I told her that I was trying to decide what to do with my own father. I could not imagine continuing a relationship with him as I tried to climb out from the enormous pile of rubble that was my past. But at the same time, there was that guilt. What I owed him for those trips to the Tech Museum and the beach when I was a child, when he taught me about the Monkey King and tucked me in every night. What I owed him for the time when we both believed he loved me. The scales were also tipped by that weight of immigrant obligation.
“There’s something there, about the immigrant experience,” she replied. “My dad definitely had childhood trauma. It was off the charts. He would say about Haiti, ‘If I messed up at school, it wasn’t just my mom who beat me. It was the whole neighborhood! Everyone on the street would come up and say, “Why’d you do that?”?’?” And, here, she mimed a smack. “He never hit me, but in his mind, he was like, ‘I didn’t hit you. And physical abuse isn’t even a really big deal. What’s the problem with my verbal abuse?’?”
“Yes, yes,” I told her, tapping my leg on the floor anxiously. “It’s so hard to deal with this idea of what I should feel about it. What I’m allowed to feel.”
“That’s what your culture has taught you. It’s not just immigrants—all Americans expect children to grow up and take care of their elders. Especially as women. You know, there’s a term that scientific journals have given to the caretakers of people with Alzheimer’s and dementia: daughter care.”
“Why daughters?” I asked, but my question trailed off as she gave me a withering look.
“You know why.”
I barked out a bleak laugh. “Right.
“You’ve interviewed sixty people who are estranged from their parents,” I stammered. “I don’t know if you have studies on it, but, um, in your experience—did the people who estranged themselves, did they feel free afterward?”
“No,” Catherine said with certainty. I waited. There was nothing else.
“No…?” I asked, my heart sinking. “Well, if not freer…were they…happier?”
Catherine munched on her cracker and shrugged. “Meh,” she said.
She must have seen my unhappy expression. “Look,” she explained, “I don’t think it brought anyone joy. It didn’t make people happy to have to do it. It was just necessary. I think you just have to figure out if it’s necessary for you. I can’t tell you if you should do it or shouldn’t. All I can say is that if you do do it, you’re not alone.”
* * *
—
In the summer of 2018, a few months after my diagnosis, I emailed my father again to tell him that I needed my space in order to heal and that if he wanted to communicate with me, I’d only do it with a mediator present—preferably a therapist. Then in September, I arranged to meet with him for the last time in downtown Oakland. I told him I was in town and wanted to pick up a few belongings: some old Japanese dolls, my yearbooks. I didn’t say that this needed to be the last time, but after my previous email, it was assumed. My father texted me, asking where I wanted to meet. I named a random street corner. I brought Joey along for emotional support.
When we crossed the street, my father was standing there with a paper bag. He looked hollowed-out, old, and he was wearing glasses. I felt bad for him, guilty about this already. He said hello but was frowning at me. I replied, “Hello.” I reached for the paper bag.
“I would like to sit down and take a minute of your time, if you can spare it,” he said jeeringly, his voice hard. There was a café half a block away, so we sat down. I went to the bathroom first and left Joey sitting with my dad.
Joey told me afterward that my father had asked him, “Do you know what all this is about?”
“I think she can tell you herself,” Joey replied.
“I don’t know why this is happening now. This could have happened ten years ago,” my father said. Probably referring to the estrangement. To the cutting of ties that he knew was about to happen. Had already happened?
By the time I got back from the bathroom, my father’s jaw was already set in that way that let me know a fight was coming. And he said, “Let me say my piece.
“When you first told me this, I felt bad about myself,” he said. “I thought, oh, you know, You’re bad. You’re terrible. Whatever. But then I thought, You know, this is really hurtful to me.”
“It’s hurtful to you.” My voice instinctively came out sarcastically.
“I knew you’d say that,” he said. “I just think—I don’t know what brought all this on.”
“You don’t know?” I heard myself cut in.
“Will you let me talk? It’s just, I can’t change the past. And I don’t know what you want me to do.”
“This isn’t going well,” I said.
“Well, fine,” he said, and he angrily got up to leave. “I’m through with this.”
I halted him, saying, “I was hoping you’d respect me enough to talk to me through a therapist. Because this is devolving into a hundred conversations we’ve had before.”
“I’ve seen my therapist FIVE TIMES,” he said, furious now. He held up his hand to show his five fingers. Then he went on. “Anyway, I just wanted to tell you to have a nice life. Because I am done. And I don’t even know why you are doing this, but I don’t care. I’m done.”
“You don’t know why? You honestly don’t know why?”
“Tell me in one sentence why. I just want to hear one sentence.”
I said it slowly. “Because you don’t love me.”
“What do you mean I don’t love you? Tell me what that means.”
“What does that mean? Abuse. Neglect. And you used me…”
“I used you? What did I use you for?”
“You just started calling me last year to talk about your depression, about how you wanted to die again. Did you think about how that would make me feel? You called me for that. Me, of all people. And—”
“You know what, fine,” he interrupted. He didn’t want to hear anymore. “I thought you were my friend, but I guess I was wrong.”
“I’m not your friend,” I shouted. “I’m your daughter.”
That was the entire problem.
Heads in the café turned to look. “Fine,” my father said, not looking at me. He threw up a hand. “You know what? Fuck it. Have a nice life.”
On his way out the door, he turned to Joey and said, “When you have your kid, give it a kiss for me. Okay?” He clapped him on the back. Joey whipped around and snapped, “Don’t you fucking touch me.” I grabbed Joey’s arm and said, “Stop.”
And then he was gone.
* * *
—
I sat there staring into space, silently, for a few minutes. I had done the unspeakable. I was floating in the air above the abyss now, without roots, without a home, seething with rage and self-righteousness. I was aware the other patrons in the café were staring at me. But I had no shame.
“Let’s go,” Joey said gently, and he led me out of the café. One block away, my breath finally came, hot and quick, and I collapsed into his arms, sobbing in the middle of Broadway, big, gasping, childlike sobs. “Even at the end—even now—why did he have to…why couldn’t he give me anything?” I asked. And even at the end, even now, I knew what I had to do. I sent a text to his wife: “I don’t think my father is in a good place today. Please watch out for him. I’m afraid he might try to hurt himself.”
And that was it. I was done protecting him from himself.
* * *