Dear James,
Yeah, where was Dad? When I went to work for him at the tool & die shop I got a little window into where he might have been: at the condo, on the golf course, the poker table, in the windowless office where the smell of the fear he instilled in everyone around him (not me) was fresh and tart - and I have to think: it could have been so much better, Dad, you really missed out you charismatic sociopath! When I won that award for writing in 8th grade, when Paul Chowning threw me against a wall and told me he was going to kill me, when I pulled a 13 second quarter mile with my 69 Chevelle SS with street tires, when my soccer team played at Pontiac Stadium, when it was a mundane Sunday night and we were watching the Walt Disney Sunday night movie in our pyjamas? Where were you, Dad?
You know, the likelihood of alcoholism in adults who were abandoned by their fathers is exorbitant? Also: depression. Clinical depression, not just feeling sad but the real deal, paralyzing freakin depression. And suicide. On our behalf, thanks Dad, for that.
Even when he was forced to step up for me, when I was 17 and dealing with what was my most intense period of homelessness, in the dead of a Michigan winter no less, he didn't do it in any sort of passionate present emotive way. He seriously could not express emotion. The first thing he said to me, and pretty much the only thing he said, after seeing me the first time for 6 years was, "Well you're pretty." At his dinner table, which was gigantic, underneath a "modern" chandelier, eating some kind of steak dinner. I sat there feeling like I was ... a puppy he could send back to the goddamn shelter. And I was. And I've bent over backwards trying to shake that conditioning, though I credit knowing what that feels like with developing my compassion, which I thoroughly believe has saved my life more than once, and has at least saved some animals' lives, so what'r you gonna do?
And I just sat quietly across the table and watched his cocky dexterity with that meat. I'd never had a piece of meat like that and I knew it, and that etched the dividing line between our worlds onto my heart, a hot white line. I was not impressed (I'm not a good daughter, I don't know how to behave), he was just a man who was never around, who could eat filet mignon when we were eating franks & beans, but I sure do recognize what I inherited from him, mad Tennessee moon-shine drinker that he was, share-cropper's son, race-car driver.
God, how fantastic, the ass you kicked in Madison Heights. We're so similar, we're so of the same cloth. Kids Abandoned By Their Dads. Lauren & Milissa, they didn't have it so good as to be left completely alone - they knew him, they have (had, right? I keep forgetting one of our sisters is dead) memories you know, of shit like Sunday dinner and homework and games on the living room floor with that guy. So they knew what it was to not have him. They're jacked, to this day. And I mean, Milissa's dead.
Me, I only knew what it was to not have him: hard work, period. You kicked ass in Madison Heights? I kicked balls. I remember Uncle Ron looking at me one day, back before he figured out I was a girl & couldn't be talked to or loved anymore, and saying, "You're gonna need to know how to throw a punch," and taking me to the side of the house, the Berents' side, and teaching me, plain and simple. He was a Golden Gloves boxer, Uncle Ron, you know. We're from that era of immigrants when being a Golden Gloves boxer was a seriously cool accomplishment, American kids that we are. So I learned how to fight, alright.
On a regular basis some kid from the hood would come running to the door, "Libby! They're beating up Milissa again!" and I'd put down the Detroit Free Press, can you hear my audible sigh, and go outside, walk down the street to the Church Road (remember that little 30 foot dirt path?) and raise some holy hell. I can't tell you how many times Milissa & I would be walking home from school & some little knot of kids would hammer down on her. And I'd turn, face them, walk up, and if they were smart they would scatter. If not, well, you'd have some crying boys to laugh at in a minute or two. Fucking pansies. It was usually boys, too, beating her up. Boys. Where were their dads? Anyone who romanticizes the "white trash life", you gotta figure they're just numbskulls. I wish we had the luxury of being that precious.
But I didn't know, man, our shared role in the public eye. Both tough, divorceé kids who would hit you in the head with a baseball some day if you deserved it. And that was the thing: only one time was I unnecessarily cruel to a helpless kid, Randy who lived across the street, on a dare from Sandra and the other bitches in Our Club (the dues was a dime). And it disturbed me so much, I felt so guilty about it that I went back across the street to Randy's house that night, knocked on the door, confessed to her mom, and apologized to her in front of her mom, even started inviting her over to play games in the basement, even though she bored me to tears and those tough girls who were my gang disapproved. It was the right thing to do.
I just couldn't stomach cruelty, just could not, it freaked my little head out, it wrecked me, all that violence, man it just destroyed me. I would rain it down on someone if they were teasing the deaf kid or taunting some girl walking down the hall or being mean to a dog but I hated every second of it. I didn't feel powerful, I felt trapped. It was like prison, for crying out loud, all those clichés about having to fight or you'll get abused for forever. God it made me so sick. I'd have to puke sometimes after taking some kid outt. Just throw up in the bushes, go home and lay on the bed in a daze. It took New Orleans to get me to put those tough little fists down. I had to go as far south as I could, into the heat and swamp, just to relax. For five minutes.
And mom going over to the house of those mean boys who lived across from the Brundage's, after those boys opened up a can of Campbell's tomato soup on the front seat of her car while she watched them in broad daylight, her walking over there and confronting the dad saying, "Your sons just dumped a can of Campbell's soup in my car," (isn't that just an absurd sentence?!!) and the dad just blowing her off, refusing to punish them or deal with it in any sort of sane fashion. Watching her walk back home underneath the daylight sun. And I remember thinking, "So now you know what it's like, Mom. Welcome to my world."
But she felt righteous, that's the kicker! So did Dad! Doesn't that just take the cake?!! They both felt, or acted like they felt, pretty fucking stainless steel clad, like they somehow were heroic, noble, little Jamies or Libbys, defending the down-trodden, fighting the good fight. Fuck them. Where were they when I got raped? More importantly: where were they when I transcended that and chose to believe in love again? Dead, that's where. I mean, I loved mom, for real, but gosh, she was as much of a zombie as him, the walking dead, they were dead way before they died. And then they died. And that's one thing nobody could ever say about you or I.
And it's so true what you write - the Nescafé, the Catholics, the death. Wasn't it weird, us being expected to be able to help other people deal with their grief over Mom's death? We were just kids and we were expected to handle it, not one adult stepped up, nobody was alive enough to recognize that then, of all times, it was vital that we kids get some nurturance, some guidance. Where was anyone to just step in and be an adult? Show the way, share some wisdom? Where?
And Lauren's weird manipulative attempts at that - god, I appreciated the gesture but it was so misguided. She actually sat me down one day & tried to convince me that joining the armed forces was my only option for any sort of secure future for myself !!! Sat me down some morning after I drag raced all up & down Gratiot Avenue to tell me that I really had no future. I mean, SHE got to go to college, it was all Mom ever talked about with you, why not me? Seriously, where was anyone with half a fucking brain to recognize that I was a walking talking honest to god genius who would excell at anything remotely related to culture/art/history/math/language? I was in the top 10 percent in national scores for my SAT's and when I took them I was sleeping in a bus stop for christ's sake. Not to mention, did she know me at all? Me, animal-loving puking-after-fighting punk rocker, I could train to kill another human being, I could submit to that kind of authority? Where was anyone with half a brain in their head; where was anyone to stop the madness, stop the wheel for one second, to just honestly deal with what was going on?
So your baseball coach used to tell you "Have eyes have eyes" and I know you know what that means. It's more poetic to act like you don't but fuck poetry, the meaning is ours for the making. You know what it means and that has to be one of the greatest wisest things anyone has ever taught you. And you do, you "have eyes", you saw, you see, and you're seen. I see you seeing the world. I see how brave and strong you always have been. I didn't have a baseball coach but I had those horses and what they taught me? When you're mid-jump you have to be actually seeing the next jump ahead, looking ahead, telling the animal that you're riding with the most delicate language possible, eensy teensy little signals, "We're going that way. We're not stopping. Nobody's watching out for you but me."
I love you, forever.
Elizabeth
