Dad. But, hey, here’s an idea.
“What if I get a job?” I expect him to embrace the concept,
but his immediate reaction is, No frigging way. Not on my watch.
If I can’t pay for it, you don’t need it.
Pride? I don’t think so. But if not that, what then? “Lots of kids get jobs, Dad. In fact, lots of parents require their offspring to prove how responsible they actually are.”
Except for a Slurp
Of his beer, he’s quiet for a good
half mile. Okay, it’s more like three
or four slurps, before he finally says, I’ve failed you in so many ways, little girl. I simply can’t let you work when I’m responsible for your needs.
“But, Dad, you said it’s important
for women to make their own way
in the world and not rely on a man.”
He thinks that over for a second.
I don’t believe I’ve ever said that, and definitely not when it comes to you.
An uneasy silence bloats the space
between us. I heard him say those precise words before, and now I search my memory vault to dig up exactly when. I’ve got it.
We were staying with Cecilia, one
of several women Dad hooked up with
along the way during our nomadic days.
That was a pattern. Touch down
somewhere he felt like hanging
around, he’d pick up a woman hungry
for a man and willing to put up with
his kid. Dad was all charm, and the world offered up plenty of lonely ladies.
Talking them into putting us up for a while was something he accomplished easily.
When I was really young, I totally
thought he was seeking a replacement
mom for me, but as I got older, I came to realize the relationships were never meant to become permanent. Rather,
they allowed us periods of home-cooked meals, regular showers, and a temporary address that accommodated school.
Oh, not to mention fairly frequent sex for Dad, who happily accepted all benefits as long as they didn’t require monetary compensation. Once in a while he took part-time work, but that was rare, and as far as I know, he contributed very little of his paychecks to our upkeep.
Things were no different at Cecilia’s, where we’d stayed for a couple of months. I guess I was twelve because I got to ride the bus to school for a whole sixth-grade semester.
Maybe if Cecilia had just accepted Dad being a lazy ass, we would’ve stayed longer.
She’d recently lost her job, and while unemployment might have been enough
to provide for a single woman, it stretched awfully thin for two hard-drinking adults and one kid—even one who ate like a bird.
I’m not sure about Dad’s criteria when it came to working or not, but at Cecilia’s he heaped one excuse on top of another for not finding a job. Finally, she decided enough was enough, and as was often
the case, everything came to a head
after a night out at a local tavern.
They’d left me alone and I was asleep
when they bungled in, already immersed in a heated argument loud enough to yank me out of an indigo ocean of dreams.
. . . do you think you are, you goddamn leech? I’m sick of buying your beer.
Come on, pretty baby, Dad soothed.
You know you never had it so good.
Besides, you want to be independent.
It’s not good for a woman to rely on a man. Independence! That’s what you want. Celebrate your freedom.
She Celebrated
By kicking us out
a few weeks later.
When it became clear that’s where things were headed, I begged her for enough time to finish the school year.
Kindly, she agreed, but tension hung like a static curtain in that little house. Summer was heating up, and along with it tempers, and I was very glad the day Dad and I piled into his car and took off.
We spent June and July mostly camping out, and by the time school started in the fall, we’d shifted states again, from Idaho to Oregon.
I celebrated my thirteenth birthday in a Corvallis trailer park, with a whole new woman attached to Dad’s hip.
Maya
School blows, man. The first quarter is almost over and I shudder to think what my report card will look like, though Mom probably won’t even ask to see it. She’s so blinded by her “church” work she barely remembers I’m here. Bad for her. Good for me, except when she tries to draw me into that insanity. All I’ve got to say about that is hell no, at least behind her back.