20 Years of Literary Mama: Dads

It’s the “oh” you let escape

when I say my name, recognition quickly followed

by the familiar “What’s happenin’?”

and I am thirteen again,

back in your old green pickup, ripped

seats, empty coke bottle, your spittoon, sour

smell rising up in August heat.

You tell me your plans, how you want

to move down south where there’s not

so much snow. You don’t say

where there’s no family.

I stood at the foot of my father’s open grave, struggling to muster a few words to say. Dad’s contradictory life had left me with a heap of unresolved feelings, and judging by my brothers’ blank stares, I guessed that they were in the same quandary. I pulled my coat tighter against the December chill, as if protecting my bruised heart as well.

The smallest thing could enrage my father: an undercooked steak, a misplaced pack of Kent cigarettes, the television volume too low. Like an Army general, he insisted that all of his orders be obeyed.

I thought about it for a few days, and agreed. I could tell Barry had integrity: he wouldn’t leave me with a child, he wouldn’t betray me with another woman unless I betrayed him first, and he wouldn’t tell me he was in love with me when he wasn’t. Besides, he had Paul Wellstone’s book on his nightstand at home. An unspoken agreement formed. We would have a child. After that, we would see.

In September, I charted my waking temperature, picked the date, and we conceived. The little soul who had waited twenty years for me settled in to my body, and began to make herself at home. Meanwhile, Barry and I adjusted to living together, sleeping together, and sharing household duties. Still looking for work, and picking up part-time teaching jobs for income, I wasn’t able to pay my fair share. Barry carried the bulk of the expenses, bought me a cell phone for protection, and kept a bedside copy of the book, How to Make a Pregnant Woman Happy. He did the housekeeping and the laundry, while I grocery shopped and cooked the meals. We had a shared project and a shared household.

I spent a surprising amount of my childhood hoping to be my dad when I grew up. Oh, I didn’t want to be a boy or anything — having two brothers pretty much dispelled any mystique of masculine superiority — but I did want my dad’s job. It looked like a pretty sweet deal to me: a little telling people what to do, a little dressing up, a little singing, and a lot of reading, writing, and being at home when other people’s dads weren’t. Yes, he did have to work on Sundays, but then again he was home at least one day during the week to make up for it. That women were barred from the Episcopal priesthood was no particular impediment; I’d been the first girl acolyte in two different churches, and I figured I could just be the first woman priest, too.

Soumana, a work colleague, called me to cancel.

He and his family couldn’t come to lunch at our house, he explained, because his daughter was too sick. She had better days and bad days and this day was a bad day.

Last year she contracted cerebral malaria. Once a social, inquisitive, energetic little girl, now she can barely talk and walks with difficulty. The illness that got into her brain mangled her body and damaged her mind.

Soumana looks broken when he talks about it. His hair has more gray in it than when we first came to Niger eight months ago. He rarely smiles.

“I’m really attached to her,” he explained quietly. “Well, the truth is I’m very attached to all of my children. But she’s always been special.”