, Rhonda was just like all little girls. Daddy was her hero. She needed his love, protection, and praise. She waited, although she never received them. She believed with all of her heart that Daddy could make everything better, even when he couldn’t.
All the ladies agreed that Rhonda’s father was really good-looking. Rhonda was always proud to walk down the street with him and watch them watch him out of the corners of their eyes. Like Grandma, he had finely chiseled features. A thick, bushy mustache covered his large lips. He had a deep, rumbling voice, and it was that voice that gave Daddy his way with the ladies. Daddy didn’t sleep at Grandma’s house. Rhonda didn’t know where he slept, but he always came at lunchtime to have a sandwich and to calculate his numbers. The minute he hit the door, Grandma would start complaining about her lack of money, about Rhonda, and about Daddy in general. On a good day, Daddy would shove some money in her hand as soon as he walked in. That would shut her up. On a bad day, if Daddy hadn’t hit a number or didn’t have any money, Grandma would go on and on, cursing and screaming. But Daddy would never curse her back. He’d just look at her and say, “Ma, please. I’ve got to get this done.”
Rhonda wasn’t sure if she should interrupt Daddy to tell him about the dream.
“Daddy, the lady in my dream told me to tell you a number.”
“That’s nice, baby,” Daddy said, as he continued his calculations.
“Do you want to know what the number is, Daddy?”
“Sure, baby. But not right now, though.” And he took a bite of his sandwich.
Rhonda waited quietly by the kitchen door. She watched him work and eat. When he was done, he gathered his slips, shoving them in his pocket, grabbed his hat, and headed for the door. Rhonda knew he was trying to make it to the door before Grandma had a chance to open her mouth again. He almost made it.
“What time will you be back?” Grandma hollered from her room when she heard his keys jingling.
“’Bout six.” He answered without slowing his pace. Just as he was about to open the apartment door, Rhonda ran over to him.
“Daddy, the lady told me to tell you the number. She made me promise not to forget.”
“Baby, Daddy’s got to go now,” he said as he tried to shoo her away.
“But she made me promise.” Daddy wasn’t smiling. He was trying to get away.
“She told me to tell you 6-2-3.” Rhonda was proud of herself. She had remembered.
“Okay. That’s nice, baby. Thank you.” And he slammed the door.
When 623 hit that evening, Daddy didn’t make a dime. But from that day on, he would walk in and make it a point to ask Rhonda, even before he took off his hat or spoke to Grandma, “Did you have a dream last night?” Whenever she had a dream, Rhonda couldn’t wait to tell Daddy. She would whisper the number in his ear so that Grandma couldn’t hear it. It was their little secret. Daddy would smile, give her a big hug, and pat her on the head. Daddy never kissed Rhonda, not ever.
It never failed. If Rhonda gave Daddy a number, it played that day or, at the latest, the next evening. Daddy would be so happy that he’d stay a little longer at lunchtime. He’d call Rhonda baby and tickle her stomach. Before he left, he would give Grandma some money, and that night Rhonda wouldn’t get a bath.
Daddy could always tell when Rhonda had gotten a bath. Maybe he could see the bruises on her arms and legs. Maybe he could see the sadness and the fear in her eyes. Maybe he became suspicious when Grandma would pray or sing just a tad bit louder and a little more off-key than usual. On those days, Daddy would quietly whisper to her, “You got another bath, yesterday, huh? Don’t worry. You’re tough like me. You can take it.” It was another secret that Rhonda shared only with her daddy.
Sometimes, when Grandma had to go out to work at a particular “Madam’s” house where she couldn’t bring Rhonda, Daddy would take Rhonda with him to bars and pretty-women’s houses, and to a variety of smoky haunts filled with loud and funny-acting people. There was Mr. Rootman. He was always nice and never failed to give Rhonda a stick of gum or some candy. There was Bubba John, who stuttered and spit when he talked. Then there were the ladies. They all wanted something from Daddy and didn’t mind using Rhonda to get it. Rhonda didn’t mind being used, because she always got a Popsicle or a lollipop in the process. Sometimes, one of the ladies would take her downtown and buy her new clothes. Grandma never liked the clothes that the ladies bought. She’d scream and holler about them being red or striped, too tight or too short.
“You look just like one of those whores you and your daddy hang out with,” she’d yell. Rhonda thought she looked pretty nice. Grandma would fix Daddy with a mean stare, “Look at her. She looks just like a little floozy.” But Rhonda thought her new clothes looked a lot better than the corduroy overalls Grandma made her wear. Then Daddy and Rhonda would be treated to another chorus of Grandma’s favorite phrase: “Ain’t neither one of you s——t! And you ain’t never gonna be s——t!”
At home, Daddy was completely different from the daddy who hung out at bars and rode around with pretty ladies. Daddy never challenged Grandma. Whatever she did, whatever she said was okay. For Rhonda, the best times she spent with her daddy were on the days when Grandma had to go out and Daddy would stay home and cook and play games. Daddy grew up in the South, not far from Uncle Jimmy’s farm. When he and Grandma moved up to New York City, Grandma went to work, and Daddy spent a lot of time home alone. Daddy was a good cook. He said that he learned how to cook when he was young and Grandma was away so much of the time. He also learned how to wash and iron and take care of himself.
Daddy told Rhonda everything he remembered about his own daddy, which wasn’t much. It seemed that he died when Daddy was only two years old. Folks in the family used to say that Grandma had drowned him for beating her. Others said that he died in a fishing accident, but they never talked about the fact that Grandma’s husband was half black and half white. Daddy used to tell Rhonda all about the army. He said he joined the army when he was nineteen years old to learn more about cooking. Rhonda thought he enlisted to get away from Grandma. When Rhonda was older, Daddy talked about how hard it was to be a black man in a white man’s army. He also told her about spending years in Leavenworth for selling cigarettes on the black market, and how they’d promised him his freedom if he’d go on a dangerous mission. He survived the mission, and after that, they gave him his freedom and a dishonorable discharge.
That’s why Daddy was a numbers runner. In 1950s America, as a black man with a dishonorable discharge from the army, he couldn’t get a job. It was, he said, worse than being a black cat in the midst of the Holiness church. Daddy was bitter about his life. Perhaps because he grew up without a daddy. Perhaps because his mother was so mean. Maybe it was because he got dishonorably discharged from the army. Maybe it was because, although he was a mathematical genius, he couldn’t get work. Maybe it was because his wife had died, or because he had two kids that he couldn’t take care of.
Rhonda was never sure what caused Daddy’s bitterness, because nobody ever explained it to her. She only knew that her daddy wasn’t there to protect her. Her daddy wasn’t there to look out for her. Her daddy knew that his mother abused his daughter, and he never said a word. Her daddy taught her many things about living and loving. He taught her that life was hard and that you must do whatever is necessary to survive. He taught her that it was all right for men to pass through your life, give you a little money, say that they love you, and that you shouldn’t ask for any more.
Rhonda knew that he
r daddy was bad, just like she was. The only difference was that Daddy never went to church. Sometimes Rhonda would ask him to go. She told him if he went they could pray together and ask God to make them good and saints, like Grandma. Daddy would laugh. “Who in the world told you that Grandma is a saint?”
“That’s what they call her in church. Saint Harris and Sister Harris,” Rhonda would explain to him.
“That doesn’t mean that she is a real saint. That doesn’t mean anything. It’s just something they say in the church,” Daddy explained.
“But Grandma said that you and I are going to hell and she and Ray are going to heaven. Maybe if we pray real hard like Grandma showed me, God won’t send us to hell. It’s very hot down there, and all the bad people go there.” By then Rhonda would be crying. She knew she was bad, but the thought of her hero, her daddy burning in hell was more than she could handle.
“Listen, baby,” she loved it when he called her baby, even if it was only once in a while. “If you and I are going to hell, believe me, Grandma will be there when we get there.” Daddy would wipe away Rhonda’s tears and send her off to play. She wanted to believe him, but she had heard a lot more of Grandma’s side of the story than she had her daddy’s.
Daddy taught Rhonda that money is more important than personal honor, and that it is okay to do whatever is required of you to get the money you need to live. He taught her that family is nowhere near as important as your reputation among your peers. He also taught her that making do with what you have is more important than asking for what you want. More important still, he taught her never to tell the truth if it will make trouble, or get you in trouble. He taught these things to Rhonda in all that he said and did. He passed it on to her brother as well, by word and by deed.
Rhonda often wondered how her daddy felt. How he felt about her, how he felt about his mother, and most important, how he felt about himself. Perhaps, she thought, if someone knew how he really felt, they could help him. Perhaps if his mother knew how he felt, she would not have stomped all over his heart. It wasn’t personal. It was about survival. Grandma was doing what she felt she needed to do to survive, and Daddy was doing the same thing. Rhonda was just trying to survive, too. Daddy and Grandma taught her to do whatever is necessary to get through the hard times, the difficult days, in order to survive.
Unfortunately, when you have a survivalist mentality, you become so caught up in surviving, you forget that there is another way of living. You forget about the joy and the gentleness and the softness. You forget about communication and intimacy. You forget that in the process of living you must remember to be gentle and kind. When you are a daddy, you may even forget that your little girl is watching you, waiting for you to make things better. Rhonda had a hard time learning all of the things that her daddy and the other adults in her life forgot.
CHAPTER FOUR
What’s the Lesson When You Don’t Realize That Life Is a School?
Today I am canceling mess! Getting rid of confusion that’s been hanging around like cobwebs on my ceiling. I am releasing my soul from tiredness and antiquated, meaningless crap! Stepping out of traps that have long been rusted. I’m doing like some companies do when they reorganize, forgiving debts, writing off losses, and establishing good credit for myself. There are simply some things that need to be written off. Some people, too!
Reverend June Gatlin, from Spirit Speaks to Sisters
I’M CONVINCED THAT expensive dogs are dumb. Mutts have good sense. They understand that they have to be good. They have to poop in appropriate places, they have to eat whatever they get, and they can’t chase the resident seventeen-year-old cat. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a mutt; I had an expensive dog. I could hear it outside the bathroom door, chasing and harassing the slow-moving cat. The fact that the water was cold and I had to rescue the old cat from the new dog provided an excellent opportunity to empty the cold, crappy water out of the Jacuzzi so that I could fill it up again. This time I would add a little peppermint and some rose oil to the water, a stimulating combination that takes the mind to the heart of the matter. After putting the dog in the basement and offering the stressed-out cat some Tender Vittles, I slipped back into the bathtub to continue my healing process.
Rhonda’s father had a girlfriend and he also had a wife. His girlfriend, with whom he had two children, Rhonda and Ray, had died of breast cancer and leukemia. He married his wife two years before his girlfriend’s illness was even diagnosed. It was a scandal. Daddy’s wife was a very classy lady. So classy, in fact, that everybody hated her. Most people said if it had not been for her, Rhonda’s mother probably wouldn’t have died. How they figured the wife’s presence gave the girlfriend breast cancer was a mystery to Rhonda. Perhaps they just needed a reason to hate her because she was so beautiful.
Daddy’s wife could have been a model, except she was too short. Her fair complexion, shapely frame, keen facial features, and long black hair were quite acceptable to the world at large. And it was precisely these things that made everyone else in the family despise her.
“Who does she think she is?” one of the more endowed aunts would ask when Lynnette was not within earshot.
“She must think she’s white!” was Grandma’s pat answer. “She acts just like them highfalutin women uptown who ain’t got nothin’ but their looks to offer anybody.”
Everyone, including Rhonda, called Daddy’s wife Nett, and she had more than looks. She was beautiful. She was stylish. And she wore jewelry. As a matter of fact, one of the things about Nett that so endeared her to Rhonda was her jewelry, all of it gold. She wore a pear-shaped opal on a gold chain around her neck. It was her birthstone, she said. Nett also wore two beautiful gold rings, one on each of her ring fingers. One was her wedding band, she said. The other was a thin gold band that had a beautiful round stone called a diamond. Rhonda liked it when Lynnette made the diamond reflect light onto the wall. Nett also wore two bracelets, called bangles, on her left arm. They were made out of pink gold. “My mother gave these to me when I was a little girl,” Nett told Rhonda. “One day they will be yours. I will give them to you, just like my mother gave them to me.” What Lynnette didn’t tell Rhonda was that on the day she would inherit the bangles, Nett would be dead.
Nett always wore a colored skirt, white blouse, and low-heeled pumps. The neck of her blouse was so heavily starched that it stood up on its own. There were times when Rhonda liked to sit and just stare at Lynnette because she was so beautiful. She was also kind, gentle, and very affectionate. Rhonda could tell that Daddy thought Lynnette was beautiful, too. She could tell by the look in his eyes whenever he was around her. Sometimes Rhonda wished that Daddy would look at her the way he looked at Nett, but he never did. But everything that Nett did made Rhonda feel beautiful for the first time in her life. And Nett was everything that Grandma wasn’t.
It would be too mild to say that Grandma didn’t like Nett. Hated would seem more appropriate. But it wasn’t just that Grandma hated Nett, it was that she went out of her way to be mean to her and to say nasty things about her. Rhonda wasn’t sure if it was a blessing or a curse. On the blessing side, it meant that Grandma spent so much time complaining about Nett, she’d go for days without complaining about Rhonda. From the curse perspective, her liking Nett made Rhonda a double enemy in Grandma’s eyes and added new fuel to her repertoire of verbal abuse.
“She paints her fingernails! You like that, don’t you?” Grandma would say, building up steam. “Only whores paint their fingernails. Guess you want to be a whore just like her. You want to be just like your daddy’s whore, don’t you? I don’t know what that trash is she wears, but you can smell her coming a mile away. Bet you want to smell like that, too. Don’t you? Homemade soap ain’t good enough for you, huh? Want to smell like your daddy’s whore, don’t you.”
At the time, Rhonda had no idea what being a whore meant, but if it was good enough for Nett, it was just fine by her. What really stuck in Grandma’s throat had n
othing to do with Nett’s fingernails, nor the fragrance she wore. It had a whole lot to do with Nett’s heritage. Nett’s parents were Caribbean, she was a mixture of Jamaican and Cuban. Back then, black people from the South neither liked nor understood black people from the Islands.
“They eat monkeys, you know,” Grandma would say smugly. “Keep them as pets, too! That bitch probably thinks you’re her own little pet monkey.” Rhonda must have heard Grandma’s monkey-talk a thousand times. She didn’t know most of the words that Grandma used to describe Nett, or whether she was even telling the truth. What she did know was that when you weighed Grandma’s baths and abuse against Nett’s bubble baths and pancakes, Rhonda would rather be a monkey in Nett’s house any day.
On days when Rhonda went riding with Daddy, he would take her to Nett’s house, and Nett would make her pancakes from scratch. It was absolutely amazing how she did it. Every pancake came out the same color and the same size. Occasionally, Nett and Rhonda would make tuna fish sandwiches together. Rhonda would peel the fragile shells off the hardboiled eggs, and Nett would finely chop the pickles and onions. Nett always toasted their bread just right, and she always gave Rhonda her own napkin.
As far as Rhonda could remember, Nett was the only person who ever really talked to her. She talked to Rhonda about important things like what the cartoon characters were doing and who was going to win the Miss America pageant. But most important was that Nett talked to Rhonda about Rhonda. She taught Rhonda how to polish her nails, and she taught her how to wash her panties out at night. And she never, ever yelled at her. A bath at Nett’s house meant bubbles and sweet-smelling soap—a marked improvement from the baths Rhonda had taken at Grandma’s house.
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